Colin Kaepernick Kneels For Nike Like I Kneel For Nike

 

 

Do I kneel for Nike? I sure do, but it’s more in awe than anything else.

Nike is awesome. So is Colin Kaepernick, but I don’t kneel to him.

 

For some reason the Kaepernick Kneel is an irritant instead of a call to action.

 

It is a call to action, right in every face turned to the NFL. And fans don’t like it.

 

Well, look, no one likes it. I doubt Kaepernick likes it, but what’s he going to do now?

 

He’s the kneeler and he’ll continue to be identified as The Kneeler.

 

And now Nike? Does Nike kneel to Colin Kaepernick? The other way around?

 

I’ve never noticed Nike kneeling to me, or anyone else. But if kneeling is way of showing gratitude, I’ll take a knee.

 

With so much chatter about The Kneeler his message gets bogged down. Not for me, though.

 

If the message shines a light on police brutality and asks for equality in America, which sounds pretty familiar, then how is he wrong?

 

From nfl.com:

 

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Niners coach Chip Kelly told reporters Saturday that Kaepernick’s decision not to stand during the national anthem is “his right as a citizen” and said “it’s not my right to tell him not to do something.”

He also has spent most of the offseason rehabilitating from operations to his left (non-throwing) shoulder, his hand and knee. His recovery left him unable to fully compete with Blaine Gabbert for months and has him seemingly in a bind to regain his starting job.

 

Athletes of every stripe face the end of their usefulness eventually. It feels like Kaepernick is just getting started.

 

In the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 men named Tommy Smith and John Carlos took the podium and raised a fist. It was their way of showing another side of sports.

 

They have lots in common with Colin Kaepernick. They are the two older men in the top image.

 

 

A year earlier some of the biggest names in sport gathered in Cleveland to show support for each other in the fight against injustice.

 

 

Ali had recently refused induction into the US Army. In other words he wasn’t going to get drafted.

 

 

Colin Kaepernick, The Kneeler, is following a great tradition in American sports. Ali had his time, now it’s 2018 instead of 1967, and so much has changed?

 

You’ve seen video of people burning their Nikes? I’ll tell the honest truth here: my feet have never been in Air Jordans, and not because I don’t like Nike or Jordan.

 

Who buys expensive athletic shoes whether they play or not? The youth, the kids, and their parents.

 

Shoes are not why I kneel down, bow down, to Nike. Through his company Phil Knight has endowed institutions of higher learning, including the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health Science University.

 

Because of Nike I got a second opinion on cancer and cancer treatment that saved me a load of grief. My Knight doctor, Dr. Yee of the OHSU Infusion clinic in Tualatin, Oregon, prescribed the correct dose of chemo for me.

 

Instead of three different chemo therapies and a chemo pump to keep it all primed, Dr. Yee said one chemo was the real deal, which made me question the initial treatment of three and a pump. All cancer drugs tax your system. It taxed me to the point of getting an intervention and turned around.

 

Because of Nike. Dr. Yee of the Knight Cancer Institute did what Colin Kaepernick is doing, but it’s called something else.

 

Justice is killing cancer with the right stuff. Nike had the right stuff to reach me.

 

Justice is killing societal cancer that eats away at the American way of life for one and all. Along with Kaepernick, Nike will have the right stuff.

 

Again.