Colin Kaepernick says Jay-Z never consulted him before partnering with the NFL in 2019.
The former quarterback now alleges that the rapper’s first outreach came only on the eve of the deal’s public unveiling, as a way to manufacture the appearance of agreement between the two men.
“Jay-Z did not speak to me about the deal with the NFL prior to him signing the deal,” Kaepernick said. He revealed that the first message he received asking him to jump on a call arrived on the day before the press conference to announce the deal with the NFL.
Kaepernick, who details the episode in Chapter 17 of his memoir The Perilous Fight, believes the timing was deliberate.
He explained that a reporter had asked Jay-Z whether he had spoken to Kaepernick about the arrangement, and that the question prompted the call.
The goal, in his view, was to allow the Roc Nation founder to say publicly that the two had talked. “It’s very manipulative,” he said.
The revelation stands out because Jay-Z had previously appeared to support Kaepernick, wearing his jersey on Saturday Night Live and alluding in song to refusing to perform at the Super Bowl.
Kaepernick also recalled that Roc Nation had tried to recruit him as a client during that period. He turned the company down, but insisted the rejection was cordial. There was no beef,” he said.
When the two finally spoke, Kaepernick did not hold back. “I disagree with what you’re doing. You’re selling the culture out to a bunch of racists,” he recalled telling Jay-Z.
The reply, he said, made the situation clear. “The response reveals to me the intention which is the ink is dry.”
Kaepernick argued that the partnership only existed because fans were tuning out and major artists were refusing to perform at the halftime show.
He pointed to reporting that the owner of the Buffalo Bills had said the league needed a Black face to help address the protests. Jay-Z doing a deal with the NFL is opportunistic,” he said, adding that the rapper “got a new job” without having sacrificed anything. “You’re trying to profit off of the sacrifices that other people made,” he continued.
He also rejected suggestions that jealousy fuels his criticism. According to Kaepernick, the NFL offered him and Eric Reid the chance to lead its social justice initiatives with a significant paycheck, but without a return to the field. “We just wouldn’t sell out. We turned it down,” he said.
Kaepernick further claimed that, ahead of the Jay-Z-linked 2019 workout, his team was receiving calls from people in the media saying that figures within Roc Nation were “planting hit pieces on me.”
To those who credit Jay-Z with securing that workout, Kaepernick offered a blunt response. “I will say if that is the case, that’s not a positive thing,” he said.
He described the session as “a silver bullet to try to get me to go away forever,” and said it “was set up to be able to destroy my employment rights.”
He listed a series of irregularities. His agent was given only a few hours on a Tuesday to accept a Saturday workout, a day when scouts are typically at college games.
The league claimed all 32 teams were informed, yet teams began calling his agent in confusion once the announcement went out.
Media access was first offered and later withdrawn, and his request to bring his own camera was also denied.
The final sticking point was a waiver that Kaepernick said went well beyond standard injury liability and would have stripped him of any recourse over discrimination or collusion. “That is not standard,” he said.
He noted that an outside law firm drafted it, that the players union later rejected similar language in collective bargaining talks, and that he signed a standard waiver without issue when he worked out for the Raiders in 2022.
Kaepernick said he stayed publicly quiet at the time because he did not want a feud between two Black men to overshadow the movement. “I’m not going to act how you act,” he said.
