The Washington Post published a hilarious puff-piece on Colin Kaepernick Friday and displayed a ton of ignorance on how business works.
Columnist John Feinstein called NFL owners “cowards” in his headline, and it only got better from there.
He wrote in part:
If Kaepernick were Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott or any of the other star quarterbacks in the league, he’d have a job. But he’s a borderline starter right now. You can take on a polarizing issue, or you can be an ordinary player. You can’t do both. Kaepernick played reasonably well last year, starting 11 games for an awful team in San Francisco. He is certainly better than many, if not most, of the backup quarterbacks in the league.
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Kaepernick is actually an opportunity for the NFL. All it takes is one team to say publicly: We may disagree with his tactics, but he’s committed no crime and we will judge him on talent alone. The NFL — like most sports franchises — loves to prove its collective patriotism with salutes to the military — paid for, at times in the past, by the military. What’s more patriotic than freedom of speech?
Not signing Kaepernick because there might be backlash is the coward’s way out. The bravest person in this room is the man the cowards are running from.
It’s mind-boggling to me that Feinstein so easily indicated how dumb he is on business practices. He actually made the perfect counter-argument against himself. He acknowledges that Kaepernick at best is a “borderline” starter. He recognizes the fact that he’s not a very talented quarterback. The argument should have ended right there.
Kaepernick won’t help a single team in the NFL win games as a backup holding a clipboard, which is what he’ll be doing for any team that signs him. However, he will piss off the fans, and that could result in a drop in ticket sales. NFL owners didn’t become successful business owners because they made terrible decisions.
There’s not a single owner dumb enough to sign a guy to sit on the bench, not help win games and lose ticket sales in the process. It’s not rocket science. It’s actually very cut and dry. Being a smart business man doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you rich.
Apparently, Feinstein must have been too busy during his time in school to learn basic economics.