Page Text: Colin Kaepernick — martyr.
It’s a popular storyline. Too bad it’s wrong.
Now, a lot of people have spilled a lot of digital ink vilifying or lionizing Colin Kaepernick, vilifying or lionizing Nike, and both threatening boycotts and promising buycotts. I have zero interest in any of that. There is something much more important underlying all of this that should be talked about and very few people are. That’s why I’m around.
First things first. Everyone who is talking around the three things I have mentioned above need to realize that they are having the exact conversation that Nike and Kaepernick want them to have. If you are outraged or delighted that Nike could “dare” to make the political statement they have, congratulations — you are playing their game exactly the way they scripted you to… and that includes the President. I have heard altogether too many stories about “Nike” and “Southeast Asian Sweatshops” to take them even remotely seriously when they start talking about “social justice”.
Once we establish that this is purely a marketing scheme designed to separate fools from their money, we can begin having a more productive conversation.
Colin Kaepernick is suing the NFL for “collusion” to prevent him from playing professional football. In a sane world, this lawsuit would get absolutely nowhere — Aside from the contract offer we know he had to go be a backup in Denver, the NFL isn’t the only route to playing professional football. Canada is a thing. There are three other professional football leagues that have or are starting (XFL, AAF, PacPro)… which means that Kaepernick’s claim is that the NFL has colluded to prevent him from playing in the NFL — which, last I checked, was the NFL’s right to do so. 32 individual clubs, all with individual ownership groups, all decided to take a pass (no pun intended) on signing Colin Kaepernick to be their starting quarterback. Given how cheaply high-level quarterbacks can be had in the yearly draft, that really shouldn’t be surprising; especially so, given how Kaep’s time in San Francisco ended. Kaepernick *needs* to be painted as a martyr as his lawsuit goes forward, however — because his lawsuit doesn’t depend on sanity or legality. Kaepernick’s lawsuit depends on convincing 12 morons in a Crayola box that he has been wronged by the league and is owed financial restitution for it.
Colin Kaepernick’s future depends entirely on him remaining socially relevant.
Now then, what does this campaign actually tell us? A corporate sponsor of the NFL, who is currently contracted to be a uniform and equipment supplier, has now used, as the face of their new advertising campaign, a former player who is suing the NFL for unjust labor practices. Why the in the world would a business partner and supplier of the NFL turn around and give a massive middle finger to the NFL? What do they get out of it? I have a couple theories.
1) Nike is betting against the NFL.
Given the hot-button nature of the swirl around head injuries, continuing healthcare for former players, and the fence-straddling position they have been forced to take to both appease ReTrumplicans and try to reach out to bring ever-increasingly-leftist millennials into the fold (because the NFL is actually starting to hurt for an audience), it isn’t necessarily surprising to see corporations starting to bet on the heat-death of the NFL. However, in Nike’s particular case, that would seem to be killing the Golden Goose, UNLESS……
2) Nike is trying to get a new uniform/sponsorship deal and it isn’t going well.
This would almost seem to be too obvious, but it would appear that Nike is going Scorched Earth on the NFL. Unless someone can give me a good reason to believe that this will somehow give them leverage over the NFL Owners (who, by the way, have to approve most of the business decisions Roger Goodell wants to make in the first place) instead of just pissing them off, this almost has to be Nike poisoning the well on their way out of town. Good luck to Reebok, I guess.
Ultimately, the real question of this campaign by Nike needs to be, “Why would a corporate partner of the NFL want to embarrass the NFL that badly?”
Because I’m choosing to believe that Nike isn’t dumb enough to kill the Golden Goose for no reason, I am forced to believe that they see a bigger financial incentive in their current course of action than in trying to maintain an extremely cozy relationship with the NFL owners. What that also ends up meaning is that everyone drawing up sides in a culture war based on the advertisements of a shoe company are being played for suckers and are either happy with that or too thick to realize it. It’s literally all a game being played by a couple of snappy PR firms — don’t bite on the narrative.
X–