Speaker 1Someone once said everybody's got a plan till they get punched in the mouth. I did. Mike Tyson. Oh, well, Mike Tyson and Boost are here to tell you that your mobile plan is punching you in the mouth. With prices that can knock you out. That's a low blow. Totally. But you can do something about it. You have to punch back. No, Mike. You gotta switch to Boost. With a plan that's $25 a month, forever. Oh, that's a great plan. Maybe you can do both. Boost Mobile, what's your plan?
Speaker 2Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a minute, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's raw. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. W.A.V.E. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the
Speaker 3right time, a W.A.V.E. original. My name is Beaumontie Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We are doing our series on Colin Kaepernick. Ten years. Ten years after the protests. This is our second episode. Check out our first one. It was with Charles McDonald talking about Colin as football player. And now we are going to talk about the year 2016. Next episode is with Howard Bryant talking about 2017 to like 2019 and then 2020 and beyond. We'll be with my man Jason Anglin. But right now coming to us live from Chicago, Illinois, the boy Jason Goff. What's going on?
Speaker 4What's up, Bo? How you doing, man? It's a great day here in the city. You know, sun is shining. and Ozzie Guillen's number got retired. Shout out to Ozzie. Oh, really? Yeah, people are feeling good about sports here. Although the Luther Burton injury got everybody in a little tizzy. Oh, that's right. Y'all got a football team now. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you know. Number 18, Cover Madden. It's going to drop as we're taping here in about four or five hours. So, yeah, you might see the Bears every once in a while. You've been a Lions fan and all.
Speaker 3Yeah, man, I can't wait to go ahead and get them two off them boards. It's going to be good. We're coming back. Coming back. Coming back. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew it. Kaepernick and not even the taking the knee, but the sitting next to the water cooler. There's a level of me that feels like this is an exaggeration, but I don't. I feel like it's a do you remember where you were? Not so much when he sat next to the water cooler, because that was a Friday night football game, preseason football game. Wasn't nobody watching that shit. Apparently, Colin was barely watching that. But the next day, when he came out, he was sitting next to the water cooler. You know, and said that he was doing it for the homies in the Shaolin Temple. I know where I was. I was at my place in Miami. I just moved in there maybe a month before that, a little bit later. And he said that. And I was like, oh, buddy, it's about to be a thing.
Speaker 4It's coming. It's coming. Yeah, we're about to get into our. I'm 45, going to be 46 here. I didn't get the chance to witness or be around for Ali saying, hey, y'all want me to fight for a country that won't fight for me when I get back. And all that. I wasn't here for, you know, Tommy and John in the Olympics. I wasn't here. Right. It was one of those moments where like, oh, shit, this is going to be our generation. And I'm not trying to throw him in that mix. But like, this is going to be our boiling point. Oh, this is how you feel. And everybody getting out clear because this there was no running from what was happening and what was getting ready to happen. And, you know, as a as a black man in this space, you know, white folks turn to you and go, OK, how do you feel about it? And then we turn into white folks like, no, no, no. You tell me how you feel about it. It was like you go first. It's like the Super Bowl in New Orleans where Beyonce and the lights went out. Everybody's looking at each other. No, back to you, fam. No, I got nothing. Back to you. They weren't ready for live TV in this moment. We weren't ready for live TV as a sports community because we hadn't gone through, you know, all around the edges. We talk about enough black coaches here and black people. Here ain't no black owners here. Like we we shot it and did what we needed to do. And then all of a sudden the game, you know what I mean? It was game day. So I was I had pretty much just gotten afternoon drive around that time here in the city of Chicago. So all my life, sports radio was a thing, right? Like 11, 12 years old. I'm like, oh, shit, we got a 24 hour station. I get a chance one day I'm going to be on that station. I'm going to be doing all the things that the people who I listen to do in terms of talk about their experience, talk about life, talk about, you know, the music they like and all those other things. I had never had to hear or experience these white men talk about anything race. You know what I mean? You want to be a race fan, you know, all the things back in the day. And oh, shit, it landed in my lap. 2016. I'm like, oh, we get a chance to tell people exactly why this is happening. The experiences of not just. Athletes, but people who are going to work on a daily basis who have to before they walk into that door, understand that they're going to be some things they're just not understood about the experience. And now you get to put it out there for everybody. Boy, was I wrong when I realized, oh, yeah, we want to hear for that. We didn't we don't care about your experience. And all those things came rushing at me while I'm talking about, OK, this is what he's doing. And I I still to this day, because, I mean, this is a seminal point in my life. Personally and professionally, I still to this day did not appreciate or understand where we weren't as a country, right? Like, you think things are moving in a certain direction, they seem like it, but, you know, shit is still not where it's supposed to be. And then you get hard stop. Hey, rich folks, this is how I feel for folks. This is how I feel. You're like, wait a minute, hold on, do we not going to get into the nuance and none of this? He talked to Nate Boyer, like the things that happened and we're getting ready to come out. We weren't ready to dissect or disseminate any of that responsibly, I think. So when it hits, I'm sitting there like, OK, can't wait to talk about this. And then you walk into the gig and you see that people can wait for you to talk about this. Right. And then you talk, you know, and it's a local situation, too, here in the city. So you got everybody there, local experience. Guys, athletes that they didn't like, that they thought might have been on this same wave. Hell, we got back into Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf. All these things started, right, all these things started bubbling up. And I'm like, man, this, they