Kaepernick says NFL ‘blackballing me’ decade after protest

Colin Kaepernick speaks after receiving the ACLU Ralph Ellison Award for Defenders of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Arts, Business, Science, and Sports at the ACLU's 2026 Biennial Leadership Conference, Friday, July 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

Ten years after he first took a knee to protest U.S. police brutality, Colin Kaepernick said he is still being blackballed by the NFL and no longer watches the “disingenuous” league.

In a rare interview, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback said the NFL’s statements condemning racial injustice after the 2020 death of George Floyd had been “laughable,” and that the league has not changed.

“I’m not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well,” said Kaepernick.

“I watch college football,” he told NBC News.

Despite leading them to the Super Bowl game in February 2013, Kaepernick was released by the 49ers in 2017 -- a year after his kneeling protest began -- and has not played for an NFL team since.

Now 38, Kaepernick will release a part-memoir, part-manifesto this month entitled “The Perilous Fight.”

In the book, he describes how the idea to kneel on Sept. 1, 2016 came from his teammate Eric Reid.

Inspired by his voracious reading of Black liberation literature, Kaepernick had already drawn flak for remaining seated during the U.S. anthem earlier that summer, but was looking for something more visually striking.

While dozens of other NFL players would go on to kneel or sit in protest during the anthem, Kaepernick remained the main lightning rod for criticism.

Fans burned his jerseys, and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him.”

Kaepernick believes the league colluded to exclude him.

“There’s not a definitive moment that I would point to,” Kaepernick said.

“Coming on the back of going to a Super Bowl, going to an NFC Championship, setting records, and not a single team would bring me in, even for a workout?”

Kaepernick said multiple NFL coaches -- including then-Baltimore Ravens boss John Harbaugh -- had explicitly told him they wanted to bring him in, but were “shut down from above.”

Kaepernick said during his sole formal meeting with the Seattle Seahawks in the summer of 2017 he was repeatedly asked about his political beliefs.

“Which, in pretty much any environment outside the NFL, would be immediate litigation,” he said. The Seahawks did not respond to request for comment.

‘Performative’

Following vast protests in 2020 over Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement expressing regret for not heeding its players’ protests.

But Kaepernick said Goodell’s response “was only because of pressure from players, not because it was altruistic.”

The idea that the league should have listened to protesting players “is so laughable in my mind, and so disingenuous,” Kaepernick told NBC.

“We had been trying to address the issue that the NFL created with blackballing me for years.

“To come out and say we should have listened on the back of that -- while I’m still actively trying to play in the NFL -- it’s so performative.”

In response to the NBC interview, the NFL said issues raised by Kaepernick “remain important to the league and deserving of continued attention and action.”

The league pointed to its work with social justice initiative Inspire Change to “support meaningful progress,” including more than US$575 million in contributions.

But Kaepernick said he does not believe the NFL has “materially changed.”

“None of their actions show that,” he said.