Let's Talk About Colin Kaepernick

November 30, 2017 2:21 PM

There's a new Chart Party, and in this installment, Jon Bois uses math and statistics to explain why the argument that Colin Kaepernick isn't good enough to play in the NFL doesn't hold water. (SLYT)

Previously.

posted by NoxAeternum (33 comments total)

“...and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy.”

*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 2:37 PM on November 30, 2017 [8 favorites]

Bois is awesome
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:42 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

I’m intrigued to see what happens with the grievance Kaepernick filed with the league back in mid-October.
posted by nubs at 2:42 PM on November 30, 2017

Indeed. And this announcement from today: "Colin Kaepernick Is Recipient of 2017 Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award"
posted by standardasparagus at 2:51 PM on November 30, 2017 [28 favorites]

Bois is awesome

Somebody give him a MacArthur Genius Grant. Like now.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:56 PM on November 30, 2017 [14 favorites]

I can name no fewer than five quaretbacks off the top of my head (Gabbert, Lynch, Osweiler, Savage, Manning (yes i went there)) who did a worse job thwn Kap wpuld have done. Lynch alone knew what happened to him after he played against the Raiders I am cursed to support for at least one more season.

But I digress. The point is that objectively awful quarterbacks are getting starts when someone who took his team to the super bowl waits in the wings. I refuse to believe that Colin Kapernick's skill is a concern in a league where Brock fucking Oswiler started a game.

The circumstantial evidence is there, and it points tp racism.
posted by East14thTaco at 2:58 PM on November 30, 2017 [6 favorites]

One word to Colin while waiting for the politics to clear and to poke a finger in the eye: Canada
posted by jim in austin at 3:00 PM on November 30, 2017 [5 favorites]

Okay. Stay with me here because this is Bois level genius.

The Steelers are going to need a QB next year. Rapey McRapeface is getting old. And terrible. You know what wouldn't be terrible? Kaep to Antonio Brown. The Steelers like to think of themselves as rugged individualistic iconoclasts, prove it by undertaking the most outsider thing a pro football team could do.

Oh, and if Colin comes to the CFL, I'll continue to ignore just as I have, not because of racism and anti-Colin sentiment, but because it's the CFL and ignoring it is my right as a thoughtful Canadian.
posted by Keith Talent at 3:07 PM on November 30, 2017 [11 favorites]

The Montreal Allouettes hold the CFL rights to Kaepernick, after the Tiger-Cats relinquished them earlier this year. It sounds like Kaep has no real interest in coming north of the border; the Als reached out to his agent to let them know they held his negotiating rights for the league and to call if they had any questions or wanted to discuss anything - and as far as I know they've never gotten a response.
posted by nubs at 3:14 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Funny, I just realized that for a long time whenever I read the name Jon Bois I thought people were talking about Big Boi from Outkast. This clears up a lot. But yeah, Kap is awesome, fuck the NFL.
posted by latkes at 3:17 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just started watching it, love it.

He probably should disable comments for this video though. :-/
posted by lord_wolf at 3:20 PM on November 30, 2017

Bois is awesome.

Times Magazine should name Kaepernick man of the year. Trump's head would explode.

Bois, well, he should definitely be nominated for a Hugo Award for that whatever the hell that thing was that he did. He's also added to my man-crush list (which is suspiciously long for an avowedly straight dude).
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:21 PM on November 30, 2017 [7 favorites]

Unfortunately, Montreal is probably the last place in Canada a Black athlete should go to get away from racist crap.

I miss PK.
posted by saturday_morning at 3:21 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

One word to Colin while waiting for the politics to clear and to poke a finger in the eye: Canada

A preview:

"Alright, hosers! I want all 12 of us fighting for every meter on all three downs! We’re going to make this a Boxing Day the Prime Minister will never forget!"
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:21 PM on November 30, 2017 [10 favorites]

Pfft. If you're not going to mention the rouge, it's not a proper joke about the CFL for an American audience.
posted by nubs at 3:23 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

If I were Kaep I don’t think I’d want to risk my health for whatever comparatively paltry wage he’d be making in the CFL.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:26 PM on November 30, 2017

They benched Tyrod Taylor for god's sake!
posted by East14thTaco at 3:28 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

There are still idiots clinging to play-related reasons why Kaepernick doesn't have a job, but most of his detractors -- at least the ones I've had to interact with as a moderator of a fantasy sports discussion board -- have moved on to simply saying that it doesn't matter what his skills are, because he created the controversy, and owners have decided that he's not worth the "risk". Of course, players who have done much worse (previously on MetaFilter) are routinely given second, third, and twelfth chances as long as their play is useful to the team, but this is a case where the offense was not beating up one's girlfriend or abusing animals, but daring to raise issues of racial justice during a somber, reflective ceremony that's been a core part of the NFL game experience for about as long as the average lifespan of a squirrel.

