In a desperate plea from yours truly, this column seems pretty irrelevant for the most part — what with the world inching further toward the brink of nuclear war and our penultimate demise.

In the same sense, I thought it would be nice to talk about sports because we likely won’t have any once the fallout begins to take effect. Let’s enjoy them while we can! I’m being facetious but you get my point.

Anyway, I’ve been waiting for the opportune moment to voice my own two cents about the ever-polarizing chronicle that is Colin Kaepernick’s attempt of finding a quarterback job.

We all know by now the Kaepernick storylines that have been accumulating for almost a year now, with its beginnings stemming from his refusal to stand for the national anthem.

Yours truly wrote a column about that back in August 2016 in what was a much simpler time in my life and in the country’s. Believe me when I say I felt righteous as hell writing that.

Moving on.

The latest development comes from the always self-centered Spike Lee, who hasn’t made a good movie in well over a decade and has organized a rally in support of Kaepernick in front of the NFL’s head offices later this month. The apparent goal of the rally, or at least my interpretation of it, is to help support Kaepernick and somehow this demonstration will persuade an NFL owner into signing him to their team.

Yeah, good luck with that, Spike. I wish people cared as much about my job hunt as they do Kaepernick’s.

The extensive coverage on Kaepernick has vaulted past the point of exhausting and crept into the point of delusional. Every single NFL storyline, or at least one related to the quarterbacking position, has found a way to mention his name.

Wait, what’s that you say? Russell Wilson rolled his ankle (he didn’t actually) during a water break at practice, and they may need a quarterback? Let’s devote the next six hours to discussing if they should sign Kaepernick!

It’s no wonder this story won’t go away.

There’s the black vs. white angle. There’s the police brutality issue from when Kaepernick wore the socks that featured cops as pigs. He managed to piss of the Latino crowd too when he wore a shirt with Fidel Castro on it. He pissed off your racist hillbilly uncle when he didn’t stand for the anthem.

And the media. Oh boy, has the media gone back to the buffet for a third and fourth plate on this story. It’s become the lowest of the low-hanging fruits, which is truly saying something for people like Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless who live off the sweet, sweet nectar of said fruit.

And here I am, doing the same because I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the constant coverage that, while it provides great content for every talking head alive, just keeps going in circles.

So I’ll leave it at this:

This isn’t about Kaepernick anymore. It hasn’t been for quite some time.

His story has become about our eagerness to voice our own opinions on the issues that he has brought up. It’s not about whether he can play football anymore and should be on an NFL roster to make a team better. He may not even want to play football anymore, as he’s really given us no indication that would make me believe so.

All his aforementioned storylines have become the perfect concoction of lazy journalism and lazy opinion pieces, a curtain to hide behind for those to say what they think about these issues, not what Kaepernick thinks about them or how he reacts to them.

And the NFL owners, as if they weren’t a bunch of gross old men to begin with, can piss off about not signing him until he cuts his hair. Same goes to you and your comments, Mike Vick. You’re scared of a black man with an afro? Grow up.

Not once did anyone tell Tom Brady to cut his hair when it looked like Brad Pitt’s in Troy because it was “unprofessional.”

Look, I just want to know if he can still play and wants to play. In the right system and under the right coach, I think Kaepernick can be a solid starter. I was in strong favor of the Browns signing him because he’d fit nicely with Hue Jackson’s system, but instead, they opted to waste a second round pick on Deshone Kizer.

Idiots.

Can he play? Does he still want to play? That’s all I want to know.

The rest is just smokescreens and bullshit.  

Matt Poe is a columnist. Contact him at [email protected].