New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica launched an all-out blitz against the National Football League Sunday, angry over what he called the “cowardly and small-minded and discriminatory group-think in pro football” over the de facto blackballing of former San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid.
The column comes days after reports that the Seattle Seahawks declined to bring Kaepernick in for a pre-planned workout after the quarterback would not commit to standing for the National Anthem. As the first player to kneel last season during the Star Spangled Banner before games, in protest after a spate of police shootings of unarmed black men. But many conservative football fans threatened to boycott the league over what they consider as an affront to the flag and the U.S. military.
“So this is the current, unwritten policy of NFL owners, who said a lot of big and brave things last fall when players were kneeling in September,” writes Lupica, “and then immediately began to run from those players and run from the anthem controversy and, for the time being, continue to blackball Kaepernick and Reid.
“This continues to be a shame on this league.”
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