ain't ready for this. And the they that I was worried about was the people who were so used to not talking about these kinds of things and not making it come like people. Oh, you talk about things, things will change. Well, you know, folks have been talking about things for a long, long time. And still waiting for some of that change. And I think we hit that that moment where there is a quarterback, a dynamic quarterback, a black quarterback in the NFL, a starting quarterback who, you know, is having success. Like Colin Kaepernick, you know, that Green Bay game is still one in the playoffs to to be remembered for the ages of, oh, shit, you cannot play man coverage on this man. Like, you know, the pistol and Chris Alton being introduced to like what? What University of Nevada football was for the first time on like a Thursday night, like, oh, look at this. Look at this Finley dude who others would have put it wide receiver 20 years ago doing this. So now he gets to this point and he says this. And I just realized how many people weren't ready for the conversation. And shockingly, so I realized how many black media members weren't ready for the conversation in a way where it's like, hey, this is your chance to just tell how you feel about something. You know, you also have the insight of the culture that you were raised in, the things that you were told, the conversation that you had to have. Right. At that time, my son, who is now nine getting ready to be 10, wasn't here yet. So I'm having conversations. Meanwhile, we're watching, you know, this this murder porn on our phones with everything that's happening because this is why Colin is kneeling. Right. And I sat there and I thought to myself, like, man, there. There was a moment there that I think we all got let down by how. Simplistic, we tried to make it in the conversations and the people who are receiving the conversations, how simplistic, like, don't talk to me about socks with pigs on them. Right. Like, do you care about the message?
Speaker 5I think there's a lot of things in that. Right. And I think these are key things to remember when we talk about late August 2016.
Speaker 3I think he did it on my birthday. Because I was like, I had vacation time, but I didn't have time to plan a vacation. So I wasn't working, but I was still just in Miami. One thing to remember, Donald Trump has not been elected. And in fact, the idea of him being elected still seems like a preposterous thought by August. Like we're rounding out convention season or whatever it is. Right. So are you talking about like we thought things were different? We thought Trump was going to lose. Right. Like, like, like we was like, there's no way they do that again. Right. So like that, that's kind of part number one to bring up. in terms of thinking where we are in time number two and you just said that i'd almost kind of forgotten is that it really kind of starts with trayvon martin right we have other names we could throw out mike brown i think in 2014 has occurred or whatever but the idea or these discussions about police violence against citizens has been going for a while now it was a largely online issue but it then came into the mainstream and so that became the dominant really i feel like the dominant issue of social justice of the time right or a dominant uh barometer of a certain morality like right now israel palestine regardless of where you are has become the barometer for morality right the police violence thing had kind of like become that and because of the videos you talk about that murder port you can watch these motherfuckers getting shot by the police right not even like there's no video of trayvon martin there's no video you can watch these motherfuckers getting shot by the police right not even like there's no video of mike brown but there was more we have all these things coming right like i think it's 2017 is when the lukewarm mcdonald video comes out of chicago but like we just have a we have a gradual building of this issue when it comes up and so kaepernick who was not flying high as a player at that point was honestly too hurt to play i remember just seeing online because again this is an online story at this point it was the second week when they had the game where people noticed it was the second week that he hadn't stood up nobody noticed nobody cared but you started to get just like a hey picture from the crowd or from the press box ain't kind of kaepernick didn't stand with their national anthem now it's a question to be asking these snitching ass motherfuckers why they even had to do that or whatever right man just over there minding his own business why y'all out here being messy right so it comes out or it's we've discovered this and i'm like ah wonder how that one's gonna go over because as of now we don't know that colin been radicalized we're not we're not up on game at this point we ain't we're not we ain't really talked to him about nothing right he just be out here flexing his stuff up to that point the quote that he gave steve white that i will never forget i am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color to me this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way there are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder he went all the way michael levin's on it boy he leaned all the way into that and i remember when i read that and i was like huh we're here we're here let's see how this goes now the work part for me is funny i don't
Speaker 4know you're hearing
Speaker 3bigger than hip yes yes in the background yes you're looking for a lexus a justice a dream of some substance some substance yeah so i don't know if you knew this part or remember this part but our long time right time is those who go back to when the right time was a radio show many of you will remember what i'm going to discuss which is remember i told you i was on i was home but i was on vacation and i have a general outlook when it comes to when i'm on vacation which is i ain't at work i don't really care who you put on my show i do
Speaker 4remember this moment i was actually listening during this
