One of the past decade’s most polarizing figures in American sports will publish a book, nearly 10 years to the day after the moment that dramatically changed, and prematurely ended, his NFL career.
Colin Kaepernick has announced plans to publish The Perilous Fight on September 15, 2026, two weeks after the 10-year anniversary of the moment he was first spotted sitting during the national anthem before a preseason game.
He’d been sitting during the anthem throughout the 2016 preseason. For the September 1 game, he was in uniform for the first time, making the gesture conspicuous and noticeable.
What followed was a protracted debate among those who understood his motivations and respected his First Amendment right to protest by not standing (he later decided to kneel, not sit) and those who viewed the gesture as disrespectful to the country and borderline treasonous. It sparked a wave of other players realizing that they also had the right to not stand, thanks to a flaw in the rules that required players to be on the sideline for the anthem but did not require them to stand.
It was a mess for the league. While many huffed and puffed about boycotting the NFL, some followed through, albeit temporarily.
And when Kaepernick was released by the 49ers after the 2016 season — two years after signing a market-level contract — he never landed with another team.
It gets a little muddy at that point. Did some teams give him a deliberate cold shoulder? Yes. Did Kaepernick do himself any favors by not making it clear from the get-go that he’d accept a backup role and, if need be, a minimum salary? No.
Still, his collusion claim was eventually settled short of a formal hearing, with Kaepernick getting a payment in the range of $5 million to $10 million.
Through it all, he had one visit (in 2017, with the Seahawks) and one tryout (in 2022, with the Raiders). In 2019, an effort by the NFL to arrange a workout for Kaepernick collapsed amid suspicions that the league’s waiver was written to extinguish any lingering legal claims he may have made for his ongoing unemployment.
Eventually, a documentary from Spike Lee was filmed but eventually scrapped. Now, Kaepernick will be able to tell his story, in his own way.
“People saw the moment,” Kaepernick said in the release announcing the project. “But they didn’t see the years that made it possible: the questions about who I was; the injustices I could no longer ignore; the voices of those who came before me that I carried into that stadium. That journey, from a Black kid navigating an identity the world didn’t always make space for, to an athlete who realized the game was bigger than football, shaped everything. When I took a knee, it wasn’t a sudden act. It was the result of years of becoming. And what came after taught me the most important truth: this fight has never belonged to one person. It belongs to all of us. We fight for each other. We build with each other. We must fight for justice and equity with the courage and clarity this moment demands. That is how we build a future worth fighting for.”
The publisher calls the book “[e]qual parts memoir and manifesto.” It nevertheless remains to be seen whether the book eventually will be published. In 2021, former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III announced plans to publish a book called Surviving Washington. By March 2022, the RGIII project was DOA.
If the Kaepernick book proceeds, it will be interesting to see whether and to what extent he does a book tour. Most publishers expect a significant time commitment for interviews and other appearances. Will Kaepernick do that? He has rarely been interviewed since his final NFL game. Possibly, he negotiated with the publisher clear limits on what he’ll be required to do.
However it goes, the current plan is for the Kaepernick book to land on the day after the completion of Week 1 of the 2026 season. The overriding question is whether, 10 years later, there will be a market for his side of a story that has largely faded from the pro football radar screen.
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