Inweekly sat down with Coach Bobby Bowden, the retired head football coach of the Florida State Seminoles, who won two national championships during his tenure.
We asked Coach Bowden about how he would handle NFL QB Colin Kaepernick sitting down during the national anthem.
“As a football coach at any level, high school, college, pro, the first thing a coach does every year when he starts is to do everything he can to get his team to be on one page,” he said. “Because you’re not going to win if your team is divided.”
Coach Bowden explained, “A coach is going to do everything to draw them together. I used to take them to movies, take them out to supper, feed them watermelon. Do anything to try and draw them closer.”
He felt that Kaepernick’s protest caused a division on the team.
“Right off the bat you’ve got a division,” said Coach Bowden. “You’ve got this group over here, you’ve got this group over here and it’s a coach’s nightmare.”
How would Bowden have handled the protest if Kaepernick played for him?
“I don’t know how much the law would allow me to do, but if the law would allow me, I would make him stand,” he said. “Now, they might say, ‘Well, you can’t do that,’ then I’d try to encourage him to not to do it.”
Coach Bowden said, “I would try to get him to protest in a different way. ‘Hey son, why don’t you give them about $10,000 or $50,000 to the association that defends this?’ To really see how interested he was, then you’ll see him drop by the wayside.”