Speaker 3moment it's so dark like let me tell you this is not a bit yeah yeah so for this week by coincidence will kate and kate fagan were the guest hosts of the show and bless kate's heart she did her best but this was not the time that my tribe needed will k now one may have made an argument and it could have easily come up that perhaps in this moment i should have gone into work right like it's an emergency sort of situation but i don't i don't do that i i take my time we don't leave vacation on the table i take my time i had to call in the show man will will will and dominique got into it on like a tv show during the day and then they came on the show that afternoon and they got right back into it shannon was intentionally booking to rile will up uh i really had to call into the show to let everybody know it's gonna be okay right like i'm here uh i i should i shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to you're right like that was that was that was on me that i didn't i didn't do that like how dare you it just gradually kind of burned it just kind of gradually burned it gradually got going um and then it got to the place where colin had to have the summit with the nate boyer dude about what to do because he was like i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do they were going to play a preseason game in san diego and for those of you who don't know san diego military it out right and i believe it was military night at the game right and that was the game where colin kneeled for the first time and the kneeling became the gesture the story was that it was nate boyer's idea eric reed says that it was his idea uh the details of it i don't think that important what i do think is important is that the idea was kneeling is a way of giving deference and so perhaps i will not stand for this anthem but i will kneel as a way to show deference because the the the national anthem apparently now entirely belongs to the military it wouldn't always like that before but now it's there so anything you do during the national anthem is actually about the military i ain't really know that shit until right then i had never thought about that when they would have us do all that stuff in school i wouldn't think about that not one time but anyway uh colin did the kneeling and honestly i don't think there was a single person who didn't like the fact that he didn't stand that's all the kneeling and was like oh okay i think that's an appropriate compromise that was how you knew it wasn't about the sitting and it wasn't about the kneeling it was really fundamentally about the point and he was like hey man any white folks out here tripping dog and i've
Speaker 4had enough of this i just didn't the outrage seemed like you know there's always one question that you can ask to kind of get you to answer right with the outrage it was like hey but you know these freedoms you speak of okay cool now we're done we back to it or hey man do you understand like for me perspective is when you got the most privilege in a conversation shutting the fuck up and and listening because you might be right or you might learn something right like if you think this is ridiculous why is this happening the why is this happening was being answered for you in short term short media clips long form news segments i mean we talk about world news on every channel cbs nbc abc cnn msn everybody's covering it you know why this is happening like the the obtuse nature with which um you know the capitalists and also that's the part that always bothered me was the poor folks that was calling me talking about you know this is what you should do and this is what they should i'm like listen man you you a couple of steps away from this happening to you you ain't got no bread like you these are marginalized and underserved community all these catchphrases that we'd like to throw on these are these are black people problems that black people are bringing to you and saying hey this shit ain't cool you don't understand why you don't want to understand why and and also it it showed me very very um i guess midway through the game in terms of career wise like i was i played balls in a suburb of chicago on saturday mornings and a guy who used to host at the radio station that i worked at legendary dude came up to me and he was you know he saw me playing ball hey how you doing hey what's going on how you feeling he goes be careful with the kaepernick stuff and immediately i you know like what what you talking about like this is a man who for years on the station had done anything that he really wanted to do in terms of race in terms of saying wild shit you know it's chicago you got some wild out dudes and they loved him for it and i said hey man what what would you do if anybody ever told you in the position that you was in to be careful about what you talk about and what i didn't know he was telling me was hey the people that make the decisions are all on that side that's what he was trying to tell me so while this is unfolding you're you're finding out oh it's not only the the ranters and ravers and the hoopers and holler this is and then you see you're going to see what happens with the cowboys and jerry jones playing that flag no no pun intended and guys linking arms and you see what happens with kenny stills and you see what's going on around the league and you're like oh it's not only the quiet you know burden it's the loud truth that these people are rocking with here and to be i don't know about how'd you it felt uh under siege in a way where it was like hey man y'all told me y'all wanted my opinions y'all told me y'all wanted me to tell you the truth about things we tell these athletes hey be great at the sport but also hey man how you feeling about certain shit if you want to if you want to divulge right you know who's the goalie for for the for the boston bruins that didn't go to the white house i forget his name but it's like no no thank you for telling me how you feel you feel me i can go now forward with every information this dude tells you hey by the way you know black folks keep getting shot the violence is not stopping And by the way, it hasn't stopped. You know, we're 10 years later. It's just still going on. It's just we kind of, like, I've heard you talk about it many times. Seemingly, people got tired of discussing the subject, even though it's still going on. But somebody said, hey, this is, ain't this crazy to nobody? And then it blows up. And then you get all the politics that go into it. And then you get Super Bowl halftime shows and all these other things. I just sat there. It was a moment. And let's face it, too. Like, I was doing what I needed to do. And the people who owned the station that I worked at sent emails, oh, we're so proud to have somebody like you in our fold, in our company, in our network. And I'm like, but what y'all going to say? Shout out to me for, I guess, saying something. But how do y'all feel about this? And things got quiet. And then you look around the city and you're like, oh, they got a lot of. Y'all very, very quiet in a in a in a ecosystem that we're not supposed to be quiet. We ran right without backup tight ends and all these other things that don't matter all the time. Why is this now? And I realized, OK, if you if you feel a certain way about, you know, self-awareness and inventory, you know, you don't know if this last check you don't get. Hey, man, I have to keep quiet about these things.