So yeah, in addition to the "preaching to the choir" aspect Bois cites, there's the fact that the haters don't really care what he can do for their teams. It's about punishing someone who should have kept his mouth shut.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:31 PM on November 30, 2017 [12 favorites]

This is a total tangent, but since we’re on the subject of Bois and the CFL, if you have not read this already, you ABSOLUTELY MUST:

The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles
posted by mr_roboto at 3:45 PM on November 30, 2017 [9 favorites]

I can name no fewer than five quaretbacks off the top of my head (Gabbert, Lynch, Osweiler, Savage, Manning (yes i went there)) who did a worse job thwn Kap wpuld have done. Lynch alone knew what happened to him after he played against the Raiders I am cursed to support for at least one more season.

This is 100% true, but it isn't even the real insanity. No team even appears to believe that he would be a worthy backup! Some teams have had 5 QBs on their roster this year, lots have had 4. None of them thought Kap deserved one of those spots. Its racist bullshit, plain and simple.
posted by Lame_username at 3:54 PM on November 30, 2017 [6 favorites]

BillB should bring him in for when Brady eventually crumbles into dust, but it'll never happen because BillB is a rules man.
posted by kokaku at 4:04 PM on November 30, 2017

Pfft. If you're not going to mention bound for street, it's not a proper joke about the CFL for a Jon Bois audience.
posted by wotsac at 4:20 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

For those who haven't read it:
Colin Kaepernick Has a Job
posted by kaibutsu at 5:02 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love that Bois uses google earth to make these.. (once you realize that’s what he’s doing you can’t unsee it)
posted by AaronRaphael at 6:52 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love that Bois uses google earth to make these.. (once you realize that’s what he’s doing you can’t unsee it)

starship troopers voice: would you like to know more?

me: yiss
posted by stinkfoot at 7:00 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

whoa.

i always assumed Jon Bois was some cartoonist-looking butterface, but he’s....

dreamy
posted by sixswitch at 7:18 PM on November 30, 2017

I think everyone knows the score (no pun intended) re, Cap. I think some are surprised that everyone is willing to lose games over it, but they're not that surprised. After all, as long as nobody gives Cap a job, everyone wins the same amount.
posted by effugas at 10:21 PM on November 30, 2017

The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles

I don't know about anyone else, but this link used 160mb of data on my phone and then crashed my browser.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:19 PM on November 30, 2017

Metafilter Jon Bois : I don't know about anyone else, but this link used 160mb of data on my phone and then crashed my browser.
posted by fullerine at 11:20 PM on November 30, 2017 [4 favorites]

I wish Seattle would have signed him. Progressive city that is relatively down with his politics and which has its own problems with out of control police brutality. And I will keep saying it until he’s gone: Russell Wilson is the worst quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl. There are more than a few games where Seattle’s defense has scored more points than their offense.

But what I came here to say is that Colin Kaepernick is GQ’s Citizen of the Year.

My youngest son, 6 years old and brown, goes to a school full of hippies and is being correctly brainwashed with liberal socialist values. Lately, he’s been talking more and more about who is and isn’t “American” based on skin color: “Teddy is American because his skin is white, Sebastian is Mexican [even though he was born in the US] because his parents are Mexican. Daddy is American because his skin is white and my brother and I are not because our skin is more like mommy’s skin color.”

So last night before bed instead of reading Narwhal and Jellyfish we read the GQ article. We talked about how the police treat black people different than white people who commit the same crimes and how that’s not fair or legal. We talked about the sacrifices that Kaepernick has made because he also thinks that’s not fair. We talked about what a “citizen” is and what it means to be a “good citizen”. Then we talked about Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson and Mohammed Ali whom he already knows all about because [see hippie brainwashing school above]. He rightly agreed that Colin Kaepernick absolutely deserves to be lumped in with those great people.

We also talked about Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark, and Steve Young and how great the Niners once were and how shitty they are now, representing everything evil about the NFL. This might have been a little extra unnecessary editorializing from Dad, but it’s my goddamn right to raise my kids with the proper ideas about professional sports.

It really is a Jackie Robinson situation and I really hope that some team picks him up and he shines. Let the racists tear up their season tickets, they’ll easily be replaced by new fans converted by the fact that a guy can have a strong moral conscience and also can play the game with skill and heart and this embiggens everyone.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:43 PM on November 30, 2017 [15 favorites]

I'm not so certain that it's all about racism. I believe that it's about a man of conscience following his heart. It's about a man who is a leader. And not a leader because he's holding the cash, he's a leader because he is a man of dignity, a man with a strong sense of decency, he's a leader because he took a knee and kept on that knee, regardless all of his chicken-shit contemporaries on those fields.

He is as much a leader as Edward Snowden. Damn sure as much a leader as Mohamed Ali. He's not a leader on the level of MLK, not because he doesn't have as much heart but rather because he doesn't has as much education. But goddamn does he ever have heart.

Standing for what you believe in is never a popular move. Or, rather, standing for it and continually standing as he got abandoned by all of his team-mates. I don't remember the exact quote, but Joseph Heller wrote about it in Catch 22: Words to the effect that it is wonderful that we as US citizens have these rights -- not privileges mind you, like a drivers license, which can be and should be revoked if you're a fuckup, so not privileges we're talking but fundamental rights -- and our leaders are tremendously strong in believing deeply in these rights, and in men having these rights, but only so long as they don't start to using them.

