He was rid of the job, the gesture became universal: Colin Kaepernick (center) protests at the side of Eric Reid (left) and Eli Harold (right) against racism (23.10.2016)
The 102nd season of the National Football League in the USA begins this Thursday with the defending champions Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing against the Dallas Cowboys. American football is also enjoying increasing popularity in Europe. Politically interested fans associate one name with the sport above all: Colin Kaepernick.
In the summer of 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback refused to stand in front of the US flag during test matches during the mandatory performance of the national anthem. “I can’t pretend I’m proud of the flag of a country where blacks and people of color are oppressed,” he said, explaining his decision. At the end of the preparation for the season, Kaepernick began to kneel down while playing the anthem. This gesture is now being imitated by athletes in all kinds of sports. Even the International Olympic Committee tolerated them during the Olympic Games in Tokyo, despite its otherwise meticulously construed provisions against any form of “political protest”. This brought Kaepernick worldwide attention and an advertising contract with Nike, but his actual job as a player was gone. No NFL club has employed him since the end of the 2016 season.
Political protest is nothing new in American football. In 1971 the book “Out of Their League” was published by the former linebacker of the St. Louis Cardinals, Dave Meggyesy. Unfortunately, never translated into German, it is political sports literature at its best. Published by a small left-wing publisher, the book became a surprising bestseller in the US with 700,000 copies sold.
Meggyesy grew up near Cleveland, the son of a Hungarian farm worker and union activist. In college, he played football for Syracuse University before signing a professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1963. Meggyesy had his best season in 1968, when he was regularly in the starting line-up of the team that narrowly missed the final of the Eastern Conference that year. Influenced by the 1968 movement, he developed his own form of the “hymn protest”. Instead of taking the helmet under his left arm and saluting the flag, in accordance with the protocol, he let the helmet dangle and looked into the audience.
Meggyesy funded bus trips for groups wanting to take part in antiwar demonstrations and got 37 of his teammates to sign a letter calling for an end to the military operation in Vietnam. He required the management of the St. Louis Cardinals that only unionized workers prepare meals for the team. He made his house available to political organizations for meetings – one evening he was denied access to his bedroom because a group of women had withdrawn there.
Like Kaepernick half a century later, Meggyesy became a persona non grata in the NFL. The Cardinals coaches sent him to the bank, no other club wanted to give him a contract. So he ended his career in 1970, not even 30 years old. He retired for a few months at the Institute for the Study of Sport and Society founded by Jack Scott in Oakland, California.
Scott was the author of the book “Athletics for Athletes”. He tried to reshape the world of sport in line with the 1968 ideals. Meggyesy used the time at the institute to write “Out of Their League”. In it he compared the military drill that shaped football teams with the war effort in Vietnam, emphasized the bread-and-play character of professional sport and called for a “humane” approach to the athletes. He also reported on black money in college sports and irresponsible use of pain medication. He also described how segregation and racism shaped American football. Years later he said of his work: “It was an angry book, written in an angry time.”
Meggyesy herself returned to American football in the 1980s, following in his father’s footsteps. He became a union representative for the National Football League Players Association. In addition, he was involved in organizations such as Athletes United for Peace.
Today Meggyesy lives secluded in California. The NFL’s handling of Kaepernick doesn’t surprise him. “The league bosses were tyrannical back then, and they are now,” he told prominent sports journalist Gare Joyce at the end of 2020. But Meggyesy is hopeful: »I tried my way to improve the situation for us players. Today there are several who do that. Much about our society still makes me angry. But there are more and more people who oppose it. “
