As Jay-Z glad-hands with NFL, journalist take aim at his volt-face revealed in his decision to team up with the same league he previously criticized for mistreating Colin Kaepernick.
Rap mogul Jay-Z has teamed up with the National Football League (NFL) when he signed up a new partnership focusing on “social justice.” The rapper and NFL Roger Goodell revealed the new deal during a a press conference held on Wednesday, August 15.
As a result, Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation, will leverage live entertainment music to enhance the experience and also increase American football social justice efforts, the pair explained. Speaking at the press conference, Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, said that the NFL platform could allow to “strengthen the fabric of communities across America.”
While the announcement and Jay-Z’s pitch made perfect sense, media had difficult questions to ask him.
NFL’s Mistreatment Colin Kaepernick
Specifically, Jay-Z was asked why he had agreed to partner with the same sports association which had mistreated Colin Kaepernick, who became famous for his “knee stand,” in 2016.
Mr. Kaepernick refused to stand up when the national anthem was played during the San Francisco 49ers vs San Diego Chargers at Qualcomm Stadium, as a sign of protesting police brutality on men and women of color.
Booed by the crowd at the game and drawing the ire of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kaepernick stuck to his guns and continued to issue acts of defiance in the following weeks. His position, he wrote in a statement, came as an act of protest to the “rogue policemen who took office” in the force and acted unpunished. With Kaepernick removed from the NFL, this changed quite a few things, specifically for established sports book that offer some of the most accurate odds, such as: https://footballbetsnow.com.
At the time the NFL handled the issue poorly, issuing a statement that athletes who didn’t want to attend for the anthem were allowed to stay in the locker room, but anyone present would be expected to stand.
Jay-Z seemed to side with Mr. Kaepernick and he released a song with Beyoncé in which he famously sang “I said no to the Super Bowl, you need me, I don’t need you, Every night we in the end zone, tell the NFL we in stadiums, too.”
So, why the sudden change of heart?
Kapernick and Jay-Z Fall Out
It soon transpired that Jay-Z had had a conversation with Mr. Kapernick on Monday, but the rapper refused to disclose any further information. Mr. Kapernick’s girlfriend, Nessa Diab, tweeted that he never spoke to Jay-Z.
THIS is a lie. COLIN never spoke to Jay-Z and NFL ahead of that deal being done. They NEVER included him in any discussion 👉🏽 https://t.co/TWmoXS4JVJ pic.twitter.com/2bjSIEtnjQ
— NESSA (@nessnitty) August 14, 2019
A further investigation conducted by The Atlantic cited a source close to Mr. Kapernick who said that Jay-Z had spoken to the athlete, and that it wasn’t a good conversation.
The NFL Gets Away Colin-Free
The partnership between the NFL and Jay-Z is an important victory for the League, mostly because that in the wake of the knee stand scandal, a number of entertainers said that they would boycott the competition until such a time that Kaepernick had been restored.
With Jay-Z’s volt-face, it is likely that more entertainers could reconsider, relying on the public’s ability to quickly forget. As to the NFL, this is precisely what they wanted – to get away fee of any guilt. Jay-Z has just helped them with that. Meanwhile, the season is nearly upon us and people are already looking up American football and betting odds for the NFL.
Just as the rapper would say himself “I am not a businessman, I am a business, man.”