Speaker 5Let me tell you something I learned. I'll never forget. And oh, wait, oh, wait, was the I started doing radio and. I was listening to the talks to the sports talk station and they was doing some is a generally good dudes like his cats. I ain't got nothing bad to say about, but they were doing a thing. Who was more black, Obama or Tiger Woods? And I think that they were intentional. I think they were intending to be tongue in cheek, comma. However, now this is the lesson that I learned here. It was that. When y'all be listening to the radio station and I do it on the radio, say something. Something crazy. You just turn that shit off and go to work.
Speaker 3But I mean, listen to the radio station and I'm going to say something crazy. I just turn that shit off and go to work. And he right there.
Speaker 4He in the cafeteria. That is a cafeteria. He on the bike. Like, like, like you, you, you want to cool it? Yeah. Like it runs through your mind.
Speaker 3Can I be KRS one right now and pull up on PM Dawn? Like it's like this is this is on the board. If you gag. Right. Like if you really the man, you say you are, you can run up in here and do something about it, but you not. What are you talking about?
Speaker 4You're making me think of the phone call, dog. It's so crazy. I used to get a phone call at a desk that I never sat at during the show, during the times that I was going. And every day this dude would leave a voicemail like these veiled death threats or whatever. And one day I was walking past the phone and I dubbed the phone call because I talked about it on the air. the next day i was walking past the phone and it rang and i thought to myself this is him i pick up the phone and i go hey man i know this is you and i know the message you're getting ready to leave and he you didn't hear anything right you just hear breathing i go don't you think it's weird that you know what time i come in and get off every day and you still you still in the shadows like i guess it's a way to be this guy this just ain't the most efficient way right like the understanding radio is a different world man the the understanding of of sports radio and just think if podcasting 10 years ago would have been what it is now and how many people would have had a nibble of this thing that let's i think it came apart because no one would have had a nibble of this thing because no one would have had a nibble of this thing because no one would have had a nibble of this thing because no one would have had a nibble nobody wanted to get on the message of hey what we're going to do about this thing right and by
Speaker 3the way that's and people wanted to talk about this right because on one hand black people and i would say black people at the median certainly and a certain class of ally wanted to talk about it because it's like now we got an opportunity for the world to hear us but as the internet has told us people are addicted to rage and so the people that wanted to rage no matter what they said about wishing you would stick to sports radio sports hell no that shit like in fact i'd be terrified to find out what would happen if that shit popped off right now because it wouldn't be no stick to sports because everybody knows that outrage juice is the thing and this topic generates outrage from all parties involved just about different things so we could be out there man that shit looked like the trial and a time to kill you know what i'm saying it's free carly and fry carly right next to each other just screaming back and forth right and by the way all of this we're talking about and all the things that we're talking about in this moment what isn't happening while we're talking about this colin kaepernick is not playing football he is hurt he has not gotten off the oak and the entire world around him has caught on fire now coming up next we'll talk about the fact that eventually at some point he had to get out here and play some football look if your supplement shelf needs a reset now's the time gnc semi-annual live well sale is happening august 13th through august 26 with bogo 50 off almost everything whether you're restocking your protein and creatine grabbing your everyday essentials or finally trying something new this is the moment to build a routine that works for you from protein and creatine to hydration and energy essentials you can find the pieces to keep your routine moving it only happens twice a year so don't miss the chance to stock up save and get ready for what's next don't wait the sale won't last long shop at gnc.com slash sale all right we are back with jason goff um this gets us to the colin kaepernick got benched for blaine gabbert which is not really true kaepernick was hurt so bad in that 2015 season that he was too hurt for them to release him because otherwise they probably would have cut him because he sounded a deal with a terrible structure but he was too injured to get cut and the whole way when he wasn't playing chip kelly who was then the head coach was like yeah colin's hurt colin's hurt once colin was healthy colin played colin was not bad the 49ers certainly were um terrible yeah they were awful but he was not bad and here's the question i want to throw at you because i don't think we've thought about this part can you imagine how this would have gone if the 49ers were good like if the 49ers were like what if they were good enough to make the playoffs but like what if they were like good enough to really be out here rocking shit
Speaker 4well it would have taken football to where it usually wants to go but it's scared to go into that territory of boxing whereas mexican versus irishman or black man versus white man you know what i mean or mexican you know what i mean like it would have been whoever was on the other side of that hey you talk about blaine gabbert like baby blaine gabbert was the was the the beginning of the he was the blueprint for the for the blackout yes you gotta you gotta make sure that one of them do you can you like this is the other thing too during that time if he and that team were great the problem was the people who are fighting on our side of this thing where it's like you know you're saying something y'all they can't fight like like everybody who was like hey man i got so many people hey man i i really never looked at it this way and thank you for opening my eyes i'm like okay well where you been sorry i had to be the guy to open your eyes to this or calling colin cabernet but it's also like you going against like you mentioned the ragers on the other side of this thing and the ragers the football audience is you know a bunch of wild out white dudes fresh out of college the older white cats who are raising those dudes and then a bunch of brothers who out here just want to watch the football because we know cats you know we all know a few dudes who got to the league got close to the league or should have been in the league for whatever reason so we all get thrown in that arena together and it's like what is the discourse really going to be right and and as you mentioned even in the even in the dissemination of information kyle really didn't have anybody on the side in the media that i knew about on the other side of things where it's like oh yeah we gonna let people know that this contract is ass that you're more hurt than you are like these things would have gotten out we we learned dudes vaccination status nowadays you know a few years ago like the the reporting that is and could be done you also started to see the slant from the media as well like who is down with who who has to protect certain relationships who has to make sure that this thing flames out in a way right like you're not gonna tell me that that the collusion wasn't on deck hell we watched it with lamar jackson you think they weren't gonna get kyle and cabinet well the
