From Robinson to Ali, the power of player activism has always been rooted in its moral imperative. The recent wave has been no different, motivated by moments like in August 2014, when Ferguson police shot Michael Brown dead and left his body on the street, baking in the summer heat for hours.authentic nfl jerseys cheap Or when police choked Eric Garner to death that same summer, or killed Philando Castile and Terence Crutcher in 2016. People filled the streets to protest the violence. Players like Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid joined them in on-field protests.

The sports world did its best to kill the protests, aided by a media that largely refused to understand the revolt and by the willful ignorance of owners and fans who never believed this part of America was a problem. The efforts appear to have succeeded. Kaepernick is still without a job. Reid, a free agent safety, said on March 22 that if signed by a team he would discontinue his two-year practice of kneeling during the anthem in protest of police brutality. The next day, Malcolm Jenkins, Anquan Boldin and Devin McCourty — three members of the Players Coalition, a group of activist players that in November negotiated with owners an $89 million partnership to contribute to social causes — gave the keynote address at a Harvard seminar on criminal justice reform. Speaking about on-field protest, McCourty told USA Today, “That was a vehicle that we used to draw attention, but doing some type of protest on the field every week is not going to stop an unarmed black kid from getting killed.”

The players have clearly succumbed to the prolonged hostility to their cause and suffer a terribly absent sense of self. Their union is ambivalent toward protest, even as jobs are being threatened. Kaepernick, the hero to the people who never quite wanted to lead the people, is still an unquestioned inspiration to millions, but he hasn’t spoken nationally in more than a year. In the void, his moral urgency has been co-opted. Unwilling to couple labor solidarity to protest, the players let Kaepernick die professionally, sacrificing their one strength management feared: the power of their numbers. The coalition said their partnership wasn’t a quid pro quo to end protests, yet that is what it has become. nfl jerseys for cheap Players took ownership’s money without asking for fairness. Kaepernick and now possibly Reid, who remained unsigned heading into April, have been the human cost — and everyone seems all right with that.