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More than a decade ago, as quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick led his team to the Super Bowl. And, not long after, he was gone, a fleeting chapter in the history of the National Football League.

Kaepernick’s lasting effect on the game came on the sidelines, when, in the wake of several police shootings of Black men, he took a knee in protest during the national anthem, embarrassing the barons who run the league and enraging the likes of Donald Trump, who called on Kaepernick to be fired from his post. Kaepernick’s gestures of solemn dissent—and the noisy reactions that followed—are in line with other moments of protest in sports history, including Muhammad Ali’s clash with the draft board and the U.S. government during the war in Vietnam, and the actions of the sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who, after winning medals at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, raised gloved fists and bowed their heads as the anthem was played during the victory ceremony. And yet, somehow, Kaepernick, who could not get another gig as an N.F.L. quarterback, has been heard from only intermittently in the past decade.

He has now written a memoir, “The Perilous Fight,” and recently spoke with me for The New Yorker Radio Hour. We discussed his persistent, despite-everything love of the game, his antipathy to those who rule the N.F.L., his activism, and his anxiety about football’s undeniable damage to those who play it. Our conversation was edited for clarity and length.

You were such an all-around athlete as a kid. Why’d you choose football over all the others?

There is a camaraderie that’s built in the huddle and on the field—

That you don’t have in baseball.

That you don’t have in baseball, that you don’t have in basketball—because, especially as a quarterback, your physical safety is dependent upon ten other people doing their jobs. It builds this sense of camaraderie and dependence on each other.

And you loved it.

Loved that element of it. There is a brotherhood there, because you know what’s at stake, you know what’s at risk there. But you go out and you put the work in to be able to accomplish that goal together. And it was hard to find that anywhere else. And football was also, culturally, very different for me.

How so?

There were a lot more Black players. For me, being a young Black boy, adopted into a white family, in a predominantly white community—

You needed that.

I found community in football, and that was also an important element for me.

That seems to be the heart of your origin story, Colin, if I may: adopted by however well-meaning white parents, who were also making mistakes all the time—of language, of intent. You set these out really beautifully in your book. And you have to teach yourself Blackness in a way that was not there in the house. Tell me about that process.

Yeah. It’s an interesting process because the important piece for me is: I think sometimes people assume there was a journey to find my Blackness, and I just don’t view it that way.

How do you see it?

I knew I was Black at a very young age. You know you’re Black. Society tells you you’re Black. My parents were very open and transparent about that. That wasn’t a secret. The evolution comes from putting your experiences as a young Black boy into the context of larger Black society and Black history that you don’t receive in your own household. And, for me, largely, in Turlock, there were no Black mentors. There weren’t—

Teachers?

I had a few, but most of them were coaches.

Tell me about the town you were growing up in. You were where?

Turlock, California—central California. I tell people, when you think about California, normally you think: blue state. You think of L.A. or San Francisco. Central California is red. So, very different environment there. I think Turlock, at that point in time, was between one and three per cent Black. So, the Black community, the Black population, were not significant.

So I had to figure out how to be able to navigate these situations, these circumstances, without really having a guide. And getting older, and later in life being exposed to literature like Malcolm X and [James] Baldwin and [Frantz] Fanon and Huey Newton and Angela Davis—getting a broader perspective helped put my experience growing up into context, but also helped put it in a broader context of Black community and Black history that was important to get me to understand systems-level thinking.

What do you mean by “systems-level”?

Think about that in relation to when we talk about policing. Oftentimes there’s a positionality of: oh, this was a one-off instance. Or: this was one bad action by a police officer. As opposed to looking historically at policing coming out of slave patrols, the original intention of policing, why policing shows up much more significantly in Black communities than white communities, the relationship and engagement that Black communities have with policing, how that feeds into the prison-industrial complex. So, having a broader perspective around it gave me the insight to understand better why situations and circumstances were happening. As opposed to being, like, “Oh, you know what? That one interaction, that was a bad moment, that shouldn’t happen.”

