Welcome to the Meena Kind Show featuring Lenny.

So before we start today's show with my friend Andrew Ciciliano, I just want to take a quick

second to address what's going on in our country right now, all the protests and the wake of the

killings of George Floyd, Namaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor, so many others. Like a lot of you listening,

I care about these things because I care about basic human rights, which I believe have been

and continue to be denied to many black people. I also wanted to add though this is a story

and an issue that I think does inform what we discuss here on this podcast, which sounds crazy,

but this is a football podcast. It's not a place where we normally talk about things like police

violence or civil liberties, but I never lose sight of the fact that I cover a league here that is

70% black, league where just six years ago, a quarterback named Colin Kaepernick protested the exact

same issues that are driving this conversation today and in doing so, found himself out of the NFL,

becoming as my colleague and frequent collaborator, Bill Barnwell pointed out in 2017, the only young

healthy experience quarterback in the history of the modern NFL to never play another down.

It's a league where race does inflect the way players are described, evaluated the opportunities

that are afforded to different people, which is something we have, of course, discussed here.

I'm not talking about that today with my guest and there's really no way to transition from that

discussion to a football show that's not a little awkward, but I just wanted to mention it because

it is on my mind and as we all are working towards figuring out how to do better as a country

on all matters pertaining to racism and racial injustice, not just when it's obvious to everyone,

but when it's subtly malicious and easy to brush aside and quote-unquote controversial,

I just wanted to say that in this particular format, it is important for me to do better to

always. So on that note, here is the awkward transition I promised.

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