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Colin Kaepernick’s first two ”protests” drew scant attention. He sat on the bench Matt Slauson Jersey , out of uniform, virtually unnoticed. His third got some buzz after a reporter tweeted a picture of the 49ers bench that had nothing to do with the quarterback but caught him in the frame, sitting during the national anthem.

Meanwhile, the killing of a 12-year-old boy by police and the light it shined on the Black Lives Matter movement helped draw a reluctant LeBron James into the world of using sports as a vehicle for social change. But once he got there, James stayed disciplined both about the message he sends and the way he sends it.

Despite their vastly divergent methods, Kaepernick and James helped set a stake in the ground, declaring to athletes across all sports that their platforms could be – should be – used for more than fun and games in the 21st century.

Kaepernick’s message – ”organic” to some, ”disorganized” to others – started a movement that has essentially linked the NFL with kneeling in a dramatic string of events that will play out for a final time this season, Sunday at the Super Bowl. James has also made an imprint thanks to the power of his own brand. Whose method worked better? The answer to that question figures to guide the direction of sports protests for the foreseeable future.

”Kaepernick didn’t go into it knowing what was going to happen. He was doing what he thought was right but this was not something he expected,” said professor Danielle Coombs of Kent State, who specializes in the politics of sports. ”On the other hand, you have athletes, like LeBron James, who make sure they do it in a way that lets the message rise to the top.”

Coombs and David Casillo co-authored a paper in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues centered on James, whose precise, calculated brand of activism pressed for change, but in a way that would not negatively affect the bottom line.

Two years before Kaepernick, and two decades after the seemingly apolitical Michael Jordan once reportedly said Republicans buy shoes, too, James found himself in the middle of a firestorm in the wake of the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

James said very little about the killing, which occurred only miles from his hometown of Akron, Ohio. He took heat for his reluctance. But over the ensuing years Braden Smith Jersey , he branched out slowly and cautiously, and sometimes with others at his side. He joined Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwayne Wade at the 2016 ESPYs and gave a well-received speech calling for an end to gun violence.

The speech was a well-thought-out, well-organized message timed for maximum impact, as was Steph Curry’s impassioned defense of the stance that Kaepernick and others had taken on issues ranging from sitting during the national anthem, to the importance of showing team unity to foregoing White House visits.

”If I’m going to use my platform, I don’t want to just be noise,” Curry wrote in a Veterans Day blog on The Players’ Tribune website. ”I want to talk about real issues that are affecting real people.”

The methods Curry and James use for getting out the message were almost the exact opposite of Kaepernick’s. Turns out, Kaepernick made more headlines, but also became more vulnerable to his message getting lost or distorted due to the timing and some of his own self-inflicted sideshows .

Some may say that by not being calculating and by playing from the heart, Kaepernick sent a truer message. He also backed it up by raising $1 million for charity – much coming in $10,000 increments from celebrities and sports stars.

But was it more effective? Can it be repeated?

”One of the keys for athletes is that they pick moments in time to make sure their message resonates,” said marketing expert Joe Favorito. ”Certainly, it has become easier for people to start a process. But it’s become more difficult to follow through with it. These days, unless you have the biggest stage, you’re competing against thousands of other people. It’s not necessarily athletes. It can be anyone.”

The NFL was unprepared for the protests, though a five-page memo in 1966 written by a young black league executive to then Commissioner Pete Rozelle predicted this could happen. The memo, which can be read in its entirety on theundefeated.com , warned that a team releasing a black player who’d been outspoken on civil rights issues could spark major protests.

Now even more than then, few platforms grab as many eyeballs as that of the NFL. And no league drapes itself in the American flag quite like the NFL. That’s two reasons Kaepernick’s gesture had legs.

When President Donald Trump took on the league this season, criticizing those who followed Kaepernick’s lead, the debate became multipronged Kemoko Turay Jersey , with players, and even some owners, banding together to show they would not be pushed around by the president.

Meanwhile, TV ratings remained flat. Some fans tuned out and stayed away, enraged by what they perceived as disrespect to the flag, the military and American values.

Kaepernick’s original message got mixed in with several others. Regardless, midway through the season, the NFL realized it had to do something. After multiple meetings with player representatives, the league announced it was funneling $90 million into social justice issues that are important to players. Just last week, it launched Let’s Listen Together , an initiative designed to address some of the players’ most urgent concerns.

The launch came mere days before the Super Bowl, where ”The Star-Spang Nine finalists have been chosen by the NFL, the Mayo Clinic and Comcast NBCUniversal in the league’s annual startup competition to spur novel advancements in athletes’ safety and performance.

Dubbed 1st and Future, entrepreneurs and innovators will compete in three categories: advancements in protective equipment; technology to improve athletic performance; and new therapies to speed recovery. One winner from each category will be selected by a panel of judges comprised of former NFL players, entrepreneurs and medical experts.

The winning team from each category will receive a $50,000 check from the NFL and two tickets to Super Bowl 52.

The finalists are:

Advancements in Protective Equipment

Exero Labs of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, which has developed a patent-pending concept for a leaf spring device that attaches to the front of football helmets and deforms on impact to help absorb and diffuse impact forces.

Impressio, Inc., Denver, utilizes liquid-crystal elastomers (LCEs) to create liner materials for protective equipment designed to overcome the existing challenges of energy absorption in current helmet foams.

VyaTek Sports, Inc. Tyquan Lewis Jersey , of Cave Creek, Arizona, is developing a new system called ZORBZ-a series of replaceable energy-absorbing modules fitted to the exterior of a helmet.

New Therapies to Speed Recovery

Cartilage Repair Systems LLC of New York aims to advance the treatment of cartilage injuries using a patented process to create new cartilage from a patient’s own cartilage and bone marrow cells in a single surgery, with the goal to shorten recovery times.

EyeGuide, Inc. of Philadelphia and Lubbock, Texas, a proprietary hardware and software eye-tracking platform designed to allow professionals to easily administer a simple 10-second test to check for potential neurological impairment.

RecoverX of Mountain View, California, has Element, a connected device that can achieve the optimum cold or hot therapy temperatures without any ice or water, designed to allow users more freedom for their therapy.

Technology to Improve Athletic Performance

Aladdin Dreamer, Inc. of Paradise Valley, Arizona, whose patented wearable is designed to improve athlete recovery and performance through biometric tracking and sleep enhancement.

Curv.ai of Toronto is an athlete development platform that leverages patent-pending computer vision and augmented reality to transform the camera on any mobile device into a versatile tool that captures human motion, measures athletic abilities and evaluates injury risk.

Xensr, Inc. of Green Bay, Wisconsin has Konect Sports technology, an end-to-end three-dimensional motion tracking, training and quantification system designed to provide real-time athlete performance data and train athletes to have faster reflexive responses.

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