Only two decades into the third millennium AD, Colin Kaepernick has left big shoes to fill for sports stars looking to make an impact beyond the field of play.
This according to Jay Busbee of Yahoo Sports, whose column titled "Love him or loathe him, Colin Kaepernick is the most influential athlete of the 21st century" was published on Thursday, which marked the six-year anniversary of Kaepernick first taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem prior to a 49ers preseason game.
In the piece, Busbee recounts Kaepernick's story, and how his seemingly innocuous gesture of peaceful protest against racial injustice, specifically regarding the police violence which disproportionately affects poor Black people, opened the floodgates on American society's reckoning with one of its ugliest tendencies.
In the mere six years since Kaeprnick took that first fateful knee, an act which was largely ignored the first couple times, the former 49ers quarterback has inspired millions both in support and opposition -- including President Trump, who ruthlessly seized on it to appeal to nationalist sentiment within his base -- according to Busbee.
In the subsequent years, Kaepernick's silent protest changed public opinion, reshaped media coverage, and forced the NFL to admit it had erred in its handling of the blackballed quarterback's situation -- including officially adopting Black Lives Matter messaging, the piece says. Other leagues, including the NBA followed suit, particularly in 2020, when nationwide protests erupted in opposition to the brutal police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In the piece, Busbee consults with progressive sportswriter Dave Zirin, who argues that Kaepernick reforged a link between sports and political consciousness that had long been buried by those arguing to "keep politics out of sports."
“What Kaepernick did was, he severed segregation and punctured privilege," Zirin said. "He took away the idea that you can imbibe in sports, particularly the excitement and genius that Black athletes provide in sports, but not care what they have to say about the communities from which they come.”
While there's no doubt there have been more accomplished athletes for their on-field exploits -- though Kaepernick was no slouch there, either, having led the 49ers to the Super Bowl -- it's hard to argue with Busbee's analysis.
Since the political fervor of the 60s, there have been at least a couple other prominent athletes to express similar sentiments as Kaepernick in opposition to state violence sanctioned or carried out by the US, such as Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Carlos Delgado, but their protests were successfully muted by their leagues and a pliant media.
Their stands were prescient in retrospect, and surely helped lay the groundwork for Kaepernick, whose message was able to cut through the noise with the help of social media and a population increasingly immiserated by decades of endless war and austerity.
You can read Busbee's piece at Yahoo in its entirety here.
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram