Colin Kaepernick: The NFL is 'largely unchanged'

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Years after peacefully protesting systemic racism by kneeling during the National Anthem in an NFL game, Colin Kaepernick says not much has changed with the powerful sports league that he believes put him on a blacklist.

"I think the NFL is largely unchanged," the former NFL QB-turned-activist Kaepernick said in a new episode of the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast (video above; listen in below).

Kaepernick added, "Unfortunately, the most recent one that we saw was the race norming where they're measuring Black players' cognitive ability at a lower level to be able to deny them medical benefits after their playing careers. We saw in relation to myself and other players being targeted for the protest. There is a long history of work that they've done there. It's actually some of the work that Eric Reed combated while he was a part of the players' union. So I think largely unchanged there. I think there's a lot of phenomenal work they could be doing. I just don't know, and don't think they have the will to do it."

The NFL didn't return Yahoo Finance's request for comment.

Kaepernick is out with his memoir, "The Perilous Fight," chronicling his childhood right through to the present day of being a father in the public spotlight.

Kaepernick was a standout quarterback at the University of Nevada before being drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011. He quickly hit the national stage in 2012 when he took over as the 49ers' starting QB and led the franchise to an appearance in Super Bowl XLVII.

His career trajectory shifted dramatically in 2016 when he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest systemic racism and police brutality in the United States.

Following that season, he became a free agent and remained unsigned by any NFL team, leading him to file a grievance alleging league owners colluded to keep him out. The matter was later settled.

Since exiting the league, Kaepernick has transformed into a prominent civil rights activist and entrepreneur, founding organizations like the Know Your Rights Camp and educational tech platform Lumi Story AI.

Key to all his businesses: drive impact in the community. Kaepernick is especially focused on Lumi Story AI which is giving students the tools to navigate the push to AI derived learning.

"How do we help them develop and build the skills so we don't have 70% of students or approximately 35 million students falling behind there. And as we're doing that work, part of the reason the focus is there, we have a world that's being built at present and in the future with AI, which today is all natural language. And we aren't building the foundational skills to allow them to access the tools that they're going to need later in their life," he added.