Nike released a new ad featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and it has people across the country talking, including veterans in his Northern California hometown of Turlock.
"I never even say the guy's name, and if somebody says it around me, I tell them not to say it to me again. That's how ticked off I am about him, OK?" Chuck Miller, a Navy veteran said.
That was Miller's reaction when ABC10 showed him the new ad featuring Kaepernick.
"Seems like it's going to stir up trouble. I mean, I don't get it. Why's he trying to stir up people?" Miller asked.
Miller is a Navy veteran and now looks after the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post in Turlock.
"I think if he's out there, he should be sending some good, positive messages and not some half truth that could go either way," he said.
Other veteran families around town are disappointed over his message of claiming to sacrifice everything.
"We had a lot of our boys go over there and not come back. And to me, that's disrespectful to them," Donna Headstrom, a military wife in Turlock said.
Donna and Roy Headstrom, an Army veteran, say they won't be planning on buying anything from the Nike brand.
"I don't think I've ever bought Nike and I will not start," she said.
On the flip side, not every veteran is throwing away their Nikes.
"I wouldn't say that it's offensive to me. Kaepernick has his right to protest. People have a right to burn their Nikes. They have a right to protest Nike. They have a right to protest Dick's Sporting Goods. They have a right to protest Chick-fil-A," Army veteran Ryan Kegley said.
Kegley said he joined the Army to protect those rights.
"Those are the rights that I joined the military to protect and that others have fought and died to protect," he said.
And he believes this is only the beginning of a much larger conversation.
"The whole intent of a protest is to start a conversation, maybe it's time that we all stand up," Kegley said.
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