Colin Kaepernick is an American football player with the National Football League, and he has an estimated net worth of $25 million. He was born on November 3, 1987 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His mother was Heidi Russo. She was only 19-years-old at the time she gave birth to her son. His father was not there when he was born, and hadn’t been around in quite some time before that. His mother was Caucasian and his father was African-American. When Russo realized that she could not care for herself much less a brand new baby boy, she chose a family to adopt her son. That family consists of Rick and Teresa Kaepernick. They already had a son and daughter of their own, but they were all too happy to welcome a new little boy into their hearts and lives.
The family was suffering as they’d been trying to have a third child for some time but kept losing their little boys – two of them – to heart defects. Adoption was the only way that they could continue to grow their family. He immediately became the youngest child in the family, and lived in Wisconsin until he was four and his family made the decision to move to California. When he was only 8, his family signed him up for the local youth football league. He was good, but he could get better with more practice. Colin Kaepernick became a star player very early, and was the starting quarterback for his team when he was only 9. He was also a student with a perfect grade point average, and he excelled in every aspect of life.
Throughout his high school career, he was a star quarterback and a star baseball player, and he had his pick of being sent to college to play for a college football team and enter into the NFL draft later, or be drafted by the MLB. Colin Kaepernick chose to be drafted by the MLB, but later decided he would rather play college football for Nevada and turned down his contract with the Cubs. He spent his first year as a redshirt freshman and played another four years after, finishing among the top football quarterbacks in the college game – he was behind the likes of Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford and Colt Brennan. He was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011, and has had a great career so far with the team.
During a preseason game in August 2016, Colin Kaepernick chose to remain seated during the national anthem, and he was heavily criticized for it. He made a public statement that, “I am not going to stand up and show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” to which the world responded that with his millions, he has no idea what oppression looks like.
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