Interactions that you experienced as well?

I mean, being pulled over, having police come into our house in college because neighbors called to say that a bunch of young Black men were robbing the house while one of my teammates was moving out—literally, one of our teammates was graduating, and we were helping move some of his furniture. Now, at this point, we had been in this house for over a year. It wasn’t like the neighbors didn’t know us or hadn’t seen us before. So you deal with circumstances and situations like that. And there’s definitely awareness of broader conversation of the Black community’s relationship with police. But, at that point in time, I didn’t have the larger understanding or systemic understanding of policing and the intention behind it, beyond, “Hey, they’re going to target you. You need to be prepared for it.”

How about the institution itself—the N.F.L.? People talk about the monoculture, what’s left of the monoculture. It doesn’t exist anymore in music, which is more fractured, or in movies or anything else. The one thing all television networks want now is the N.F.L. It is the most galvanizing entertainment that this country has at this moment. You can see it in dollars and cents. When you entered the N.F.L., did you experience racism in the league itself, or was that an escape from racism in greater society, in some way?

Both. It’s a complex dynamic, because, in some regards, you’re able to have the benefit of being with other players. The N.F.L. is approximately seventy per cent Black. So you have community in that regard. By the time you’re in the N.F.L., most players have significant salaries—you’re making significant money, well beyond the average. So you then reach a different class status that gives you different privilege associated with it.

How political were you in the beginning, when you got into the N.F.L.? And how much, if at all, did you talk politics with other players? “Politics” in the broadest sense.

I would say you talk about it, but, for me, I didn’t have the broader perspective around it. So you see it show up in relation to—and we talk about this in the book—it shows up in the combine, of the treatment of players—

Explain that, because this is very strange. The combine is where prospective players go to show not only how fast they can run or jump to catch a ball but also they strip down and display themselves.

Yes. What the public sees is the on-field performance—the drills, the throwing sessions, all of that. But it’s actually a three- to four-day event. And you do have moments where you’re walking across the stage in your compression shorts, and they’re taking photos of you as part of that. There’s an understanding that this has parallels to slave-auction blocks. There’s no reason for us to walk onstage.

And does this occur in any other sport?

Not to my knowledge.

Not to mine, either.

And there’s quite literally no relevance to it for the ability to perform the job.

Do the players talk about that in the moment, or is it only in, kind of, retrospect that you now think back and think, Wait, that was really sick.

Players know it in the moment.

And what do they say?

I mean, it’s one of those things that, as a college player—at this point you’re probably somewhere between twenty-one, twenty-three—you’ve worked your whole life to get the opportunity to play in the N.F.L. You know this is wrong and you have an understanding of, like, This doesn’t make sense, why is this even happening. But, in the moment when you’re about to get drafted, do you raise that and be, like, “No, I’m not doing that for you,” and potentially hurt your draft stock or capital? Do they then say, “Oh, this guy is un-draftable. He’s rebellious.”

“He has an attitude problem. Bad attitude.”

Yeah. “He’s not coachable, doesn’t listen well, not a team player.”

Those are the euphemisms.

Yeah.

Is it racial, often?

Oh, oftentimes. Which really ties back to: “You’re not obedient.”

Right.

And with that also come the interviews, as part of the combine. A lot of the interviews that I had—and they’re well documented, publicly—they’re not asking you questions about your ability to play football, oftentimes. There are questions about players’ sexuality. “Are you gay?” There have been questions about players and their mothers. “Are they prostitutes?”

Wait a minute. “Are you gay?” “Is your mother a prostitute?” Questions like that come at you?

Oh, I mean, post-2016, players got asked, “What do you think about Colin Kaepernick?” What is the purpose of that?

2016, the year that you protested police racism and so on.

Yes. Now, mind you, all of these are illegal questions to ask in a labor engagement, but, to me, those are questions designed to be able to understand: Is this player obedient? Are they going to conform? Are they going to be compliant about what we’re asking of them? And do I feel like they’re going to act in our best interest at all times?

