Yannick Peterhans / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has never gone quiet about how his NFL career ended. Now he’s naming names about what came after and claims Jay-Z became the league’s “Black face” in the late 2010s.
In a recent interview with Medias Touch, Colin Kaepernick claimed that NFL owners discussed needing a “Black face” to end player anthem protests back in 2017, and offered him a leadership role in a social justice initiative.
Colin Kaepernick claims NFL owners offered him a social justice leadership deal in 2017 to end anthem protests
According to Kaepernick, after he turned the role down, Jay-Z — then just a few years into running his Roc Nation Sports talent agency — stepped into it two years later when Roc Nation struck its 2019 partnership with the league covering entertainment and social justice initiatives, including the Super Bowl halftime show and the “Inspire Change” campaign.
“We see the NFL owners explicitly call this out in their players-owners meeting that happened in 2017. Coming out of that meeting, we have reports of Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, saying, ‘The elephant in the room is this kneeling and the protests. We need to address it,'” Kaepernick explained.
“Then you have Terry Pagula, who is the owner of the Buffalo Bills, on the back of that, coming out and saying, ‘We need a black face to help us end this.’ We’re hearing very explicitly from the NFL owners and that oligarch class that, ‘We need a black face to help us subvert the protest, work counter to the people’s interests, and we’re in search of that,'” he continued.
“They tried it first with the players’ coalition. They tried it with me, directly, trying to offer me a major deal to lead their social justice initiatives while they’re actively blackballing me. To be clear, that was rejected… At the same time, we see Jay-Z step into that role, effectively fill the void that the NFL owners were looking for: that black face to subvert the protests.”
Kaepernick has been out of the NFL since the 2016 season, after his kneeling protests during the national anthem sparked a widespread controversy. He filed a collusion grievance against the league in 2017, which was settled confidentially in 2019.
The outspoken former NFL signal-caller is out promoting his recent book, The Perilous Fight, which revisits his exit from the NFL and shares his perspective on being sidelined.
Kaepernick played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers and helped lead the team to the Super Bowl during the 2012 season. During his career, he threw for 12,271 yards and 72 touchdowns and 30 interceptions, and also rushed for 2,300 yards and another 13 touchdowns.