CARLTON FLETCHER: Here’s reality: Kaepernick jersey sales skyrocket

Eyes down, round and round, let’s all sit and watch the money-go-round.

— The Kinks

It’s been sort of funny — in a sad kind of way — all of this hoopla that’s arisen around San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick after he — some say “boldly,” others prefer “stupidly” — announced that he had sat through the playing of the American National Anthem during a preseason NFL game and had worn socks with cartoon pigs sporting police hats as a form of civil protest.

All of a sudden, this enigma of an athlete who went from “future of the game” star to “whatever happened to” has-been in the course of one dreadful season was all anyone wanted to talk about.

And talk people have … offering such tasty tidbits as: “If he don’t like it here, let him go to some other country …” and “If I had hair like that, I’d be angry, too …” and “The 49ers ought to fine him” or “kick him off the team” … and “Let’s see what happens the next time he needs a cop” … and “I will not buy any San Francisco merchandise or watch any of their games this year.”

Kapernick, to the delight of his agent, is not backing down despite the onslaught of criticism directed at him and the boos that have cascaded down upon him as he’s played in the 49ers’ preseason games. The QB’s agent loves it because, after an atrocious season in which he tumbled from superstardom to benchwarmer, people have stopped talking about his diminished skills.

I like what my colleague, Chaunte’l Powell wrote about Kaepernick in a column that appeared in The Herald last week. As Powell pointed out, those days of athletes being revered as the emblems of all things good in America are long over. Stunned sports fans, maybe some of the most naive individuals on the planet, woke up to a dose of harsh reality in 1969 when then-Seattle Pilots/Houston Astros pitcher Jim Bouton released the first-of-its-kind behind-the-scenes tell-all book “Ball Four.”

Major League suits were outraged and hero-worshipping fans were stunned to learn that All-American boy/Yankee great Mickey Mantle came to the ballpark smashed at times, that these young men who played our national pastime so well spent nights before games drinking and chasing women, that boys definitely would be boys when they were out on the road with nothing but time on their hands.

Powell noted that Kaepernick, like other athletes, are not superhuman beings living in a vacuum that revolves only around the latest standings and individual stats. These men who are paid handsomely to play the games that we love to watch are, hard though it may be to believe, human beings, with the same human frailties and foibles as the rest of us.

They’re just shielded by PR specialists who are able to, as Bouton says, “Explain to a player’s wife why she needs a penicillin shot for his kidney infection.”

Fans grumble that their favorite athletes should just keep quiet about the issues that impact the world they live in, leave the social consciousness to politicians and rabblerousers. They’re not supposed to care about the injustice, the corruption, the inhumanity that’s become, sadly, so commonplace in our world and in our country. Just hit the ball, pretty boy, catch the pass and shut up.

To sports fans’ chagrin, I have a pretty good feeling that, despite spinmeisters’ and millionaire owners’ expensive efforts, Kaepernick’s outburst is just the beginning of athletes speaking their minds while media cameras and recorders are rolling. Other medium- to low-level hangers-on who see the fuss around Kaepernick are going to want their time in the spotlight, and the multimillionaire stars who should be — sadly, many aren’t, despite the millions they’re paid — set for life will also want to get in their 2 cents worth so that they remain — say it with me — “relevant.”

And all the fan griping in the world won’t impact the athletes, who only tolerate the seat-fillers because, as their agents and bosses keep telling them, “Those are the people paying your salary.”

Now, if you, as a fan, are truly sickened by socially conscious comments from pampered athletes, comments that ring hollow coming from the backseat of a Porsche, there is something you can do. But, knowing 98 percent of die-hard sports fans, it’s an order too tall to fill.

If you really want to show how angry you are, don’t just boycott San Francisco 49ers games. Boycott the NFL. Or the NBA. Or the NHL. Or MLB. You want to get players and management’s attention, quit paying their salary. Quit buying products they endorse and write letters to the company telling them you won’t spend another penny on their products as long as Athlete A or B is promoting said product.

And stick to it.

But that’s not going to happen, because frustrated former athletes get too big a kick out of living vicariously through their chosen sports heroes. So prepare for more comments from your favorite athletes, more words from socially conscious young men — and women, I’ll bet — that will cause you to question your own patriotic veneer. The athletes’ comments will only reflect what’s really happening in our society.

And the Colin Kaepernicks of the sports world — whose jersey sales, incidentally, have gone through the roof since all this hoopla arose — will laugh all the way to the bank.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.