And I think the reality for players is: you know those things shouldn’t be happening, but you’re also in a position that’s, like, “Well, two, three months from now, we’re going into the draft, and we’re going to decide where you get drafted, which has direct impact on dollars that you’re going to make.”

And, if you don’t get drafted, you go back to your home town and fend for yourself.

Yeah.

Colin, I’m fifteen or twenty minutes older than you are, so, when I was growing up, Black quarterbacks weren’t around. I mean, Warren Moon came along, and slowly it changed, but it was exceedingly rare, even in college. And I wonder how that affected your psychology as a quarterback. How did that figure into things?

One of the mentalities that I have is: you have to break boundaries. And we saw instances of this happening, to your point. Warren Moon, Donovan McNabb, Randall Cunningham, Mike Vick—

Doug Williams.

Doug Williams. We see flashes of this, and we see the success, but the abilities of Black quarterbacks were always called into question, in part because the quarterback is viewed as, essentially, the C.E.O. And the question is, Well, should your C.E.O. look like this? Do they have the capability? And there’s always a question on the intelligence of Black quarterbacks. We see that consistently show up. They’ll get all the accolades on physical ability and athleticism and being gifted, or being a monster or a beast. But when it comes to intellect, it’s never the same adjectives as for white quarterbacks. They’re never described as a “student of the game,” or a "field general,” or a “coach on the field.”

Those are white descriptions.

Yeah. You’ll get those for white quarterbacks. Black quarterbacks, historically, have not been described that way. Even though the intellectual abilities are still there—they just have the athletic abilities in addition. And I think what we’re starting to see now, more and more, is: coaches are starting to catch up and understand that Black quarterbacks give them more optionality. They give them more capabilities on offense, because they are able to do both. Typically, white quarterbacks have been viewed—

Drop-back passers.

Pocket passers. They’re not getting out of the pocket. We’re also seeing that start to change now. White quarterbacks are having to change their approach to the game.

If they ran in the old days, they were freaky, like Fran Tarkenton, for the eight people who remember who Fran Tarkenton was.

Yeah. And even if you think of Steve Young. That was an anomaly.

So as you’re developing at the Niners, you’ve got a political part of your head, you’ve got a football part of your head—and then you have this explosion, in terms of your career, seemingly out of nowhere. I’ve got to tell you, as a pretty casual fan, it was, like, “Oh, my God, who’s this guy in San Francisco?” And then the next year you’re in the Super Bowl. You have these games where you’re throwing two hundred and fifty, three hundred, four hundred yards in the air, and running. . . . Extraordinary. How explosive was your political development, or radicalization—call it what you will? What’s happening in your mind as we’re leading toward 2016, when you’re becoming, in some way, a different person, as well as a different-level athlete?

I look at both of those as preparation and putting the work in. The same way, on the football side, in 2012, people are, like, “Oh, you came out of nowhere. Your tenth start is in the Super Bowl. How did this happen? Where did you come from?”

Fifteen years, an overnight sensation.

Yeah, exactly. And it’s, like, “No, this has been years and years of work and preparation, and showing up as if I’m the starter, even when I’m not in that position.” And similarly, on the political side, is putting in the work to make sure that I am prepared to be able to take the actions that I need to, to be successful in that space. And that’s everything from reading the literature we had talked about—from Malcolm X to Baldwin, to Fanon, to Angela Davis, and some of the Black radical and revolutionary tradition. But also, in doing that, I was auditing graduate classes at Berkeley.

What were you taking? What were you reading?

The one class that I remember specifically was a class around decolonization, and looking at it from a global perspective. I was spending time on Berkeley’s campuses. I was in these classes. I was doing my own research and studying. I was doing work directly in communities. And this is before ever taking a knee, in 2016, and protesting. And, again, I think it’s similar in the sense that people are, like, “Oh, well, this came out of nowhere. How’d this happen?” It’s, like, “No, this has been happening.” It just wasn’t in your face or in the public eye—because, to me, I feel like you have to do the work.

