Mike Ditka admits he is old fashioned, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear he doesn’t like Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem.
Ditka blasted the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Friday with Shan Shariff and R.J. Choppy on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas/Ft. Worth:
“I think it’s a problem…anybody who disrespects this country and the flag” said Ditka. “If they don’t like the country they don’t like our flag…get the hell out.”
“I have no respect for Colin Kaepernick – he probably has no respect for me, that’s his choice” said Ditka. “My choice is, I like this country, I respect our flag, and I don’t see all the atrocities going on in this country that people say are going on.”
It’s a predictable approach from Ditka, if not a silly one. Telling someone to leave a country because they exercise their freedom to demonstrate seems a tad harsh.
Unsurprisingly, Ditka is the same guy who didn’t much care for the St. Louis Rams players staging a demonstration during the Ferguson riots a few years ago.
Ditka uses these same freedoms to support a guy in Donald Trump who wants to “Make American Great Again.” As of this writing, it’s hard to say if anyone has told him to leave the country.
Others have spoken on Kaepernick’s protest. Drew Brees disagrees, while Cam Newton and others have stood behind the signal-caller, who will appear on the cover of TIME.
At the end of the day, Ditka has played right into Kaepernick’s goals—he’s talking about it and raising awareness.