We Should not let Colin Kaepernick's Football Irrelevance Take Away from the Importance of his Protest

This means different things to different people, and that is ok.

I have had about a week now to process this whole Colin Kaepernick situation, and I think I'm finally ready to give my take.

First off, I have absolutely no problem with his choice to not stand for the national anthem. Why do we have to stand for the anthem anyway? It's been put into our heads since we were kids, but when I am at a sporting event, I cannot wait for the anthem to be over so I can sit down and enjoy myself.

Secondly, his reasoning, I totally agree with. There are a lot of problems in this country right now. There are racist police officers and people that are getting away with murdering minorities, and that is a very big problem. Our country is becoming a scary place for minorities, and when one person cannot take a stance without getting raked over the coals, that's frightening. Kaepernick is no Malcolm X or Muhammed Ali, not even close, but he is allowed to take a stance and protest. For all the crazy right wingers, this country was built on free speech, which Kaepernick is doing, so don't call him out for being un American, he is doing one of the most American things anyone can do. I fully stand by, and respect Kaepernick's choice to not stand for the anthem, just like I did with Mahmoud Abdul Rauf's choice to not stand for the anthem back in the 90's in the NBA, after converting to the Muslim faith. These athletes are people, just like you and me, and they have a right to their opinions. You don't have to like, or agree with them, but they can have an opinion. So, yeah, I fully stand by Kaepernick's reasoning for doing this protest. More power to you Mr. Kaepernick.

I do have some problems with the person, not the protest. First off, for people to compare what Kaepernick is doing to the Ali protests of the Vietnam War, or everything that Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr did for civil rights, stop it. Colin Kaepernick is not a leader, or an athlete of great stature, so these comparisons need to stop right there. He is not Ali, Malcolm X, MLK or even Jesse Jackson or Jim Brown. He is not nearly, nor will he ever be, as important and influential as those guys were and are. When I want to hear about civil injustices from athletes, I will pick old Ali quotes, or just listen to what Jim Brown has to say. They are so much more influential and important than Colin Kaepernick.

I feel like Kaepernick's actions, I don't mean to sound crass, is a bit of a stunt to keep his name in the mouths of sports analysts and journalists. I personally have not even thought about Colin Kaepernick the football player, in two or three years. The 49ers and Kaepernick have become irrelevant. Colin Kaepernick has not been the same QB since Jim Harbaugh put all his eggs in his basket and traded away Alex Smith and built his offense around the young moblie QB's talent. Sure, he led them to a Super Bowl, which they lost, but since then, the 49ers have been terrible.

First off, they fired Harbaugh after he and the owner just couldn't get along. Then, they gave Kaepernick a huge extension and decided to completely build around him. Then, the 49ers started to lose players left and right to free agency, trades or retirement. Last season watching the 49ers was horrendous. They looked so bad on offense, I would leave the room when the Red Zone Network would switch over to 49ers games. They just couldn't move the ball. Kaepernick's biggest threat, his legs, became neutralized. Teams figured him out. He just couldn't make the necessary throws to compete at an NFL level. It got so bad for him, the 49ers benched him for Blaine Gabbert. That's right, the same Blaine Gabbert that couldn't cut it in Jacksonville, supplanted Kaepernick as the starter. The 49ers still stunk, but Kaepernick did not see the field again after this benching.

Going into this season, it was widely known that the 49ers hadn't picked a QB yet. In fact, they were shopping Kaepernick, until they hired the incredibly overrated Chip Kelly as coach. Some, not me, seem to think that Chip Kelly can get something out of Kaepernick. I disagree. During the preseason Kaepernick has not performed well. He sat the first two preseason games, then all anyone talked about was him sitting during the anthem in the third preseason game because his on field performance was atrocious. Again, he couldn't make the reads or the throws necessary to succeed in the NFL. But, he did keep his name in the news for sitting during the anthem.