Speaker 3thing that got me in terms of like talking about media because one of the defining stories that you mentioned a little earlier um the pig socks which i mean there was if we're all being honest there was always an element of fm 101 to this right like the excitement that somebody has when they've first really gotten in to the media and they've gotten in to the like the surrounding literature and the zeitgeist that is around that and they're really charged up about what it is and they be going to show y'all you know i mean that big ass afro and everything you understand what i'm saying like like like like he was he he was a true believer you know what i mean he was he was he was he was in on it 100 the whole way but what we found also is it was media members couldn't wait for the change they were waiting for the opportunity and one of them in particular was uh armando salguero who i believe then worked at the miami herald because colin had also done something that is very popular uh amongst the like one fm 101 types in this which is he had that t-shirt with uh malcolm and fidel castro on it okay now um i had talked to colin about that and he told me all the landmines yeah this was very early in the whole thing but he told me that he saw that as a representation of malcolm's willingness to talk to others in order to get things done which is a bit of a historical interpretation only because malcolm and castro were allies like there's no there's there's there's no real way around there's no bridge i have to cross there's no bridge i have to cross to get to you i'm aligned with you in a way yeah and there were some questions about skepticism that malcolm had about castro himself as it's not like castro was black however in terms like there was i would say they were much farther from being allies than enemies i think that would be fair they were not they were not they were not they were not they were not they were not operating as oppositional forces in part i think you know you know castro loved to antagonize the united states in any way possible like who do you dislike the most okay cool i'll hitch to that but salguero being a cuban in miami they really don't have no sense of humor about that whole castro situation and so he came with the questions when they played the game um in miami and colin i thought handled the questions well i did not have a problem like they were talking about pigs like it was the n-word you understand what i'm saying like like i didn't i didn't realize people took that term so seriously or so personally like it's like okay he said the cops are pigs like this is wait till wait till you hear that cypress hill song like i didn't i just i just didn't know i didn't know that that was i didn't know that we treated like or any of the
Speaker 4predator or america's most wanted yeah
Speaker 3yeah yeah like i know the police had gotten themselves a promotion in recent times in terms of their role that they played in society but i didn't realize that was that big a deal but it then again began became your reminder that nobody got into this i would say none of the white dudes at least got into sports media to talk about this stuff they did not and then it happened but then it was some people who just couldn't wait to get their lick off when the time came and it was that was kind of the tour for him through that season when you stop and think about it like anything was really gonna be possible and you when you showed up in this new place and we had reached a time in our society where the people who disagreed with him the most fervently were more likely to be quiet right like i don't the idea of liberal media bias has always felt preposterous to me in a world where fox news exists right and like i know who the white dudes are they're in charge like when you know who runs this stuff maybe it's just that maybe it's a liberal bias but liberal doesn't stop you from being racist and my black ass just can't appreciate you know what i mean so like like there's perhaps there's some separation of everything that's going on but i do think it's fair to look back especially 10 years later that there's things that people would have said about colin if it happened now that i don't think they were felt as free to say because they knew they was they knew they sounded a little bit wrong
Speaker 4give me like give me something give me give me give me i'll say an example where i could go off of because i i'm listening to you about the the let
Speaker 3me ask you this who among us in sports media really stood ten toes down the hardest as a direct critic of colin and what he was doing without hiding behind some excuse yeah
Speaker 4without making it about the flag or military yeah and
Speaker 3even then it's like you know he's i understand where he's you know he has his view or whatever comma however right i feel like today it'd have been somebody on it a lot more gangster and what their opposition
Speaker 4is so i the only person that i because i got into uh a discussion shall we say uh with this person for about a good 12 15 minutes about it was a guy who i you know had dubbed one of my favorite quarterbacks as a kid and that was boomer esiason yeah um yeah we you know we were cbs on the station so i had we had boomer esiason on and i talked to boomer esiason with my with my co-host about you know the you know what colin was doing what he was going through and it seemed like he was and you know boomer's a big you know nypd fdny guy like he he does a lot for military and the troops and is always flying that flag but at the very end of it i think one he i'm talking to him about it and the voices i'm talking to you and he he said to me uh it seems like you're getting a little emotional about it and i wanted to answer in that way yeah man like there are certain first of all a weakness i feel like if your decisions are driven by them then you will end up looking weak or making weak decisions at some point but he he said that in a way where i'm like oh we're getting somewhere and by the very end of it he said um i'm not going to have him disrespect my flag and the very last word because it's my show i'm like yeah but it's his flag too and in that moment i remember like okay so at least it's being said and as and now that you say it i don't know what it means but it's being said and i don't know what it means but it's being said and i don't know what people who came out and was like this is screw this i'm not with this and these are the reasons why um why do you think that is why do you think because it was i'm trying trying to go find a good way to say this i found in my experiences and this is no shade um when certain folks feel excluded they do one of two things they either shit on whatever is being said or or they get upset that they're excluded from the experience and shit on whatever is being said i think that there were so many people who didn't understand fully even though it's right there for you don't have to understand i guess and when the world is talking about something and forcing something in your in your purview that maybe somebody might have the drop on you or a better understanding these people don't know how to just come up off of i simply don't understand what's going on you know and i think a lot of the media cats and and and guys and gals um hid behind that long enough that they didn't have to make any kind of real i think
