Flag football will be featured in the 2028 Summer Olympics, and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick wants to represent the United States at the Games in Los Angeles.
The once-promising signal-caller would be 40 years old and 12 years removed from his last appearance in a professional football game. He joins superstars Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts as players who have expressed a willingness to play the tackle-free version of football.
“Hopefully, we’ll be out there,” Kaepernick told Sky Sports on Tuesday. “We’re gonna work on some things, see if we can make it in there. But we’d love to be out there.”
2028 will be the first Olympic Games to feature flag football, and America’s stiffest competition in the sport worldwide has included Mexico, Japan, Canada, and Germany.
Kaepernick also revealed he is “still training, still pushing” to make an NFL comeback. “We just gotta get one of these team owners to open up.”
After a couple of standout seasons in San Francisco, which included making a Super Bowl, Kaepernick’s play sharply declined. In 2016, what would be his final season, he began kneeling for the national anthem to protest the alleged widespread police brutality against and oppression of black people. The 49ers only won one out of 11 games he started in that year.
Following Kaepernick opting out of his contract and remaining unsigned by any of the other NFL teams in the offseason, he decided to sue the league for collusion in 2017. In 2019, the two sides settled, but the details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Shortly after his 32nd birthday in 2019, the NFL hosted a private workout for Kaepernick that all 32 teams were invited to attend. The quarterback chose to back out of the workout on short notice and held his own workout in front of the media instead of talent evaluators.
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Since then, he has made several statements pleading with teams to sign him. In 2023, for example, Kaepernick offered to join the New York Jets as a backup after Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles tendon.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Kaepernick, the International Federation of American Football, and the International Olympic Committee for comment.