Hey, Colin Kaepernick. Just Give It Up, Man.

I'm going to let you in on a little glimpse into my world of delusion. I try to swim at least a mile every day, but I don't always have enough time to do that. I think I last did it this past Sunday and managed to do it a little faster than normal. Afterward, I was sitting on the side of the pool to catch my breath and feeling incredibly proud of myself. My ego got the best of me. I started Googling "am I too old to be in the Olympics?"  

I won't tell you exactly how old I am — I'm a millennial, and we all fall somewhere between 30 and 45, which, unless you're in amazing shape or have plenty of experience, is not the ideal age group to start entering Olympic-level swimming competitions. But it has been something I've dreamed of since I was a teenager. Unfortunately, I just never really had the opportunity to pursue it. 

I accept that my time has come and gone. I'll just keep doing my miles in my pool or, when I'm in Costa Rica, the Caribbean Sea, which quite frankly offers better scenery than an Olympic pool. 

Colin Kaepernick, however, has not reached the same realization. 

Despite what elite players like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers have taught us, a 40-year-old NFL quarterback is the exception to the rule. Most QBs decline or step away in their mid-thirties if not before. And those are the guys who have been playing consistently, every year since high school or even early childhood.  

Kaepernick will be 39 in November. He hasn't graced an NFL field in nearly a decade. He may have a slight edge over me because he has actually been a professional athlete and not just a silly girl trapped in a middle-aged body with a bad knee and an Olympic dream, but he's every bit as delusional. 

The former NFL player is making the media rounds this week, promoting his new book The Perilous Fight. I have no idea what it's about, and I don't really care. But what I find most amusing is that he keeps telling these media outlets that he's still waiting for a call from an NFL team. 

He recently told NPR that he still gets up early every morning and trains like he would if he was playing in the league. "If there's a small chance of success or probability, my goal is to be able to go out and capture that," he said. 

Here's more from Men's Health: 

For some people, a 4:30 a.m. wakeup is an event. For Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback-turned civil rights advocate, it’s a Tuesday.

Even though Kaepernick is almost a decade removed from his last snap of organized football, he's still in game shape. He made that clear when he appeared on MH's Strong Talk podcast, saying he's "absolutely" ready to play. "We'll hit the ground running," he said. "We do all of our training to make sure that we are prepared for that."

And yes, Kaepernick still wants back in the league. While he no longer watches the NFL, he regularly checks box scores and stat lines, searching for teams that could use a QB. That means early morning workouts five days a week, hitting plyometrics, sprints, skill work and heavyweight lifts. That level of discipline is deeply ingrained in him—he says it started when he was just eight years old.

Again, this feels like the equivalent of me swimming a mile every day and checking my phone to see if Team USA called while I was in the water. 

Here are some other facts. Before he began kneeling for the national anthem in 2016, Kaepernick's career was already on a downward spiral. He wasn't the same guy who led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012. By early 2017, the team was planning to cut him anyway because he wasn't the right fit for Kyle Shanahan's offense and was too expensive to hold onto for no reason, so he opted out of his contract. He became a free agent and other teams showed interest, but ultimately, no one ever signed him. 

He claimed this had to do with his political stance, and while that may have been a part of it, it certainly wasn't the whole story. 

To this day, Kaepernick maintains that the NFL was colluding against him. In one recent interview, he claims that other players wanted to join him in kneeling, but they said they talked to their agents and/or family about it and decided against it. He calls them scared. I call them smart. If someone was paying me millions of dollars to play a game, I'd be hesitant to rock that boat too. 

By the way, if you hate the league so much that you think it's conspiring against you and you don't even watch the games, why would you want to play in it?

Something else I'll confess is that I never really had a problem with Kaepernick doing what he did. Did I think it was stupid? Absolutely! He doesn't come across as the brightest bulb to me, though. Did I think he was a spoiled brat complaining about living in the greatest country in the world and comparing being paid millions of dollars to play a game to slavery? Yep. Did I think it was incredibly disrespectful to his fans, teammates, and the brave men and women who serve our country? Hell yeah.  

But I'm all for freedom of speech, too, and if that's the way he chose express himself, he didn't need my approval. The only impact it had on my life was that I had to hear about it nonstop. I'd just as soon not give him any attention. 

As a matter of fact, the only reason I'm having to think about him now is because sports writer Jemele Hill recently spoke out and said that my Atlanta Falcons, who have what is probably the worst quarterback situation in the league — our starter is currently our third-string, Cooper Rush — should consider hiring Kaepernick because Atlanta is a "black city." 

No thanks. I'd rather stick with Rush and the perpetually injured Tua Tagovailoa than welcome that sideshow to Atlanta. We don't need a "black city" mascot. We need a guy who is in good shape and acts like a real teammate and wins games, not an attention whore.  

Anyway, it's beyond time for Kaepernick to move on to something else. He chose to become an "activist" and the result that was it potentially cost him some of his playing years. We all make decisions. We all have to accept the results. It's time he does too. (Or maybe call Lane Kiffin.)

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