Colin Kaepernick’s recent remarks about comparing the NFL draft combine to the slave trade generated a lot of responses last week, many of them critical of the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback. Obviously, to any sane, normal, logical, and rational person, comparing the horrific institution of slavery to the billion-dollar athletic empire that is the NFL is laughable and unquestionably offensive. One such person is former NFL player Jack Brewer, who ripped the quarterback-turned-left-wing activist for making such a foolish comparison.
Brewer, who was a team captain in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Eagles, called Kaepernick’s comments sad, while noting they were rife with hypocrisy.
“I pray for Colin Kaepernick and anyone who supports his ideals and his way of thinking,” Brewer told the Washington Examiner. “At the end of the day, I think it’s an act. I can’t comprehend someone really believing what he says. Out of one side of his mouth, he compares professional football and the process it takes to play it to slavery, and out of the other side of his mouth, he says he wants to come back and play at 40 years old. I don’t understand it.”
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Kaepernick originally made the controversial (and arguably foolish) comments on his 2021 Netflix series, Colin in Black & White.
“What they don’t want you to understand is what is being established is a power dynamic,” Kaepernick narrated in the 2021 series. “Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected. No dignity left intact.”
Brewer told the Washington Examiner about his own experience at the NFL combine. He called it “miserable” and said that no prospective player liked going through it because of its difficulty. But Brewer said he also understands why it was necessary.
“My experience with the NFL Combine is that it’s miserable for anybody,” Brewer said. “You’re woken up early. You’re put through a lot of stress. You’re prodded and pulled, and you have to perform under high pressure.”
“Did I like the combine? No,” he added. “But I understood why they did it, because they wanted to know who was going to break. I can tell you that the combine process was no harder than playing on Sundays, having to play through injuries, having to learn a playbook that changed from week to week, and having to take on the pressures of the National Football League — preparing your mind and your body knowing that you’re going to physically take years off your life and jeopardize your future safety, your brain function, and everything else that you sacrifice.”
“I understand why they put you through the combine and why they do what they do, because this game is not for everybody,” Brewer said. “Colin Kaepernick knows that. Ryan Clark knows that. Any NFL player knows that.”
Kaepernick’s words about the combine were resurrected during an interview on fellow race-baiter, left-wing activist, sports commentator, and former NFL player Ryan Clark’s Pivot podcast. The recently fired ESPN sports personality asked Kaepernick when he had the revelation that getting paid millions of dollars to play in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans once a week was essentially the same thing as forced servitude in the 17th through 19th centuries.
“When did you truly start to have the realization that, ‘Hey, this does, in this cinch, remind me of the slave trade?” Clark asked Kaepernick.
“When you get to the point that’s like, yeah, strip down to your drawers,” Kaepernick said. “‘Well, like, why do I need to do this?’ But also, I mean, guess this is what I have to do, and everybody is doing it like, all right, this is part of the process.”
“You have a high level sense of like, you know, it feels like it’s a meat market,” he added. “But, at that point in time, I didn’t have the historical perspective to be able to tie those together in such a parallel.”
Unfortunately, I was never able to come close to playing in the NFL. Yet, doing so would have been an absolute dream. There are hundreds, thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who would have loved to don the uniform of an NFL franchise and line up on the gridiron to play. All of them would have gone through the process at the draft combine to get that chance. Millions of people would have begged for the chance to come even remotely close to the opportunity Kaepernick had.
It’s a safe bet that none of them would have felt this way about living in bondage. It’s just one of a hundred reasons why Kaepernick’s comparison, and standing firm on it last week in the podcast interview, was, without a doubt, stupid. Yet, sadly, it’s indicative of the toxic rot that has corrupted the minds of today’s generations. It’s one of just many reasons why Brewer objects to Kaepernick’s slavery comparison.
“This young man was literally raised by white people, and the things that he says are so racist and so divisive,” Brewer said. “You would think that he had been beaten and abused his entire life, when the reality is, white people have probably done more for him in his life than black people have. For him not to show gratitude toward people, and for everything that comes out of his mouth to be about skin color and race, is just truly sad.”
“And then to have the audacity to talk about slavery and compare it to National Football League players like myself,” Brewer said. “I didn’t make millions of dollars in the NFL, but he sure did. A lot of people have changed the trajectory of their families through that opportunity. It’s a slap in the face to everyday middle-class and lower-class Americans who will never see that amount of money. Many won’t even make in their entire lifetime what Colin Kaepernick made in one season.”
“To say things like that is just disrespectful,” Brewer added. “It’s disrespectful to the country. It’s disrespectful to black people and to families who are generations removed from slavery.”
Similar to what I wrote in my column last week, Brewer also believes ulterior motives fuel Kaepernick’s obsession with race. He noted the former quarterback’s lack of a history of “serving people” or helping children in the communities “he’s talking about.”
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“It’s just sad,” Brewer said. “It’s sad that he continues to race-bait. But you have to ask yourself why. Why does he continue to do that? Why is this the platform he chooses? It’s not a platform of positivity or change. He’s not known for serving people. He’s not out in the community serving the young black kids he’s talking about. He’s saying things that promote victimhood, and the people who put him on air and interview him promote victimhood right along with him. That’s just a sad, sad thing.”
“I don’t think he believes it,” he added. “I think he’s doing it for money. I think he wants to stay relevant, so he says these ridiculous things in hopes that they go viral so his name can stay in the airwaves and in the headlines.”