Even in 2012, on that Super Bowl run, one of the pieces that came up as part of that, going back into having a Black quarterback—there was an article written after my second or third start in taking over. I believe it was David Whitley who wrote an article. The primary question was “Do you want the C.E.O. of your team to look like he just got paroled? You’re Black, with tattoos, and you don’t fit the mold of—”

He wrote that?

Yes. And that’s part of where, in 2012, in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, that’s where “Kaepernicking” came from, which was a touchdown celebration. Really, me saying, “I love my Blackness. I love my tattoos. You’re not going to try to make me feel like I shouldn’t be in this position because of that.” Why I think that’s important is, I was trying to push back on those narratives then, but I only had an understanding of it from an individualistic perspective of, Oh, you’re directly attacking me. The later understanding was: No, you’re not attacking me. You’re attacking the idea of someone like me, in this position, and you’re trying to remove the opportunity and the pathway for other Black quarterbacks to be in this position, by trying to denounce me in this position. And that goes back to the systems-level thinking, and thinking about it from a collective perspective, as opposed to just the individual one.

Why did you decide, in 2016, “I’ve been sitting on the bench for a couple days—nobody seems to notice—during the national anthem. I’m going to take a knee,” which people would notice, and did notice, in the most various and sometimes hysterical ways. Tell me about why you made that decision, and what you expected to come out of it.

Yeah. So when I first started sitting in 2016—

This was in the preseason, too, right?

This was in the preseason. And at that point in time we had seen a wave of killings, a continuation of a wave of killings of Black people. We saw this with Mario Woods, in San Francisco. We saw it with Alton Sterling, in Baton Rouge. We saw it with Philando Castile, in Minnesota. And the conversation that was being had more broadly was, “We have to do something about this.”

And putting that in context with the work I had been doing on understanding systems, when I walked out on the field and they asked us to rise for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I had a realization of, Well, why do I take pride in this, when historically this country has discriminated against Black people? We’re seeing Black people being killed by police with impunity. And, if we go further into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it talks specifically about how no slaves shall escape slavery, essentially. And it was a moment of, Well, why are we taking pride in this? We need to have a different pathway forward. We need to address this. We need to build safer communities.

The actual gesture itself reminded me most of John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968—I think it was Mexico City—Olympic Games, and they got up on the stand and raised their fists, wearing black gloves. Was that in your head, that moment, or something like it? Why did you decide to kneel?

So we started taking a knee after the third preseason game.

And you say “we.”

Yes. I think it’s an important context in this, because, the first three games, I had been sitting by myself. That got identified by Steve Wyche, and he asked me why I had been sitting.

Steve Wyche is?

He’s a reporter for the N.F.L. And he asked me why after the game. We had a conversation, and that led to broader coverage around why I wasn’t standing for the anthem. And, on the back of that, we were going into our next game, down in San Diego, and this was our last preseason game. And Eric Reid, who was our first-round draft pick out of Louisiana, a safety—he was also someone who I constantly competed with in our early morning workouts. He was, like, “Look, I’m from Baton Rouge. I care deeply about this as well. I want to join you and I want to be supportive in it. Would you be open to us taking a knee? Because they’re saying you’re distancing yourself from the team, because it’s a way that we could be up front and center.”

There was a broad narrative about disrespect around the approach of protest, which I think is always a distraction from the actual issue, but it was a way that we can continue this. We’re going to try to continue to grow and expand that, and make sure that it’s very clear that the work that we are doing is trying to bring awareness to the issues directly in Black communities.

Were you disappointed that more teammates didn’t do it along with you?

Yes.

Were they scared?

Yeah.

What did they say to you?

I had players who came back and were, like, “Oh, I talked to my agent about it,” or “I talked to my family about it.” We had players across the league—I remember one. Playing this back is a little bit of a mind-blowing conversation. I had one player who came back and was, like, “My owner told me that I can’t protest.”

“My owner.”

And that was an unfathomable sentence to me.

