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To get Nebraska, you really have to spend a winter there. When I was growing up in Lincoln, the cold made the world a small place. You stayed in your house to avoid the deep freeze just a short distance from the front door to the car.So fall is not to be wasted, and on Saturday afternoons Id watch the downtown fill with red -- red scarves and sweatshirts and jackets with the Huskers logo. So many people poured into Memorial Stadium on game day, they made it the third largest city in the state. All to watch the Huskers play football.Back then, I went to the most diverse high school in Nebraska in Lincoln High, and at the time, minority students made up less than 10 percent of the enrollment. Compared to the population of the city, the Huskers were a paragon of diversity, but you would never hear people talk about race when it came to football players.Nebraska was a football factory before the BCS money arrived. The young men who wore the uniform were football players first, and that was it. The team occupied a lofty space that was just a little bit closer to heaven and definitely above race -- and those boundaries were enforced by an authority structure that was predominantly white.When 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first sat for the national anthem this season, the criticism came quick and hard like a flash flood over the prairie. The deluge didnt quiet him, and last week the ideas that Kaepernick now kneels for came to Nebraska when three Huskers, including Michael Rose-Ivey, knelt during the anthem. Nebraska has become more diverse, and so has my alma mater. Race and injustice is no longer a conversation limited to the Native American people we took the land from.Yet it was still something of a shock to see Ivey, standing at the podium in front of the big red N and discussing police injustice in black communities. He said someone told him that he and his two teammates should be lynched or shot for kneeling. He quoted from Martin Luther King. He discussed his own commitment to the idea of racial justice. He was informed and laid out the very real schism that exists in our country.Nebraska football gave him that platform.In the Nebraska that I grew up in, its hard to imagine how Ivey, or teammates Mohamed Barry and DaiShon Neal, would have kept their scholarships. Even one university regent reportedly told the the Lincoln Journal Star the players should be kicked off the team, although hes since walked that comment back.This has been real life in Lincoln and a lot of other college towns; critical thinking required of the college student is rooted out of the football player. Its a contradiction that has always made an oxymoron of football scholarship.My first published piece, a letter to the Lincoln Journal, criticized funds earmarked for a new practice facility instead of needed repairs to the library. What does a fan give up to root for a team, to turn over some measure of judgment in exchange for that community in focused pursuit? Its not without cost. As Nebraska put football first, defensive lineman Christian Peter was convicted four times of assaulting four women from 1991 to 1995 while playing for the Huskers.Nebraska was where I learned that games need to be taken seriously, for what is bad and for what is good.The weekend that Kaepernick was spotted sitting during the anthem was one of those moments. Black athletes risk being lampooned, cut, excoriated and exiled for bringing their own experience of injustice into the workplace. The fact that most of the NFLs fans and coaches are white while most players are black, is a dynamic that plays into this.For generations, white coaches have wanted the talent, speed and sweat of black players, but didnt have much use for their opinions. Football, more than most, is a sport that values the subjugation of personal needs and ideas to what works best for the team.What Kaepernick said about his gesture has merit -- the kind of merit that once you hear it and if any part of you can relate to it, is hard to get out of your head. Last week, I spoke to Giants running back Rashad Jennings and he discussed the third verse of the national anthem that invokes slavery. Ive written about tennis player James Blakes pivot to activism after he was roughly taken down by police as he waited for a car to the 2015 US Open. Last year, I spoke to then Ebony senior editor Jamilah Lemieux after Michael Bennett and Richard Sherman discussed Black Lives Matter from the podium in Seattle.Heres what she said a year ago: Regardless of their political beliefs, I would wager that most black male athletes know how easily they could end up a hashtag after a police encounter, said Lemieux. As it relates to social issues, outspoken celebrities have always been in the minority. However, the scope of the public conversation around police violence and access to social media are making it harder for people in the spotlight to remain silent.It was prescient.Kaepernicks actions arent out of the blue. What may be more surprising is the response from the 49ers and the NFL. San Franciscos ownership family is unique in that the team is owned by Denise DeBartolo York and run by her son Jed York.They recognize the progressive, tolerant culture of the Bay Area, and were the first NFL franchise to announce they would be applying the Rooney Rule to their own job searches at the team level.The team is coached by Chip Kelly, an unconventional coach who has publicly backed Kaepernick when directly criticized. Then there is the NFL itself, which despite flyovers at games and flags the size of football fields, said standing for the anthem was recommended, but not required.If Kaepernick played for another team in another town, he might not have found that tolerance. Once he did, the idea was out there that players have the right to protest in their own way even though many fans dislike their actions.Thats how an idea moves from the Pacific coast and inward, to more conservative towns and different climates. It reached a high school Camden, New Jersey, when coach Preston Brown and the Woodrow Wilson Tigers took a knee for the anthem. It reached Indianapolis when the entire roster of the WNBAs Fever did the same during the playoffs It has reached the womens national soccer team with Megan Rapinoe and across countless strata of American fields.Now the idea has worked its way to my hometown in Lincoln.Im not a fan of the Cornhuskers in any conventional sense. Ive been a sportswriter too long. But this week, I can say that Im proud of Nebraska football for letting a young man speak his truth and reveal so much about himself, and the work that still needs to be done to make the world a better place. Cheap Ian Happ Jersey . Now tied for second in the league in shootout goals, the 24-year-old likes to see what the opposing goaltender has in store before he ultimately lands on a move. Cheap Jose Quintana Jersey . 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