We have the right to assemble. That's been turned into a wonderful thing, where journalists and concerned citizens are forced into these holding pens, to assemble there. The image of Amy Goodman getting dragged away and shoved into a truck and tossed into jail, and Amy Goodman one of the best US citizens we have, watching video of that is chilling. Not surprising, necessarily, but chilling nonetheless.

~~~~~

US citizens just sortof assume that work weeks should be 40 hours, and weekends off of work, and health benefits, and retirement benefits, and all of the rest of it -- we just assume that's what it is, like maybe it's written in the bible or some shit. The idea of children working in unbelievably dangerous jobs for long, long hours in horrible factories, the idea of *anyone* working in unbelievably dangerous jobs for long, long hours, US citizens are aghast at the very idea. They have not read about Samuel Gompers, nor would they bother to do so, though he is one of the pillars of US Labor. Cops going insane on people has been going on a long, long time -- those miners in Colorado, just for starters.

Read a bit about Douglas Mac Arther -- old Dugout Doug -- and his subordinates George Patten, and I believe Dwight Eisenhower was on the scene also, read about the mass murders they committed in Washington DC, because men who had fought in WW1 had been promised they'd be given their blood money, and then thesee men were told to go fuck off. But these veterans did *not* go fuck off but instead went to Washington DC, to force political leaders to see them, and hear them. Read if you will about the little shanty town they put up and how all these people were hit with heavy, heavy tear gas and then machine gunned, and their pathetic little shanty town burned to the ground by US military forces -- go read up on that some, to give an idea of how leaders, who are standing tall and with dignity, get an idea how they're treated by those in power.

Actually you needn't go back that far in time -- Ohio State. Four lily white kids dead, and because of mass media having some teeth it was reported upon, the truth of it, and every white person went nuts about it. Now, had it been black people -- almost certainly nowhere near the juice, could have been 454 black people gunned down without CSN&Y writing any songs about it.

When I write that I don't think that this is totally about racism, don't think I'm blind. It's just that it's about power, also, class AND money AND skin color. Power. A heady brew.

~~~~~

The man is a leader. He is daring to stand tall. He is enduring financial harm because of doing so. Quite frankly, I believe that he's being done a service -- he has not had even one TBI since he's no longer in the game. A game which is in its death throes, and which will die unless the NFL takes helmets and the rest of their body armor away from their players. And then US citizens will get bored, because now it's rugby for christ sake and we're not New Zealanders. Where are those brutal hits that we need come Sunday? Hockey will become more popular until they also are stripped of helmets and all of their armor. Not that young men wouldn't still risk life and limb for glory and money but rather because society is not going to be able to watch their sons be destroyed this way. Much better that that their children become extremely good at shooters computer video games, and then they can take out their rage -- and ours -- while flying drones from an office park in Idaho and killing people who cannot even see the weapons that are raining death upon them.

~~~~~

Personally, I don't give a rats ass about football, nor any other sport, unless I'm involved in it, by which I mean my bicycle and swimming. I had to quit watching television, I had to, I had long before my 18th birthday reached my limit of dancing cats and talking toilet bowls. Plus if I want to listen to a talking toilet bowl I can turn my ear toward Trump, and I still needn't watch TV; that son of a bitch is everywhere. So anyways, the only real interest I have in this story is the social aspects of it, not just the racism in it but also men knuckling under, bowing their heads not toward their god but rather to the people who sign their checks. Though I guess that they've demonstrated that the people who sign their checks *are* their god, that they'll abandon a powerful leader in a heartbeat so they can keep the dough coming in, and keep those TBIs racking up, too -- hopefully they'll have enough money set aside that they can afford to pay people to care for them once all of their brain injuries catch up with them.

~~~~~

I'm all over the map here, I woke early and no way to go back under-- my eyes popped open like they're on springs. Autumn. Mania. It's when I fly, I *can* end up flying on any day in any season but Autumn is what really gets hold of me.

So. Sum: The man is a fantastic leader. While it is hurting him now it will in time prove his integrity, his goodness, his strength. A man of his word. I've read Marcus Aurelius for decades, page after page he wrote about Kaepernick. I wouldn't recognize Kaepernick if I saw him on the street but if I found out who it was I would damn sure go to him and thank him, knowing myself as I do I suspect that I'd take a knee as I thank him just for being who he is, for demonstrating how great human beings can be.
posted by dancestoblue at 3:41 AM on December 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh, and if Colin comes to the CFL, I'll continue to ignore just as I have, not because of racism and anti-Colin sentiment, but because it's the CFL and ignoring it is my right as a thoughtful Canadian.

Well, there were the glorious Warren Moon years of the CFL when we hosted one of the greatest professional quarterbacks who wasdenied the opportunity to play in the NFL because America was racist. Five grey cups was pretty much a Gretzky level romp. So there is precedent for CFL fans enjoying the fruits of the NFL's and America's awfulness.
posted by srboisvert at 4:49 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Canada

Unlikely. He's sacrificed his career to stand up for the rights of American citizens, and its hard to see how that protest wouldn't be undermined by moving to a foreign country.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:25 AM on December 1, 2017 [3 favorites]