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Ten years after he roiled pro sports with on-field protests against racism and police brutality, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick said he no longer watches pro football, calling the league’s moves to address racism “so performative.”
“I’m not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well,” Kaepernick told NBC in an interview to promote his memoir, which comes out this month. “I watch college football.”
Kaepernick, 38, declined interview requests from The Athletic.
Kaepernick began sitting during the national anthem before preseason games in August 2016, and then kneeled before a game on Sept. 1, 2016. As other players followed Kaepernick, the protests and counterprotests became national news. Kaepernick started most of that 2016 season for the San Francisco 49ers, for whom he started in the Super Bowl following the 2012 season. He opted out of his contract in March 2017 and never played another game, later filing a grievance alleging that NFL team owners colluded to keep him out of the league. The NFL in 2019 settled grievances filed by Kaepernick and former teammate Eric Reid.
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The next year, amid protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell recorded a video in which he said the NFL condemns “racism and the systematic oppression of Black people. We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe Black lives matter.”
“His response through that video was only because of pressure from players, not because it was altruistic,” Kaepernick told NBC, calling Goodell’s message “so laughable, in my mind, and so disingenuous. We had been trying to address the issue that the NFL created with blackballing me for years. To come out and say we should have listened on the back of that — while I’m still actively trying to play in the NFL — it’s so performative.”
The NFL launched an “Inspire Change” program in January 2019. During the 2020 season, slogans such as “End Racism,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Stop Hate,” “Choose Love” and “Vote” began appearing on end zone borders, part of a broader, multipronged effort to promote diversity and inclusion. In an internal memo at the time, the messages were said to demonstrate “how football and the NFL bring people together to work as one and use our example and our actions to help conquer racism.” Before the Super Bowl in February 2025, league officials changed one of the slogans expected to be stenciled in the back of an end zone from “End Racism” to “Choose Love.”
The Rooney Rule, the league’s policy requiring teams to interview diverse candidates for leadership roles, has also come under attack, with Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier saying this year that the policy violates Florida law and threatening legal action if officials do not do away with the policy. Goodell has said the NFL remains committed to the rule.
“‘End Racism’ in the back of the end zone is a great marketing campaign, but what are the actions behind it?” Kaepernick said in the NBC interview. He told the network that he doesn’t think the NFL has materially changed, based on the league’s actions.
“We have seen it time and time again. For them, it has gone back to business as usual, and I think that is a tragedy that we have allowed them to be able to get to that point.”
Kaepernick told reporters in 2016 that he didn’t vote in that year’s presidential election; he was repeatedly criticized by President Donald Trump, who during his first term said NFL owners should react harshly to players who took a knee during the anthem: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He’s fired,” he suggested. Kaepernick told NBC he has voted in the past two presidential elections, and he said the criticism of his means of protest was a way of distracting from his actual message. He also said he doesn’t think much about his legacy.
“What I think about is what are the areas that I can do work that I think are going to have an impact and help us move towards that future together,” he said. “At the end of the day, people will decide what that legacy is, and hopefully that’s a positive one.”
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