Speaker 3concrete statement i think that i think that what people deep down were protecting in the course of
Speaker 5that discussion was their right to not care i think that people could very basically and fundamentally understand that the
Speaker 3way police is out here also killing every they they kill white people and get away with it too um like that is worth noting and that was one of the more common defenses was would the police kill white people too and they like with it implicit and you don't see us crying right you see what i'm saying like i think that people were defending their right to see these you know and in many of these cases we talked about they were very young like not even black men did boys boys right like they were defending their right to not have to care they were defending their right to be ambivalent to what was going on around it there's no way for you to say look at that i just don't really care you can't do that what you have to do is you have to venerate the police and you have to turn it into a situation where you're saying the police do this just because they got a zillion things going on they got this they got that you know they're heroes deep down got to break some ears to make some omelets you know like they were they were they were you know they were going through all of those things and they were going through all of those things and they were going through all of those things because yeah right right but you couldn't you couldn't really come out there it was very difficult in that time to stand up and fervently be like what is he talking about no no they just didn't want to care about what it was um i do think that there's like a heavy like liberal sort of presence in the media certainly um but i don't think that it was enough to where i felt like oh i'm just it feels like i went to a dsa meeting no that's not that like those yeah those of us who work in this are kind of like no it never no it doesn't if you really want to know yeah like i feel like it don't feel that way to me it sure don't feel that way to me but i'm talking to a boss or anything like that right like it's not there i think now after 10 years of trump being at our faces like boomer siason is a great example he is a very conservative man and now we know that in ways that i don't think we knew it before right i think that he feels a little more comfortable being 10 toes down on that there's always been somebody in your local market or whatever uh who will go out there and be that guy honestly the difference between now and call it 20 years ago was that me and you were there 10 years ago right like like in that time period you know like 10 years before that no not really they wouldn't you know the the people that had these people and i think that was what i really thought by and large was that youth like age was maybe the
Speaker 4the thing that pissed me off in my travels were the people who would i'll never forget uh vinnie del negro was coaching a bulls team that was going up against tyreek evans and the sacramento kings and it was either rookie year tyreek or second year where tyreek was just a monster and they came back from 31 down some some crazy shit like that and everybody is sitting there in the in the media uh press conference post game and i'm in there and it's like one of the first times i'm asking questions and i go hey man you worried about your job security after some shit like that go down and vinnie straight up looked me in the face answered the question whatever and then as we're walking out then he daps me like i understand he's no he's been around the league forever right you know you know he ain't a good coach you know what i'm saying you don't mean people in that media scrum press conference post game thing was like man i'd have never been able to ask that that was that was great though and i'm sitting there like but why not you just watch the same shit i just watched and that moment was 100x for me during 2016 because it's a city with you know a lot of microphones and we only get a few of them and i'm like hey y'all uh what y'all think and you get everything that everybody thinks behind the scenes when it's time to flip that flip that red light on that on air button come on shit changes a little and i was just i was astounded by it because maybe i didn't maybe i understand the magnitude see i thought it would be a thing that passed where we look back on it and you know how we look back on other figures like i hate to keep going back to ali but ali wasn't beloved right but there were people who were like hey man you know what he's supposed to be doing then people didn't have microphones so if you got the microphone and you feel that way say this and then shortly after that you know your boy get let go you know wayne brady's turned into malcolm x's on the air it's because it becomes an inventory thing like uh you know we can sell this now look look at and i hate the word woke because now it's been used like i let me break this to uh some of the people who still use this as a pejorative in this way it sounds like you're saying n-word or n-word activities to all and i and i've been waiting my entire like last five six years hey for all the white folks out there to think that when they said i don't want to sound woke or not or they were too woke or they lost something because they were woke it sounds away and in these conversations we should be able to pass along these feelings and these experiences man i when i find out the media members were on that side and now have been you know converted or are standing even harder i'm like hey man shit feel free it ain't like it's gonna lose you any business these days you know i mean you you out here rolling with the crimson tide or you know the early odds like y'all y'all got some championships that y'all y'all running around putting pros in the league like you if you think that this is the last we're gonna see of this this is just 1.0 so yeah people people saying a lot of things like for instance the the wmba discourse and the way it's going down now what
Speaker 3if this y'all can
Speaker 4you imagine if
Speaker 3one of them had decided not to stand for the
