One year later, in September 2017, President Donald Trump weighed in at a rally staged in Alabama to support Senate candidate Luther Strange.
In this southern state with its own history of virulent racism, where the civil rights movement began in 1955, Trump — without mentioning Colin Kaepernick by name — said: "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, 'Get that son-of-a-bitch off the field right now. Out, you're fired!'"
The way that Trump has framed the narrative, it is his defence of patriotism against the vague protest of a bunch of ungrateful (read mostly black) football players.
In fact, this is as much about Trump and his personal grievance at being scorned as it is about patriotism or social justice.
In the 1980s, Trump tried to buy into gridiron's National Football League, the NFL.
Unlike England, where Russian oligarchs can buy a soccer club in the Premier League, you can't just buy a US football club. Purchase of a team requires the assent of two-thirds of the NFL's owners.
The 32 owners — all billionaires — are a snobby clique and Trump was repeatedly shunned. He's nothing if not persistent, especially when rejected.
Trump's call for the NFL owners to fire protesting players is a trifecta of grievance. In one stroke he managed to combine the dog whistles of racism for his Alabama audience, challenge the NFL owners' manhood, and wrap himself up in the American flag as a defender of patriotism.
Except, like almost everything he's ever claimed to have done, in Gertrude Stein's aphorism, there's no "there" there.
Trump's candidate, Luther Strange, lost; and so did the next one, Roy Moore, after allegations of paedophilia.
The NFL has gone on to do just fine, although its treatment of Kaepernick, denying him a berth for the past two seasons, is now going to trial for collusion in restraint of trade.
Trump denies the implicit racism of his comments, but more to the point is his self-described patriotism evidenced in respect for the national anthem and the flag.
All of that rings hollow coming from a man who ran away from military service during Vietnam — he claimed five deferments, including bone spurs that kept him from the field of battle but not off the dance floor at Club 54 in New York.
While the president's poll numbers keep sagging, his tweets less effective even with his hardcore loyal fans aka Cult 45, Colin Kaepernick's social status keeps rising.
In April, Kaepernick won Amnesty International's ambassador of conscience award, and he is to be honoured with a medal at Harvard.
His league jersey #7 has outsold all the others and, finally, Nike has put his face on its Just Do It adverts with the superscript: "Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything".
With enough wind at his back and a good enough team, Kaepernick may finally get his protest narrative heard. That would be good for the game — and for all of us.
Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
