Charlotte Wilder

USA TODAY

ESPN's Trent Dilfer, a former quarterback himself, doesn't like Colin Kaepernick's protest. He said that Kaepernick's job was to support his team and that he was stealing the spotlight and distracting from football by taking a stand against social issues.

Shannon Sharpe and Skip Bayless disagree. On FS1's Undisputed, the two hosts went all in. Sharpe started: "Trent is absolutely right. There was a time when a backup quarterback was to be seen, not heard."

But that time is not 2016, he argues, and goes on to talk about how hard it is and how much negativity you encounter when you take a stand, mentioning the backlash both Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali faced.

Then Bayless lets it rip, and accuses Dilfer of harboring a "plantation mentality:"

"White cops are killing too many black, unarmed men, and getting away with it, without penalty. Without a check, without a balance. That is getting addressed. Let's get back to Trent Dilfer. That was typical old-school quarterback mentality that you just spoke of. That was so typical. Dispassionate. Disconnected to the point of being clueless. Sort of ex-white-quarterback mentality. This is how you do it. You should be thankful and you should be honored to be in the NFL quarterback fraternity. So if you're a starter, you can speak out a little more. But if you're a backup, to use your [Sharpe's] line again, and it's my favorite line, you are to be seen and not heard. You are to prepare for the game and be ready to play in case of. And you are to remain in the shadows so as not to distract or disturb or wreck your team unity. … Obviously, I'm not black. But this is one thing I do know after years and years of working with a lot of black players and black commentators on many networks: That if you go to the place of you're telling a black man, or a black woman, that 'You should know your place and stay in it,' when you get to there, them's fighting words. That smacks of plantation mentality. You cannot go there-and he went there. Because no matter what you're trying to say in the football context, we're not in the football context any more. We have risen above it to an issue that is far more important than any football game."

Kaepernick himself hit back at Dilfer, too, calling Dilfer's comment "one of the most ridiculous" he'd ever heard.