Speaker 4national anthem oh well let's be real um the most disrespected person walking around your office or in your sphere is probably a black woman you know i mean i'm not even gonna do the woman of color thing is a black woman so you know and they've been holding shit down with motherfuckers in the nba was too i'm always almost said the word but i was too pumped to do anything right yeah yeah like you know when when when derrick rose wore his is i can't breathe shirt the ladies have been doing it for a couple of weeks before that right like man i'm not you know shout out to derrick because he he was one of the few to actually was doing it without getting everybody to do it and i'm not gonna do it because i'm not gonna do it together and do it a team photo and make it in marketing right but like man please like what we are now and how we how we challenge thought hopefully and how we're going to continue to challenge thought yeah that that moment showed me a lot in terms of you know they gonna forget about the moment but you should probably never forget how you handled that moment and there's a lot of people who run around handle that moment that's you know probably shout out to them but you know integrity ain't for sale
Speaker 3yeah i don't think we realize or i don't think i fully realized that what was beginning at least it felt like a moment at a point right like i think a fundamental question about all of these things is was it a moment or was it a movement or was it a moment right and when we get to like talking about 2020 that that question becomes a lot more prominent but when you think about the stuff with black folks and police like you think about the protests in ferguson you think about how it went with trayvon martin you think about it leading up to kaepernick there really was a long time a long stretch of a sustained outrage um about this issue and we did start to see some things like by the time the qual mcdonald thing comes around like it was treated these things were treated more seriously george floyd was the culmination of it where people had to be like damn that was fucked up you know like it like it it reached that it reached that point and it reached that build and college shook up the world like and while it was happening it kind of felt like it right but i don't know if it felt like that all off of the internet because on the internet it felt like that's what was happening but that's where media people and people who consume media were getting together and kind of going back and forth and hollering at each other and everything else i mean me doing a lot of the hollering just to be clear you know that's where we were but it was it was part of a move it was part of a larger thing and yeah we had the i can't breathe and stuff like this but this like this right here landed when colin didn't it was and it was because he was an nfl quarterback a quarterback who had been to a super bowl like a a name that people knew and you could make the argument that his career was down and that's why he did it well kurt flood's career was down when he did that thing that he did but it didn't mean he didn't do the thing right like he had maybe he had the thing that puts him to the point of not giving a fuck no more that happens but somebody still has to do the thing he wasn't the only person whose career wasn't going good he's the one who did the thing you ,
Speaker 4and if he wasn't ready for understanding of the moment do you think that he would give up being you know a backup for the next four or five years and i don't think
Speaker 3i don't think he knew it would go
Speaker 4like so i'm asking yeah
Speaker 3i don't think he thought now it's fair on one level it's fair to ask the question if he did know it was going to shake out like this would he have done it but the bottom line is he did the thing he did
Speaker 4it yeah he did it and he and he forced the conversation and you know and and his his partner ness you know she still rides hard for him and is doing what she's doing doing a great job in new york radio like that it's and you know the the know your rights thing like people people have gotten information and education on things that we wouldn't have had conversations around i mean it's a hollow it's the most important position in american sports is quarterback okay i mean you might say your best player on the nba team no pitcher on the nba team on a baseball team shortstop no it's the glamour boy position of the country high school kids grow up to and want to be that right there are professionals who if you stay in the league long enough you're gonna catch some of this glory shout out to sam darno right you want that position you want that moment and for that position in that moment to speak to things i mean it's what we've always talked about like you're the ceo of the of the team and you're you're the when moments got a little hairy hey remember you're the quarterback everybody's looking at you mama got hairy and he was like yeah everybody is looking at me i'm not mad like i appreciate it in a way that at that time when i was getting ready to have my first son like i'm thinking about how am i going to raise a young black man in this atmosphere with all that shit going on at the same time i remember going on the air uh shortly after i dropped uh his his mom was pregnant with her off and she was listening we were listening to the news and listening to like the pretty much the roundup of what had happened over the last two weeks of young black men being shot by the police and she starts to sob and now i gotta go in to a a four-hour sports radio show and act like that didn't happen no this is the conversation we're not gonna be like it's it's as if when there's mass shootings and gun violence and we go hey man t's and p's it's not a time to politicize this we're gonna talk about this some other time don't use these people's deaths well guess what man so many deaths what's happening is like hey there ain't gonna be no other time we should we should probably get to this now and see where everybody stands and that's why i like the seeing where everybody stands part is always you know it's always jarring for some right and i think it was so jarring for everybody in the country that was like wait a minute this is where you stand with this this is how you feel hell i got police in my family who are like yeah man it's it's some some grind I mean, shit that goes down, you know, so there's some things that, that, that, that we're not even down with. And I'm like, yeah, but let's say this. If the dude who is on the Nike ad, if the dude who can get anything and have anything in the world that he wants because of the position he holds, not just in this country, but in this world, bro, like, yeah, you got excess resource. You got excess network. You're around billionaires because of the ownership groups. You travel. Yeah, if he's got this on his heart and he, you know what I get pissed about? When people don't want to hear from rich folks because you damn sure don't want to hear from poor folks. So who do you want to hear from? Right. You feel me? Yep. You damn sure you're not going to listen to the poor folks because you're not around them. And if a rich motherfucker can say, hey, by the way, man, with all this privilege and everything that I have amassed because of my talent, there's something sitting on my heart heavy. Yeah, I want to speak on it. And to see the response by employers, by corporations, by the league, by sports media, it was one of those, okay, it's just a temperature check. Every 10 years, every five years or so, we get a temperature check. And that was the temperature check.
