Every August, as the NFL season goes into the depths of its preseason, Steve Wyche thinks back to 2016 — when the national reporter for NFL Network got one of the biggest sports scoops of the century as the first person to report that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was protesting the national anthem over the treatment of Black people in the U.S.
“It’s hard to write modern American history without recognizing that moment,” Wyche told SFGATE last week. “It’s one of those things you remember, like, ‘Where were you when this happened?’ Well, I was here when this happened.”
This week marks 10 years since Kaepernick’s protest was first spotted in uniform at an Aug. 26, 2016, preseason game. Ahead of the anniversary, Wyche spoke to SFGATE on the phone to discuss what that day was like and how he got the story.
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A longtime NFL reporter who had been at the league’s media office since 2008, Wyche said he met Kaepernick when he was a draft prospect at the 2011 Senior Bowl. He had covered the quarterback periodically as Kaepernick took over the 49ers starting job from Alex Smith in 2012, led San Francisco to the Super Bowl that season and remained in the job for the next few years.
FILE – Reporter Steve Wyche of NFL Network broadcasts prior to an NFL football game between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Tennessee Titans at Nissan Stadium on Sept. 25, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn.
Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images
But Kaepernick hadn’t played in a game since November 2015, when the right-handed passer underwent surgery to fix a torn labrum in his left shoulder. (He also had surgeries on his left knee and right thumb.) And as Kaepernick rehabilitated, Wyche noticed his social media activity picking up and him speaking out about many major issues in the U.S. that summer.
“He was really speaking out against the things that were happening to Philando Castile and Michael Brown and a lot of the shootings of unarmed Black men,” Wyche said. “He was just really profound with his posts.”
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Kaepernick didn’t dress in either of the first two preseason games, when the 49ers hosted the Texans and traveled to face the Broncos in Denver. But while not in uniform, he started his protest against the national anthem — even though most people didn’t see it.
Then, Kaepernick was cleared to return and was going to play against the Packers on Aug. 26 in the Niners’ third preseason game, which Wyche was set to cover. He was in the press box just a bit before the national anthem when his NFL Media colleague Mike Garafolo called him and told him to keep an eye on Kaepernick, as a source within the organization had told Garafolo he hadn’t been standing for the anthem. No one knew precisely why, but the social media activity gave Wyche a hunch.
FILE – Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers looks for an open receiver during the game against the Green Bay Packers at Levi’s Stadium on Aug. 26, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif. The Packers defeated the 49ers 21-10.
Michael Zagaris/Getty Images
Wyche looked down during the anthem and thought he saw Kaepernick, but from the eighth-floor Levi’s Stadium press box, he wasn’t completely sure. Few others were even paying attention at the time, and the best evidence was a photo beat reporter Jennifer Lee Chan — then at SB Nation, now at NBC Sports Bay Area — took of the anthem, with Kaepernick sitting just barely visible in the wide shot.
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Once Wyche saw that, he said his journalistic instincts “went abuzz” and he dove deep into research, looking up NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf’s anthem protest from the 1990s. He also contacted his editors and considered how polarized the American political climate was becoming in the summer of 2016.
“I’m fortunate I had the experience as a reporter to be able to incorporate all of these wheels of the machine while I was waiting to talk to Kaep,” Wyche said. “If I were 25 years old, I might not have understood the role that it played. But because I was 20 years into my career, I was like, ‘OK, all of this could be a factor into the questions that I’ve got to ask Kaepernick after the game.’”
Once the game began, Kaepernick took the field in the second quarter and played in two drives, completing 2-of-6 passes for 14 yards while adding four rushes for 18 yards in. After the game, Kaepernick did a press conference with team beat reporters that was just about football, focused on his return to the field and trying to win back his starting job.
FILE – San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick during the first half of an NFL preseason football game against the Green Bay Packers Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Tony Avelar/AP
Wyche was there and prepared to ask more questions about the protest if anyone else did. But the competitive nature of being a reporter kept him from asking right away. Once the press conference ended, he met Kaepernick in the hallway outside and had a one-on-one interview.
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“I think people just thought I was speaking to Kaep about his performance in the game or recovering from his injury,” Wyche said. “I don’t think anyone at the time realized I was asking him about not standing for the national anthem and why. I mean, there are people walking past the whole conversation.”
Wyche said he came away from the interview impressed with how clear, concise and profound Kaepernick, then 28, was speaking about the issues at hand. Kaepernick’s answers did not sound rehearsed, but Wyche said he spoke “with full conviction, with full intellect, with full purpose.”
Once their interview ended, Wyche went back to the media room to write up what Kaepernick said. At one point, he looked around at the rest of the reporting team that covers the 49ers (which he complimented as a “very good beat crew”) and knew he was going to give them “a bad morning” of work. But even that wasn’t top-of-mind to Wyche.
“I’ve broken a lot of big stories, but this is a big story that’s going to create a splash and a lot of ripples,” Wyche said. “My most important thought was: Don’t mess up the quality of the story and remember the journalistic principles of who, what, when, where and especially the why.”
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FILE — Quarterback Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers looks on from the sidelines against the Green Bay Packers in the first half of their preseason football game at Levi’s Stadium on Aug. 26, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
Wyche filed the story, went to bed very late at night and woke up around 6 a.m. to see the story wasn’t published. Instead, Pro Football Talk had a story up about Kaepernick not standing for the anthem, but wrote that it was “unclear” why, and that no one had talked to Kaepernick about it after the game. Wyche was furious and started trying to find out what the holdup was, even teasing out his story before publication on social media. (To this day, he doesn’t know what caused the delay.)
Once the story finally did publish, he posted it on his social media around 7 a.m. and it was what he called “a wildfire right away.” It quickly became one of the biggest stories in the country, if not the world — one that instantly became a national controversy and is still reverberating to this day. From switching the protest to kneeling, to not playing in the NFL again after the season and accusations of collusion and blackballing, Kaepernick has become a civil rights icon for the protest.
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Wyche still covers the NFL, now shifted over under the ESPN umbrella as part of Disney’s takeover of NFL Network. But even he knows there probably won’t be another story like that one.
“There’s a million stories where I think I’ve done a good job,” Wyche said. “But I just think because of the impact, it’s at the top of the list.”