It certainly was an interesting
week for two men, each of whose careers took on a different trajectory.
First, there was Colin
Kaepernick, who signed a deal with Nike to be the face of Nike for the 30th
anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign.
You will recall that Nike tried to make a splash earlier this year with
their Sport Hijab, attempting to prove to the world how inclusive the firm is
and showing that social justice warriorism is part of its core mission (never
mind that Nike was red faced when it was disclosed that some of their products
were being sourced from Vietnam using child labor and that 11 of its executives
left the company out of sexual harassment incidents). I’d be curious to see exactly how many sport
hijabs it has sold and the cash flow from that project, and we’ll see if
Kaepernick will do for Nike’s customer base what he did for the NFL’s.
I have to hand it to Mr. Kaepernick. While the rest of the conservative world has
raged at him and at Nike, Kaepernick showed that he knows how to do career
planning. Often, NFL players are at a
loss as to what to do with their careers after their star fades. With an average length of an NFL career at
about 3.3 years, that means many are out of the game by the time they are in
their late 20’s. Some, like Tim Tebow,
never really catch on. Having completed
six full seasons, and having led the 49ers to a combined record of 3-16 in his
last two seasons, Kaepernick was definitely on the downside of
his career.
But suddenly, in the space of a
year, Kaepernick has a collusion lawsuit against the NFL that is still alive, a
book deal and a huge endorsement with Nike.
How did this all happen?
I strongly suspect it was all
deliberate. Kaepernick knew his NFL
career was in its twilight. He has made
a conscious, deliberate career choice to maximize his long term cash flow. Having ascertained that the best he could do
after 3-16 over two years would be a 2nd or 3rd string
spot on a roster, Kaepernick made a decision to blow up his NFL career and
began his career as a Social Justice Warrior at the end of the 2016 season. Like Bernie Sanders, who saw that being a
socialist advocate could be very profitable, Kaepernick set out to be the
sports version of Al Sharpton. He saw a
niche and went for it.
Kaepernick then hijacked his employer’s
place of business to build his own brand awareness. It is no different than if an employee used
firm time and resources to launch his own business on company time. Only this was Kaepernick, Inc., Social
Justice Warrior.
Kaepernick’s career shift was
brilliant. His career will have a much
longer lifespan and ultimately be more profitable for him. He doesn’t have to worry about performance. And he doesn’t have to worry about getting
headaches from concussions. In a jiu
jitsu move, it will be Kaepernick that will be giving other people headaches.
Ironically in the same week that
Colin Kaepernick inked his deal with Nike, Fox News shamed former Cosby Show
actor Geoffrey Owens when it disclosed that he had been located in a Trader
Joe’s bagging groceries. The former
star who played Elvin Tibideaux was working in a low level job to make ends
meet.
In a further ironic twist, Fox
News, THE conservative outlet tried to embarrass the once prominent actor that
was making an honest living. Shame on Fox.
It turned out that Bill Cosby’s
legal troubles had caused his show’s reruns to be cancelled, drying up Owens’s
residuals, forcing him to take the job to pay bills.
As one person on Twitter noted,
“We all admired Dr. Huxtable. We should
have been admiring Elvin.”
After getting over the initial
humiliation, things ultimately took a good turn for Mr. Owens. Twitter and his fellow actors leapt to his
side. Social media was almost uniformly
supportive of the 57 year old actor, and he ultimately got an acting gig out of
it from Tyler Perry for a part in a 10 week series, the “Haves and Have Nots.”
I am happy that Owens received an
offer for an acting gig out of this. His
attitude that “all work is honorable” should have been lauded by Fox and not
shamed. Owens was honest about the
position he was in and was giving his employer an honest day’s work for an
honest day’s pay. Owens should be the
focus of a Mike Rowe special. He is Rowe’s
kind of guy (and mine, too).
Kaepernick, on the other hand, is
a thief. He stole from his employer to
launch his second career as a Social Justice Warrior, and is profiting
handsomely by it. His is no altruistic
venture. He used the N.F.L.’s time and platform to highlight himself and his cause
without his employer’s permission. If a
receptionist in my office persisted in handing out anti-abortion literature to
clients in our waiting room, she wouldn’t last long, no matter what peoples’
views were on the topic, unless we gave her explicit permission. Kaepernick’s antics were no different.
That the Nike ad spouting
“Believe in something. Even if it means
sacrificing everything” was released the week before 9/11 added to its
repugnancy.
No more Nike for me. But I will be sure to watch Owens’s new gig.
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