Martin Luther King III, son of the civil rights icon, urged football fans to boycott the NFL until a team signs national anthem protester Colin Kaepernick.

King told TMZ that Kaepernick would be back in the NFL nearly instantaneously if fans united behind him. “What would change it overnight is if the public decided, ‘Okay, we’re not going to watch,'” he said of Kaepernick’s plight.

King went on to insist that the league “blackballed” Kapernick after he spent a year protesting against the country and sparked a wave of other players joining him in the protest.

“The industry did blackball him, which is not good,” King added “He certainly is one of the most talented quarterbacks even today, probably.”

“There are times when you need strategic quarterbacks who have a proven record,” King said of the NFL’s current need for quarterbacks. “And, certainly, Colin Kaepernick is one of those.”

King also praised “the country” because Colin Kaepernick’s controversial Nike ad won an Emmy. But King insisted that the problem is still unsolved, though, because “young black men are being gunned down every week” by police officers across the country.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.