Anybody call you up? Owner, commissioner, saying, “Cut it out?” What kind of pressure did you get?

They wouldn’t explicitly frame it that way, but it would be, like, “Well, have you thought about doing something else? Have you thought about—”

I bet you had.

It was always passive-aggressive, trying to redirect, which is interesting because I think the part that stands out to me—and really the N.F.L. told on themselves in this situation—is: I wasn’t protesting the N.F.L.! There was no point in time when I was, like, “The N.F.L.: you are the ones doing this.” But their reaction was, “Oh, we have to make this stop. We’re going to take an oppositional position.” They aligned themselves with Donald Trump in the process.

Donald Trump, of course, was running for President that year, and made you a campaign issue. Tell me about that.

Yeah. And N.F.L. owners did fund-raisers for him, raised millions of dollars. And he had Robert Kraft flying on Air Force One with him—

Who owns the Patriots.

Who owns the Patriots. He had Jerry Jones, who owns the Cowboys. There was a reported phone call where Trump was saying, “This is a winning issue for me.” Essentially: Fall in line.

Colin, I’ve got to ask you, and remember it is now ten years after the fact, so maybe it’s a little less fraught. Michael Jordan was once asked about why he wasn’t more political, and he said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

Yeah.

Which is a very different approach than Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and a lot of N.B.A. players, too.

Yeah.

And I’m asking you to be specific: Who let you down in the N.F.L.?

Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, there were players in the N.F.L. that joined forces with the N.F.L., in the Players Coalition. Those were efforts that were led by Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Boldin, and sold the protest out, or attempted to. Very real conversations that were had there. I mean, I would say, largely, N.F.L. players—I don’t think they collectively responded. I do think there was a missed opportunity there.

Did you feel lonely in your efforts?

No, because I had great people by my side. I mean, whether it’s Eric Reid or Kenny Stills, Albert Wilson.

Any white players?

No.

Not one?

Aaron Rogers and Tom Brady came out and supported me, saying that I shouldn’t be blackballed, and I should be on an N.F.L. team. So there was support in that regard in very select instances. But around the topic of police killing Black folks and trying to address the systemic issues? Very limited.

Now comes a murkier part of the story that I’ve never understood, and I want you to flesh it out, if you would.

Yeah.

Your career comes to an end, really. It comes screeching to an end, and that’s always been mysterious to me. What happened?

After the 2016 season, the 49ers told me that they were going to cut me, [the head coach] Kyle Shanahan, and [the general manager] John Lynch. Now, at this point, it was—

Did they make clear that it was for athletic reasons, or extra-athletic reasons?

They said they were looking to run a different-style offense. I think it was a matter of “Hey, we’re going to get him out of San Francisco. We have a new coaching staff, new G.M.—this is how we’re going to approach it.” And they told me they were going to cut me. I didn’t get a whole lot of explanation beyond that.

Now, as part of that, they said they weren’t going to cut me until after the new league year started, which means that free agency would have already kicked off, which means that other teams would have already had selections as far as their quarterbacks, and went out and gotten them. So, they said, “We’re either going to cut you, or you can opt out of your contract now.” So I opted out of my contract so I could get a head start on free agency, and looking for another team. Publicly, they did not disclose that until a later date. That became a separate narrative of, “Oh, well, he wasn’t in San Francisco because he didn’t want to be,” which just wasn’t the case. And John Lynch, later after that story had already run rampant, came out and apologized for not addressing it.

What followed on the back of that was, no other team had given me a tryout. And I had had a visit with the Seattle Seahawks. They brought me in. They did not do a workout with me. Because, they said, “We already know you’re a starter.” What they asked me was everything about my political beliefs, the protests, and then ultimately said, “We’re not going to offer you to play on the Seahawks.”

So I think what you’re telling me is, in the end, people thought, You know what? We don’t need this. It’s too much bother. We’ll get our quarterback elsewhere.” Am I getting that pretty much right?

