We may have predicted {that a} Tremendous Bowl performed within the dwelling stadium of the San Francisco 49ers was going to steer some woke sports activities part to show to their revolutionary hero Colin Kaepernick, the one who wore pigs-with-police hat socks as a result of all cops are apparently pigs. It got here from The Washington Publish. The net headline:
What can we make of Colin Kaepernick now?
The Tremendous Bowl is being performed in his former dwelling stadium, at a societal second that echoes the problems he compelled soccer followers to confront. So why is he out of thoughts?
As @AGHamilton tweeted for all of us: “Past parody to publish this take after every week of arguing that WaPo’s sports activities part supplies irreplaceable and important insights to readers.”
Former followers of the Publish Sports activities part have been irritated on the paper’s crusading towards the “Redskins” title. We reported in 2014 that in a campaign led by sports activities columnist Mike Clever, the Publish printed 31,562 phrases on the self-created controversy in only one yr.
The Tremendous Bowl is being performed in Colin Kaepernick’s former dwelling stadium, at a societal second that echoes the problems he compelled soccer followers to confront practically 10 years in the past, after he kneeled through the nationwide anthem earlier than a 49ers recreation. https://t.co/TX2l7r7msx
— The Washington Publish (@washingtonpost) February 8, 2026
Sports activities reporter Adam Kilgore provided the everyday opinion piece:
SAN FRANCISCO — Probably the most related determine to Tremendous Bowl LX is absent from it. The sport can be performed in his former dwelling stadium, within the place the place his protest made him a nationwide lightning rod and a world image. The social points swirling round America’s largest sporting spectacle carry distinct echoes of what prompted his actions and what led to his exile. And but he stays outdoors the dialog and invisible throughout the confines of the NFL.
Colin Kaepernick may as properly be a ghost.
“Colin Kaepernick?” Seattle Seahawks security Julian Love mentioned this week, as if listening to a reputation he had not thought-about in a very long time. “Oh, wow.”
Sure, wow. Kaepernick hasn’t performed within the NFL since 2016. The quarterback drafted simply above him within the second spherical in 2011 is Andy Dalton, who’s nonetheless a backup for the Carolina Panthers, however few discover. Most gamers who performed throughout Kaepernick’s years are retired and barely remembered now. For his half, Love later praised Kaepernick’s activism within the article.
As common, leftist activism makes you a “worldwide emblem of concern,” a woke hero:
The picture of Kaepernick on a knee turned a worldwide emblem of concern over police violence and racial injustice — and a tempest that led to undesirable political entanglement for the NFL, fierce ire from the political proper and Kaepernick’s ostracism from skilled soccer.
The present second and the Tremendous Bowl’s location present a platform to look at the legacies of Kaepernick’s protest. He served as a flash level, and at the same time as he semi-receded from public life, his affect hovers over the league for example of each braveness and penalties….
His boldness and prescience didn’t guarantee triumph. Donald Trump, the president who referred to gamers who knelt as “that son of a b—-,” received reelection.
Most of this text is a pile of leftist athletes, union reps, and professors, complaining the the present ICE agitators in Minneapolis close to extra superstar hype:
“The silence there’s very, very loud from athletes each in and outdoors of Minneapolis,” mentioned Ayesha Bell Hardaway, director of Case Western Reserve College’s Social Justice Institute. “That, too, is Colin’s legacy. The impression of him paying that consequence, we should always all marvel if what he needed to endure has made others really feel as if they can’t communicate out and due to this fact not communicate out.”
To The Washington Publish, there can at all times be extra revolutionary leftist protesting — to allow them to amplify and have a good time it.
