This is only getting larger, because Colin Kaepernick's protest was always genuine, because his words have been precise, his attitude has been thoughtful, his support has been growing, and his critics have been so predictably intellectually feeble.
This is only getting larger. It won't get smaller. It can't get smaller.
None of us know how this will go, how America will change, how it might not at all... but this will be what Kaepernick is remembered for, decades from now, long after his playing career, and maybe it's what this time in American sports will partially be remembered for _ and we're all right in the middle of it, watching it happen.
This is history, in day-by-day, reaction-by-reaction increments, starting with Kaepernick deciding that he had to do this, and then everything that happened after that.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that this conversation and situation was not developing at all the way Kaepernick's critics thought it would... and that this all probably was unfolding very closely to the most significant possible way.
Again, that was a long, long two weeks ago _ before the start of the 49ers' regular season, before several WNBA players followed his lead and knelt for the national anthem and high school players and band members across the nation did, too...
Before several other NFL players conducted similar quiet protests before games, before Marshawn Lynch supported him on "Conan" and before some poll announced that Kaepernick is now "the most-disliked player" in the NFL, which actually is a sign of popularity, if you understand how these things work. (Tom Brady was listed fourth this time.).
And before the death of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla., and now maybe another questionable shooting death of a black man in Charlotte, N.C.
These things are happening rapidly, there is no sure answer to any of it, but Kaepernick _ as so many other athletes have acknowledged _ was the start of the dialog, at the top of the American sports landscape, and beyond.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that Kaepernick was winning _ that his actions started the deep, thoughtful, troubling conversation he wanted to start _ and that his critics, who just wanted to shout him down, were losing.
And now the TIME cover, and there will be more. This will not get smaller.
Also, yes, the criticism will probably only get uglier and angrier. Part of this I understand, because not everybody agrees on anything and I can understand that many Americans hold the anthem and the flag to be sacrosanct at all times, even when the anthem is played thousands of times every weekend.
That's understandable. But the conversation is the point _ and you cannot logically or morally say that Kaepernick is wrong to protest the shooting of unarmed black people by police.
Yes, you can say it, you can drape yourself in the flag while you do it, you can tell everybody to "stick to sports," but you can't do it logically or morally.
I absolutely agree with what Kaepernick said earlier this week: "There's a lot of racism disguised as patriotism in this country and people don't like to address that and they don't like to address what the root of this protest is."
Or as we get it in the sports media industry, the response is usually: "Stick to sports! Unless you completely embrace my racist agenda, then you're all good!"
But Kaepernick _ until now someone you would've said would be a rather unlikely person to lead this conversation _ has put this issue on the table, and it's there now.
You can't shout it away. If you say you only want to deal with sports... no, that's not going to happen, not any more.
