Michael Strahan would kneel in protest with the NFL players

Michael Strahan has previously been outspoken regarding the controversial NFL protests during the national anthem, even defending Colin Kaepernick for starting the national movement. Today the former NFL player revealed he too would kneel with the current players if he were currently in the league.

While visiting The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Monday, Strahan thought carefully about his father, Gene Strahan, who is a retired Army major, before revealing his opinion.

“I think I would have [kneeled],” he said. “I would have had a conversation with my father, and based on that conversation, and conversations, I’ve had with him, I’m pretty sure I would have.

“When my father, who’s 81, can look at me and tell me that he’s not offended by it because he understands, then how could I who didn’t do that service be offended?”

Strahan went on say Nike was “smart” in using Colin Kaepernick as its spokesperson for its recent ad campaign and defended the protesting by the onetime 49ers quarterback whose activism cost him his job.

“One of the things you can do in this country is you can protest, and he’s protesting injustices that he sees happening. And I take my hat off to him, because he really did sacrifice and put so much on the line for other people that he had no idea who they were. He’s never met them, does not know them, and he put his whole life and career on the line.”

Though the GMA host agrees with the NFL protests, Strahan did offer one note of criticism: The players and the league owners need to work together. The league has sent mixed messages to the players regarding the protests.

“I would have been more proactive in getting it more organized,” he said. “Football, there seems to be a fracture between player and ownership and they need to get that together in order to get the message out there in the right way and not letting the message become hijacked and turned into something it was never intended to be.”