Jeanine Pirro with Fox News recently suggested former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick could be a good fit for the New England Patriots after the team hired Jerod Mayo to replace Bill Belichick as its coach for the 2024 season.
The Fox News show The Five discussed Mayo’s comments on race in the NFL during his introductory press Conference this week. Mayo opened the press conference by saying he was proud to be the Patriots’ first black head coach.
Jared Mayo talked about race this week
Per CBS Sports transcription of Mayo’s statement, the Patriots new head coach said he sees color:
“I do see color because I believe if you don’t see color, you can’t see racism,” Mayo said. “Whatever happens, Black, White, disabled person, I’ve always — for the most part, people are all like ‘don’t.’ When they’re young, they kind of make the spot hot. What I would say is ‘no, I want you to be able to go up to those people and really understand those people.”
Mayo said that seeing race allows people to fix the “problem” with racism people in the US “know we have.”
The Fox Five team took issue with some of Mayo’s points. Their headline read, “Ready for some wokeness?! Patriots new head coach brings liberal agenda to NFL”.
Most of the panel felt that Mayo spoke too boldly about race for their tastes. They contrasted Mayo’s “liberal” statement to Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles’ comments last season when he said he doesn’t race among his coaching colleagues.
Fox News host: Colin Kaepernick would fit the “woke” Patriots
Pirro asked fellow host Dana Perino if she could see the Patriots signing Colin Kaepernick this offseason since the team needs a quarterback. Perino said she thinks the Patriots will try to avoid race talk altogether in the future because of the lessons they learned from the Kaepernick protests.
I don’t know anything about quarterbacks, but I will say the media, and even the sports media, likes it when they talk about racism because it gets clicks,” Perino said.
“So all of these coaches have to know that this is coming, and you’re going to get this question, so be prepared and get media trained and figure out what you’re going to say because the NFL has finally crawled itself back from the Kaepernick stuff right. So it’s crushing [the ratings] right now. Remember how bad it was about three years ago? They don’t want any part of this either.”
The NFL might want to hide the issue of race in the league, but unfortunately, it won’t ever go away. Coaches like Mayo aren’t the worst of the issue. The Las Vegas Raiders had to fire head coach Jon Gruden due in part to racist emails.
NFL owners, the majority of whom are white and employ primarily black players, have used racist rhetoric in the past.
None of that has anything to do with Kaepernick. But cheap jokes get easy laughs with some crowds.
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