This is my biggest problem. Yeah, the GM's that are coming out and saying mean things about him, where have all you assholes been when people bring up all the assault and abuse from current players. I didn't hear any "anonymous" GM's taking Adrian Peterson or Greg Hardy to task for what they did, which is about ten thousand times worse than what Kaepernick is doing, but he is not as good a player as those two are, so these "anonymous" GM's keep their mouths shut on them. But, they bring the hammer down on Kaepernick. What a joke. But, all these reasons above are why I think this may be a publicity stunt just to keep his, meaning Kaepernick's, name in the sports news. He is not a good QB anymore. He is a shell of himself. He doesn't play with the reckless abandon and love that he did a few years back when he was running all over Green Bay in the playoffs. He has become a mediocre QB, fighting for the starting job on a mediocre team. The 49ers are very bad, and Kaepernick cannot keep that starting job on lock.

Like I said at the top, I wholeheartedly stand by the message he's trying to get across, I just don't think they have the right messanger. I wish someone like Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady or Cam Newton were the ones doing the protest. I think that QB's like those guys should join in with Kaepernick's protest, there is still time, because they would be able to shed some real light on the problems going on in the US right now. And, I wonder how "anonymous" GM's would react if Brady, Rodgers or Newton joined in. Would they curse those guys out? Would they say that they are locker room cancer? Would they say that they wouldn't want them on their teams? No, no and no. Those GM's would not say one word. So, yes Colin Kaepernick, I wholeheartedly support you and your protest, but I wish you were more of a relevant player, because that would make this protest that much more important. People would have to look at this problem much more seriously if you were a better, more important player. The talking heads at ESPN and at SI wouldn't be able to just push it aside and say that this doesn't matter because Kaepernick is irrelevant. If it were any of the other three QB's I mentioned, this protest would have some real momentum.

Anyway, you be you Colin Kaepernick, and stand up for what you believe in. I cannot say it enough, I fully support him, but he is irrelevant. This is the true definition of a double edged sword. No one wins because of the irrelevancy of the player bringing the message.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.

Millennial Memories From a Decade Plus Worth of Super Bowls

Many of our memories are of the food being better than the game.

With Super Bowl 50 just around the corner, I want to look back at some Super Bowl memories that I have had over the past decade plus. I've watched a lot of football in that period of time and I have some good and not so good memories of Super Bowl's past. I know that I wouldn't get the exact Super Bowl number, so I will just describe some teams and some of the games that I remember and I'm sure that most people would be able to pick the game I'm talking about. First, I want to go back to the early to mid nineties. Those Super Bowl's are some of my very first memories of realizing that this is a big game. I don't so much remember the games, but I remember moments and, more importantly, teams.

First of all, I was a big time band wagon fan when I was a child. Whichever team won the Super Bowl, that was my favorite team and the team I remember being on the bandwagon for the Dallas Cowboys of the mid 90's. Looking back on it now, I despise this team, but when I was a kid, they were the champs, so I rooted for the champs. If I could go back in time, I'd yell at the young me for being a fan of this team. They were so arrogant and so flamboyant, and as I've gotten older, I'm all about "acting like you've been there before". I don't need flash, just score a TD, give the ball to the ref and go to the sideline. That's why I like Barry Sanders so much. That Cowboys team though, save for Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith, were all about flash. I loved it as a kid, but as an adult, I don't care for it. But, that Cowboys team, for a young football fan, was so easy to like and say you were a fan.

The team I should have stuck up for back then was the Buffalo Bills. They played the game the way it was supposed to be played, but added that up tempo, no huddle offense. They were a ton of fun to watch and I liked Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas just as much, if not more, than Aikman and Smith. The Bills also had one of my all time favorite players, Bruce Smith. But, they couldn't get over the hump, especially against the Cowboys. The Bills were the only team to make four straight Super Bowls, and they lost all four of them, three via blowouts. Everyone remembers Scott Norwood and wide right, but what I remember most about those Bills-Cowboys Super Bowls, was Don Beebe chasing down Leon Lett and striping the ball out of his hands. That game was an absolute blow out, but Beebe still wouldn't throw in the towel and after chasing Lett down and stripping the ball, John Madden said something that I will never forget, "Don Beebee is the fastest white guy in the NFL". At the time, I thought it was weird and if a commentator said something like that now, it would be a huge deal all over the internets.