Speaker 5All right. Let me ask this last thing before we go.
Speaker 3All right. When Colin played his last game in the 2016 season, did you think that was going to be his last game, period?
Speaker 4Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because I was still under the assumption that, hey, man, I didn't see murderers get their gags back.
Speaker 3I'm trying to think when exactly I realized it wasn't going down. Like, I feel like definitely once he didn't have a job and the season started, it was like, oh, no, no, no. This just ain't happening. I think maybe it might've taken for me to get through training camp and like nobody just even just needed a live arm or anything. But I'm really trying to look back and think to myself, when did I fully realize, when did I fully realize it's a wrap, dog?
Speaker 4We grew up, though, understanding that collusion was a thing that you can get in trouble for as kids, right? So it was like, oh, no, no, don't worry about it. But also, it would require the whole goddamn league
Speaker 3to be so mad about this and a league where everybody need a quarterback. Nobody? Again, you said Michael Vick got out and it was a line waiting on him. Oh, when I was
Speaker 4talking about murders, you had some Atlanta
Speaker 3people coming after me. Nah, nah. I wasn't referring to Mike. No, no, no, I was just using Mike as an example of people.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the country of second chances. You kidding me? Like, and did you really need a second chance by saying, hey, y'all, it's kind of fucked up what's going on out here. I don't know if y'all are seeing this. But yeah, you couldn't have told me that that dude wouldn't find. And then the pretzels that people tied themselves, the knots that people tied themselves, well, you got to change the whole system. Boy, Greg Roman saw Chris Alt's system and like a college football video game was like, hey, we can just put this package in and run this with some different verbiage. Don't tell me shit about a system that you got to build for a strong-armed, left-handed, he's lefty, right? He's right-handed, he's right-handed. He's right-handed, he's a strong-armed, right-handed quarterback that runs like a gazelle and, well, you know, his anticipation and his accuracy, man, hey, let me tell you what I saw, though. I saw him go 12 and four. I saw him shred the Packers. Super Bowl, two NFC championships. What? You're going to tell me in a league that as a Bears fan, dude, I've watched Steve Stenstrom, Chad Hutchinson, you feel me? I've watched Drew Henson. I've watched Craig Krenzel play football. I've seen Jonathan Quinn throw a football to a man who was getting paid to catch it and not get there. I've seen so many things. Me and Cleveland Browns fans should have been right there at the altar like, no, no, y'all, somebody can figure it out. I had to watch some shit, you know? Shout out to Steve Berline and so many Steve's. Steve Walsh. I've just seen every Steve ever play quarterback. You mean to tell me this man's saying, hey, can y'all stop shooting this? It's going to be the difference between him playing and not playing? All right, I got you. I got you. This man said, I done seen so many Steve's. I done seen every Steve ever play football for the Chicago Bears at the quarterback position. I done seen Mike Tomczak. You going to tell me this is what it is? So, hey, man, there is nothing more powerful than a decision maker with insecurities and a lack of understanding. And I think you look across the board in terms of ownership groups, you're going to find enough of them. And they're like, we can't do this. Juice ain't worth the squeeze. Huh? Tim Tebow. You know, hey, Tim is about God. Okay? He can do whatever he want. Anytime the Jets come on through. The Jets had a press conference for signing a backup quarterback. You remember when that was going on? They did. You remember that? They did. Meanwhile, you know, and now, you know, fast forward 10 years later, we got freestyles at block parties about, you know, struggles and crazy shit going on. Like, I hate how this turned out for everybody, man. Yeah. Like, everybody involved, brother. Everybody. I don't think there was one winner in this situation.
Speaker 5Not one. And that's a question we'll get to as this series goes on. That is Jason Goff.
Speaker 3My brother, I appreciate you.
Speaker 4Appreciate you, man.
Speaker 3All right, man. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this a couple of times a week during the summer. Mike McQuaid telling everything, behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line, 3-2-3-5-9-6-7-7-6-7. Remember, follow The Right Time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us. Give us five stars. What's up, you guys? In a couple of days. Take it easy.
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