Colin Kaepernick's Name Censoring By EA Sports Could Help His NFL Lawsuit

Rapper Big Sean was not happy with EA Sports omitting a Colin Kaepernick lyric from his song which will feature in the Madden 19 in-game soundtrack; however, it was not the first time the video game developers had done it.

Featuring in the song "Big Bank" by YG alongside the likes of 2 Chainz and Nicki Minaj, Big Sean sings a verse which mentions the former San Francisco 49er quarterback.

"You boys all cap, I'm more Colin Kaepernick."

But with the song featuring in the new Madden 19 soundtrack, a Twitter user pointed out Thursday the game had omitted Kaepernick's name from the song.

Big Sean would later take to Twitter to express his shock at the development, claiming nobody from his team approved of the decision.

Kaepernick would soon respond, thanking the rapper for having his back.

In their attempts to avoid a PR disaster, EA Sports apologized and claimed it was an error due to confusion over the rights to Kaepernick's name in the game.

"We made an unfortunate mistake with our Madden NFL soundtrack. 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," EA Sports said in a statement.

"We messed up, and the edit should never have happened. We will make it right, with an update to Madden NFL 19 on August 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."

However, as others soon began to take notice, they observed Kaepernick's name was also omitted from the Madden 18 song "Bars of Soap" by Mike WiLL Made-It, leading many to believe the NFL had told them to do so. The verse from that song is below:

"She be hopin’ that I take a knee like Kaepernick, yes."

Kaepernick has been shunned by the football world ever since opting out of his San Francisco 49ers contract in 2017 following protests during the national anthem. He notably kneeled before the kickoff of their 2016 preseason games as a response to racial discrimination and police brutality against people of color.

The 30-year-old's actions led to political controversy and with no team signing him since, he sued the NFL in October last year in an ongoing case for alleged collusion in keeping him out of the league.

And his case could actually be strengthened by this new lyric omission development, as reported by Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, especially as Madden 2018 released in August last year.

"The NFL exclusively licenses EA to produce and market a video game with league and team logos and trademarks. It’s an official piece of NFL merchandise," Florio wrote. "The fact that the game omitted his name even before the anthem issue became a next-level news story in September 2017 with the President’s comments at a rally in Alabama and, a month later, Kaepernick filed a collusion grievance tends to show that the league had a clear bias against him."

"Which becomes possible evidence that the league acted on that bias by advising teams not to offer him employment. Which becomes collusion when the league sends a consistent message to the various teams, and they act upon it."

To make things more interesting, Kaepernick even retweeted the below post from former NFL player Matthew Cherry.