Well, it wasn’t even so much “too much bother.” It was “We know you’re capable of playing in the N.F.L., and the N.F.L. prides itself on being a meritocracy.” That is one of the narratives they push. If you’re the best, if you’re good enough, you’ll play. It’s actually not true.

Are you saying the teams were willing to suffer a less-good quarterback, just to avoid the political heartache that you might give them?

Absolutely. And I also think they overblew the impact that it would have, because I think they only looked at it from the perspective of white fans. The part that I think is under-covered is the massive support for the protests, and how that continued to grow. And one of the narratives that the N.F.L. continued to try to push out was, “Oh, you’re bad for business. You’re going to hurt the value of our teams. You’re going to hurt our ticket sales. You’re going to hurt all of these things.” Which got proven to be demonstrably false multiple times. One, because my jersey went to No. 1 as far as a seller.

Two, in 2018, we did a campaign called “Dream Crazy” with Nike. And, on the back of that, Nike’s stock jumped approximately six billion dollars, because of the support from people and communities saying, “Oh, this is the first time that a company has stepped up and supported our communities in this way. We want to make sure that we support that.” So that narrative of it being problematic for them just was disingenuous and factually false.

So this story really was a moment in time. Not only in what I think is the biggest pop-culture business that we have—pro football—but in the greater political world. Everybody knew about it, even non-football fans—and there are some. It’s now 2026, and the W.N.B.A. is known almost as much for its cultural politics as it is for its basketball. You see these very complicated things happening in the W.N.B.A. about trans issues and who will tolerate what and who will say what, and also action on the court between white players and Black players. How do you look at the, kind of, culture-war aspect of the W.N.B.A. and its racial ramifications? What’s going on there?

I mean, to me, the W.N.B.A.—they have been at the forefront of a lot of the work that has been happening across the country. In relation to the protests, the W.N.B.A. was one of the first movers in supporting the protest against police brutality and police killing Black folks. And how I think about them is: the players within the W.N.B.A. have been at the forefront, as far as athletes, in thinking about how they show up beyond just as players. I think they’ve done that exceptionally well, and they’ve shown that time and time again—whether it’s the protests, whether it’s voting rights, whether it’s issues directly in their community. They’re navigating some of the attempts at shock value around trans issues right now, within the W.N.B.A. But I definitely look at them as leaders over all in the space, because of how they’ve continuously shown up over time, and the consistency that they’ve approached it with.

Sometimes, in terms of your protests, critics would say: “That’s just wokeism, that’s woke politics.” But, recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a remark on television, some Sundays ago, that “Woke 1 was crazy.” I’m sure you saw this play out. What did you think of that?

I think it is incredibly important for us to think about: The opportunities and environment that we are in currently came about because of the work that people have been doing on the ground for years. I don’t buy into “Woke 1” or this “woke” framing, because that’s not one that’s come from the communities that are actually doing the work. To me, that’s a political positioning that the right has used to try to say, “Hey, we don’t want to support Black causes,” or “We don’t want to support causes that aren’t white supremacists, or aren’t benefitting white men.”

But this is A.O.C. saying that.

Yes. But it’s my assumption that she has broader political positions.

I think you can assume that.

And I think some of that probably comes into where she thinks polling is, where she thinks space is, what she has to do to be able to accomplish things. And, again, I think she has done phenomenal work, but when it comes to this “woke” framing and trying to denounce the work that people have done for years, that have created the environment and condition for a Mamdani to come in and be successful—that’s not something I’m going to denounce, the work that people have done. We have to embrace that, because that’s what’s helped get us to this point. That’s not to say that that doesn’t grow and evolve, but I don’t buy into the framework of accepting how right-wing politics is going to position this.

Colin, you’re here a week after some news came out about the N.F.L., about C.T.E.s, head injuries: that one in four N.F.L. players will end up with one form or another of C.T.E.—with brain damage, essentially. And I wonder, when you were playing, whether you felt that this was a dangerous thing that you’ve chosen. You could have been a baseball player—you could have been a lot of things. You were a straight-A student. Did you ever feel that sense of peril?

