NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that he wishes "we had listened earlier" to what Colin Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to when he began kneeling for the national anthem in 2016.
Goodell was asked on former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho's video series, "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man," what he would say in a public apology to Kaepernick.
Goodell responded by expressing remorse about the lack of dialogue with the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, saying that the league would have benefited from a conversation with Kaepernick.
"We had invited him in several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue," Goodell said in the video posted Sunday. "I wish we had the benefit of that. We never did. And we would've benefited from that, absolutely."
Goodell also said that players kneeling is "not about the flag" and that their intentions are being "mischaracterized."
"These are not people who are unpatriotic. They're not disloyal. They're not against our military," Goodell said. "In fact, many of those guys were in the military, and they're a military family. And what they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed. And that misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me."
-------------------------------- We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb
Bazootiehead-in-training
Posts: 37874 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
Although increasingly, I am having difficulty reading "the news" with my old trust*, I am encouraged by this.
Echo Chamber Effect and all, I'd like to think people are finally recognizing their misperceptions and misreading of - well, "current events". (Pointing finger at thread about Republicans for Biden movement )
Even perhaps the Conways' apparent wake-up to the importance of their children.
Hoping it's not too late for lots of our belated awareness. (Fer g-d's sake, get out of the Arctic drilling - and oh so much more!)
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*Noting today that the NYTimes front page sounds evermore like a VOX spinoff and that many of their headlines are again recycled.
-------------------------------- The most dangerous word in the language is "obvious"
Posts: 14392 | Location: PA | Registered: 20 April 2005
Surely nobody thinks that a corporation like the NFL has any conscience apart from appealing to its audience. It's difficult to know whether they even believe they made any mistakes. The only reasonable take-away from that letter is that they believe their current best profit maximization strategy is to capitulate a little more.
As for the Conways, their family is falling apart and have decided politics isn't as important, especially considering that pop culture politics got them into the family mess in the first place. Good for them.
Posts: 900 | Location: Bay Area of CA | Registered: 21 April 2005
Originally posted by Horace: As for the Conways, their family is falling apart and have decided politics isn't as important, especially considering that pop culture politics got them into the family mess in the first place. Good for them.
It is highly presumptuous for anyone on the outside, liberal or conservative, to pretend that they have any idea what the facts are in the Conway household. We could all speculate, and surely many will, but Kellyanne could be Mother of the Year or Mother from Hell or anything in between, and we have no way of knowing right now. Having raised two women who were simultaneously 15 years old, I know how hard that is. And I also know that we are likely confronting some Roshamon effect. So, I regardless of how I feel about Kellyanne's politics, I will withhold judgment.
Goodell could start apologizing by removing the blackball that surrounds Kaepernick's name. I have no idea if he is still in playing shape, but something more than, "oops, our bad," might be a good response from the NFL.
I don't pretend that Kaepernick is all sweetness and light himself, but he became the poster child for all the right-wing pro military flag wavers, and the NFL said nothing. He (CK) has never wavered from his contention that kneeling was prompted by racial inequality in policing, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to see how his statement was completely taken over. Privilege, indeed.
Posts: 35377 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005
I don't pretend that Kaepernick is all sweetness and light himself, but he became the poster child for all the right-wing pro military flag wavers, and the NFL said nothing.
You say "pro-military flag wavers" like it's a pejorative. I think they are probably pretty decent people by and large.
quote:
He (CK) has never wavered from his contention that kneeling was prompted by racial inequality in policing, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to see how his statement was completely taken over. Privilege, indeed.
Well it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know that if he had made his point by, for instance, saying it during post game press conferences or other media appearances, everybody would have nodded politely. The controversy is not about his stated motivations. You make it sound like a righteous motivation should allow for any intentional disrespect of any tradition that means something to people.
Posts: 900 | Location: Bay Area of CA | Registered: 21 April 2005
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