Despite no protest at the NFL Hall of Fame game Aug. 2, a kneeling Colin Kaepernick still casts a shadow over the NFL brand off the field.
A trial release of “Madden NFL ’19,” known for its deep and deeper simulation of the NFL football experience and its broad soundtracks made a controversial edit to one of its featured songs.
A contributing artist took to Twitter to express his dismay.
“It’s disappointing and appalling @NFL & @EA took @Kaepernick7’s name out of my verse on Big Bank for Madden 19, like it was a curse word,” Big Sean tweeted. “When he’s not a curse, he’s a gift! Nobody from my team approved any of this.”
“Big Bank”, also featuring Nicki Minaj, and 2 Chainz features the lyric “You boys all cap, I’m more Colin Kaepernick,” performed by Big Sean.
“We made an unfortunate mistake with our Madden NFL soundtrack,” EA said in release and direct response to Big Sean’s tweet. “Members of our team misunderstood the fact that while we don’t have rights to include Colin Kaepernick in the game, this doesn’t affect soundtracks. We messed up, and the edit should never have happened. We will make it right, with an update to Madden NFL 19 on Aug. 6 that will include the reference again. We meant no disrespect, and we apologize to Colin, to YG and Big Sean, to the NFL, to all of their fans and our players for this mistake.”
The omission of Kaepernick’s name comes amidst a controversy over his visible protests when he was still a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers. Since opting out of his contract in March 2017, the Super Bowl quarterback remains unsigned.
“Madden ’19” still in beta, has not been officially released as a finished product. Forbes reports that EA will release a patch restoring the controversial edit before the games full release.
In the meantime Kaepernick thanked Big Sean in his own tweet.
“Much love brother,” Kaepernick said. “Thank you for having my back!”