As a football player, you know you’re putting your physical well-being at risk every day. That’s a known component of it. The part that became more prominent—and there was more awareness around, and studies started coming out—was on the C.T.E. side, and the impact that it’s having on players’ brains. To that study, I would say I think that’s very generous framing at twenty-five per cent.

Really?

Because there were past studies. I believe there was the one that was done that was a hundred players—I believe there was only one who didn’t have C.T.E.

That was an earlier study.

And I believe that one was a kicker. So it was, like—

You’re saying that doesn’t count.

[Laughs.] Not that it doesn’t count! Kickers are a critical part of a football team . . .  but they’re not having contact the same way the rest of the players are.

When you watch it on TV from a distance, you hear euphemisms like “Oh, he got dinged.” Or “He’s going into the protocol,” like he’s going into some science experiment, which means he likely has a concussion. And you have these scenes of everybody lining up and praying that their teammate is not paralyzed or dead. Tell me what it’s like to play football. What is the pain level like, for real?

Well, I think there’s a few different pieces. One, you build a pain tolerance. That’s something that you grow over time. Normally, the first time you step on a football field, there is a shock to your body of, like, “Oh, I just got rocked. That did not feel great.” And, by the time you get to the N.F.L. level, the general equation that people use is: it equates to approximately a thirty-five-mile-an-hour car crash, every collision.

Every collision. Just slow that down for a second. Every time you’re in a play, unless you’re getting away with it, unless you get that pass off really quickly, you’re in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour car crash. And that’s first down. Then comes second.

And then you have, over the course of a game, sixty to seventy plays, generally, and you do that for sixteen straight weeks. That doesn’t include preseason; that doesn’t include postseason.

Or practice.

Now it’s seventeen weeks.

And the people watching on TV think the helmets and the shoulder pads, et cetera, somehow protect you. They don’t seem to.

I mean, they help. They definitely help. The pads help disperse some of the force. The interesting part with helmets is, they give you a false sense of safety. And you see, even with little kids—you put a helmet on and it’s, like, all right, the first thing they do is want to run their head into something. That still exists when you get to the N.F.L. But what we’re finding now with the studies that have been done is, no, every collision is shaking your brain, and every concussion is causing damage. And I think it’s a newer factor, a new discovery in the prominence as far as how it’s shown up in the studies that have been done around it.

But the part that I don’t think is fully appreciated is the level of violence. And we talk about contact sports, generally. To me, basketball is a contact sport. It’s physical. They’re playing hard. There’s contact there. Football is a collision sport. There is a different level of violence and intentionality behind that. And, even as there have been measures to try to make it safer, you still have people that are three-hundred-plus pounds, two-hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds, running full speed, and trying to knock your head off. That is part of the intention. And I don’t know if there’s a safe way you actually do that. We adapt for it, you train for it, you try to prepare for it. But, ultimately, football—the chance of you getting injured is a hundred per cent. You’re going to get hurt.

Do you miss the game?

Oh, of course.

You do. For all that—for all the pain, psychological, political, and physical—you miss the game.

Yeah. Now, I don’t miss the politics of the N.F.L., but the game of football and going out and competing and being in the huddle with teammates—as brutal as it is going through all of the training and preparation, and then going out there and trying to accomplish a goal together—that’s not something you can replace or replicate anywhere else.

They say sometimes that athletes die twice. They die at a very young age when they leave the game that they’re in, and then, like the rest of us, their life comes to an end. Did you feel that?

I don’t look at it as dying twice. How I look at it is: I had football taken away from me. I didn’t get to leave on my terms, and I didn’t get to leave because, “Oh, you’re not good enough to play anymore.” It was because of the causes I was supporting, and the change I was trying to effect. So that leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

But if you could go back into the game today, if somebody gave you a call from the Giants or the Jets—the Jets could certainly use you—and you thought you were up to it, would you do it?

Oh, we would be suited up and on the field throwing the football.

You would?

Absolutely. ♦