CBJ, USA hockey coach says he’d bench Kaepernick for anthem protest

At 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, and extremely athletic, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick would probably be hell on skates.

He apparently couldn’t play hockey for the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, though. Nor at this point Team USA.

RELATED: Jim Brown says he supports Kaepernick 100 percent

John Tortorella, coach of the Blue Jackets and the United States’ entry in the World Cup of Hockey, told ESPN as much Tuesday when asked about Kaepernick’s decision not to stand during the national anthem.

“If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game,” Tortorella said, per Linda Cohn.

The notoriously outspoken Tortorella seems to be staking out unique territory here.

Kaepernick, who said he wants to bring awareness to what he considers oppression of minorities in America, might have muffled his own message with how he began going about it, but most athletes and coaches who have weighed in on the topic have treated his right to protest as existing without question.

You might even call it, “inalienable.”

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