Colin Kaepernick hasn't thrown a pass in the NFL since the 2016 season.
Ten years later, Roger Goodell is still running Kaepernick's playbook.
And what Goodell just locked in for 2026 proves he learned absolutely nothing from the backlash.
NFL Brings Back End Racism and Stop Hate for the 2026 Season
The NFL confirmed this week it will stamp "End Racism," "Stop Hate," "Choose Love," and "Inspire Change" on end zones and player helmets across all 32 stadiums for the 2026 season.
That makes seven straight years of this.
An NFL spokeswoman told Front Office Sports directly: "Can confirm that we are continuing with both the end zone stencils and helmet decals this season."
Players can still wear helmet decals honoring what the league calls "victims of racial violence" – keeping George Floyd's name stenciled into every nationally broadcast game.
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" – the so-called Black national anthem – still gets performed alongside the American national anthem at major events.
And Jay-Z still controls the Super Bowl halftime show through the Roc Nation deal Goodell signed in 2019 – the partnership that handed woke rapper Bad Bunny a stage watched by 125 million Americans this past February.
This apparatus traces directly to 2020, when George Floyd's death handed the radical left a crowbar to pry open every American institution.
Goodell grabbed one right along with them.
"We at the National Football League believe Black Lives Matter," Goodell declared in a video posted to social media that same year.
He also admitted the NFL was "wrong" for not listening to its players on racism.
Six years later, the remorse tour has no expiration date.
Kaepernick settled with the league, collected an undisclosed amount, and never played another down.
Goodell kept the entire apparatus and made every piece of it permanent.
Roger Goodell Keeps NFL DEI Programs While Corporate America Abandons Them
After Donald Trump won the White House in 2024, Fortune 500 companies across the country buried their DEI programs one by one.
Target, Amazon, Meta, Walmart, Ford – company after company quietly dismantled the woke machinery they had spent years building.
Not Goodell.
While corporate America cut bait, Goodell announced the NFL would keep its DEI programs and its left-wing messaging on the field.
Goodell went further, sticking with Bad Bunny as the halftime headliner for Super Bowl LX – a Trump critic who performs almost entirely in Spanish.
Turning Point USA counter-programmed with its own halftime show headlined by Kid Rock.
Goodell called the choice "carefully thought through" and assured the public the show would be great.
Fox News contributor Clay Travis called the messaging a betrayal of the fan base – and named exactly what he would put in the end zones instead.
Travis told Goodell to put "Back the Blue" on the field – a message honoring the police officers actually keeping communities safe.
Goodell didn't respond.
Jim Jordan tried a more direct approach.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman called Goodell to testify this past June about the NFL's streaming deals and the antitrust protections that were supposed to guarantee fans free access to games.
Goodell declined to appear before Congress.
He sent Travis to take his seat before the committee instead.
Travis told the panel that fans are "getting gouged" every single day to watch a product that the law was designed to guarantee them for free.
The One Thing Goodell Figured Out About You
Roger Goodell has figured out that NFL fans love football more than they hate what he's done to it.
So far, he's right.
The NBA surrendered to activist politics and spent a decade watching viewers walk away.
The NFL watched that happen and concluded it was immune.
It isn't immune.
It's just that Goodell is betting fans will absorb the politics and keep showing up on Sunday.
Nobody believes "End Racism" stenciled in an end zone stopped a single crime.
Nobody believes a George Floyd helmet decal changed a single mind.
America's football fans know exactly what this is – a league that views its own fans as the obstacle.
Kaepernick took the settlement and walked away.
Roger Goodell has spent the last six years paying that debt on behalf of the league – with America's Sunday afternoons.
Sources:
- Staff, "NFL's Anti-Racism Messaging Returns for Seventh Season," Front Office Sports, August 28, 2026.
- Clay Travis, "NFL end zones go woke but something else belongs there instead," Fox News, August 28, 2025.
- Staff, "NFL commissioner Roger Goodell won't testify before Congress about league's TV and streaming deals," Fox Sports, June 3, 2026.