Moving on to more modern Super Bowl memories, I remember when the Rams won their Super Bowl while in Saint Louis. They had one of the best offenses in the history of the NFL and I thought that they were going to crush the Tennessee Titans, but that didn't happen. Now, the Rams won, but it was a low scoring slug fest type of game with Mike Jones tackling Kevin Dyson at the one yard line to preserve the win for the Rams. It was their defense, not their historically great offense, that won that game for them. Then, when they played the New England Patriots, led by backup QB Tom Brady, the next year, it was a foregone conclusion that the Rams would win again. They had the much better team and much better players. Then, the game happened and the Patriots won on a last second field goal. People will look back at that game and say that the Patriots only won because of "spygate", but Bill Belichek outcoached Mike Martz and no matter how much "spygate" may have helped them, the Patriots played a much better game and Martz sorely underused his best offensive weapon, Marshall Faulk. That Super Bowl was a great example of one coach being prepared and the other coach being very under prepared. That 's why the Patriots won.

And thus, began the dominating run of the Patriots. Sure, teams like Pittsburgh and my Green Bay Packers and the Seahawks and the Colts have won Super Bowls in this time, but the one consistent team has been the Patriots. They have played in 11 of the last 15 AFC championship games and they've been to 6 Super Bowls, winning four of them. I already talked about them beating the Rams. They've also beaten the Eagles in a Super Bowl. That Eagles team had Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens, but that wasn't enough to beat the Patriots. What I remember most about that Super Bowl was McNabb barfing in the huddle and Owens making great catches and then excuses for why it wasn't his, but everyone else's fault, that the Eagles got beat. I remember their Super Bowl win over the Carolina Panthers. The Patriots should have won that game going away, but Tom Brady threw one of the worst interceptions I've ever seen with a 14 point lead and the Panthers came all the way back to tie the game. Then, their kicker kicks the ball out of bounds, gives the Patriots excellent field position, and they win by a field goal once again. Then, their two losses to the Giants. One, they were undefeated and favored by 10 plus points. There was no way they were losing that game. But, the Giants constantly harassed Brady and they couldn't get their offense rolling. They still had a chance to win, but Eli Manning chucked the ball up in the air, after evading multiple sack attempts, and David Tyree made the best, and his last, catch I've ever seen. He pinned that ball to his helmet and the Giants went on to win by a field goal. Their second loss to the Giants also came down to one team dropping a pass, the Patriots and Wes Welker, and the other team making a miraculous catch, the Giants and Mario Manningham. That drop that Welker had was crushing. Had he caught that ball, the Patriots could have easily salted the clock away. But, that catch by Manningham, on a terrible throw from Eli Manning, was humongous and that kept the game winning drive alive. The Patriots played in last years Super Bowl, and they should have lost, until Pete Carroll and his offensive staff made the worst play call of all time. Why on earth they did not give that ball to Marshawn Lynch on the one yard line is still extremely baffling. But, Brady did pick apart the "legion of boom" and put his team in position to win, as he always does.

Now, I'm by no means a Patriots fan. I'm indifferent when it comes to them, but they have been the one team that has always been there at the end. Like I said, they've been in 11 AFC title games in 15 years, and they've won more tan half of them. This is why they're so prevalent in my recent Super Bowl memories, I will never forget the Packers win over the Steelers, but I can't help but notice how the Patriots are always in it until the very end. They're the most dominating team I've watched and that is why they are the team and they've played in the Super Bowls games that I remember most.

With all that being said, I hope we get a good, memorable game on Sunday so I can start making new memories about a new team, be it Carolina or Denver.

I think it will be Carolina.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. Do you love reading about his memories, well tomorrow you can hear him tell the stories on the X Millennial Man podcast. Read more from Ty by following him on twitter @tykulik.