I generally try and avoid FOX Sports 1, but this has been floating around social media and it’s ridiculous on a couple levels.
Michael Vick made an appearance on FS1’s hot take shot Speak For Yourself, and had a chance to talk about Colin Kaepernick. He pointed to his struggles the past couple years, and talked about how he needs to find a team that suits his particular skillset. If you want to talk about Kaepernick as a football player, that’s reasonable. He should be signed, but people have their viewpoints on what he can do as a quarterback.
Bomani Jones offered up some useful discussion on this aspect of the interview. Here are his comments, which sum it up better than I can.
but his argument that if colin could play, he'd be on a team...of course vick would say that. HE GOT TO PLAY AFTER FIGHTING DOGS.
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
with the hell vick got -- and how horrible he's come to believe he was -- he's gotta look at kap like "the anthem? that's light work."
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
so if you're vick and you've been told what you did was the worst thing anyone can do, and you played, you'd think anyone who can play...
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
...would get a job. that's foolishly naive in this case, but i can easily see how he reached those conclusions.
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
and that's a key that i don't think vick gets, a point @michaelsmith made: vick atoned. colin hasn't, and won't, cuz apologize for what? https://t.co/dybshTsaZb
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
nope. because opposing white supremacy is even more distasteful to much of white america than fighting dogs #message https://t.co/5yc86QfsYK
— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) July 18, 2017
Things went off the rails for Vick and this interview when it got into Kaepernick’s image. In the video below, Vick says first and foremost Kaepernick needs to cut his hair. He talks about perception issues and the image Kaepernick has.
Vick certainly has plenty of experience dealing with PR problems, so he is going to be a go-to guy when it comes to fixing up an image. Of course, his PR problems arose from going to jail for conducting a dog-fighting ring, and Kaepernick’s PR issues come from his work for social justice issues.
And this led to a particularly obnoxious discussion between Vick and Jason Whitlock. When Vick got out of jail, he worked with Tony Dungy as part of his image rehab. Whitlock suggested Kaepernick needs to find somebody like that, and Vick agreed. I get that there are people who have a problem with Kaepernick, but offering even this kind of equivalency? This follows Mike Freeman saying one executive told him last fall that he had not seen vitriol like this toward a player since Rae Carruth hired a hitman to kill his pregnant girlfriend.
When people are prepared to make any kind of equivalency between Kaepernick did and what Vick or Carruth did, things are going off the rails.
"First thing we got to get Colin to do is cut his hair." — @MikeVick advises Kaepernick on rebuilding his image pic.twitter.com/YENvUPOIgP
— Speak For Yourself (@SFY) July 17, 2017