On bended knee

Every so often sport bursts its banks, spills from its usual courses and goes flooding incontinently onto the news pages. This year we’ve already had Australian cricketers doing unspeakable things with sand-paper, Gareth Southgate’s World Cup waistcoat and the return of Serena Williams to Wimbledon a few months after an emergency caesarean.

And now we have Colin Kaepernick. He is currently an unemployed quarterback of America’s National Football League. He famously — heroically if you like — refused to stand for the pre-game national anthem, in protest against social injustice and police treatment of black people. Many other footballers followed suit. Last season at an NFL game in London between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars, around two dozen players ‘took a knee’ during the American anthem.

Colin Kaepernick #7 takes a knee (Photo: Getty)

The protest has caused great angst in the United States. Donald Trump called the kneelers ‘sons of bitches’ and demanded that they be sacked from their NFL teams. Certainly Kaepernick can’t find a job, though some say that is because he is a second-rate quarterback. Martyr or sporting chuck-out?

Nike has made up its corporate mind — and chucked another cartload of newts’ eyes and baboon blood into the cauldron by putting Kaepernick at the centre of its new campaign. The slogan: ‘Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.’ What does that mean, exactly? Kaepernick hasn’t given up everything: he is after all a very well-paid brand ambassador for Nike.

Let’s flashback 30 years, to when Nike built its advertising around the great basketball player Michael Jordan. His nickname: Air Jordan. The name of his shoes? Nike Air. Man and product had become one. Jordan played it resolutely apolitical — never got involved in a single controversy.