His Work Here Is Done: How Sports Journalists and Commentators Framed Colin Kaepernick’s Possible Return to the National Football League

Abstract

A frame analysis was conducted of recent coverage by sports journalists of the on-again off-again possibility that Colin Kaepernick might sign a contract to play with a team in the National Football League (NFL). Kaepernick was blacklisted by league and team officials angry at, and hoping to avert public backlash from, Kaepernick’s 2016 decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest systemic police brutality and mass incarceration. The analysis enabled the creation of champions, distractions, exile, futility, impact, and spectacle frames. The analysis affirms that journalists may be priming readers to conclude that the NFL has learned its lesson, that some officials should be congratulated for generating the bravery to welcome Kaepernick back to the league and commended for their newfound insights about racism. The episodic frames emerging from coverage of the tryouts and a possible signing affirm that the “new appreciation” of Kaepernick has become a nonthreatening reverence for his place in history. Kaepernick’s exile now reads like a one-off, an outlier, rather than a glaring example of the systemic racism that still infects the league. Frames affirm that the NFL—with help from the nation’s sports writers and commentators—has taken control of the narrative with which fans process an athlete’s activism. They have legitimized the narrow space provided by the league for player protest.