In 2017, with a football season on the horizon, and with Colin Kaepernick out of work, a group of black NFL employees sought an audience with senior leadership and the commissioner. They met with Roger Goodell and other top executives in August, at 345 Park Avenue in New York, around the time some 1,000 people protested Kaepernick’s unemployment outside.
“Why can’t he get a job?” the masses wondered. Employees wondered, too.
“Is he being blackballed? Can you guys talk to us?”
They wanted answers. Every day, when they’d leave the office, they’d go home to family and friends, and defend the NFL.