Colin Kaepernick’s money
We may never know why Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid settled their collusion grievance against the National Football League last week. Confidentiality agreements preclude any of the parties from directly addressing the settlement.
Let’s presume they got money, because the football cartel has a lot of money and checks are usually cut when settlements are reached. Since Reid was only out of work for a quarter of a season, it’s reasonable to consider that Kaepernick’s part of the settlement is greater. So how much might he have been paid?
If he had satisfied arbitrator Stephen Burbank that two or more teams, or NFL management in concert with one or more teams, had worked together to keep him off the playing field because of his national anthem protests, Kaepernick would have—under the rules of the collective bargaining agreement—been entitled to roughly twice what he would have made had he played.
You’ll remember that in 2014 Kaepernick, having led the San Francisco 49ers to consecutive
NFC title appearances and a Super
Bowl, signed a record seven-year
$126 million contract. But NFL contracts are at best creative non-fiction. Only a $12.3 million signing bonus and his 2014 salary of $645,000 were guaranteed. Had the 49ers cut Kaepernick before the 2015 season, they wouldn’t have owed him another penny.
They didn’t, and Kaepernick’s 2015 salary was reportedly $12.4 million. In reality, it was $10.4 million because $2 million of it was in incentive clauses Kaepernick failed to reach. The 49ers had a bad year, winning just five games, and before mid-season Kaepernick lost his starting job to Blaine Gabbert. (A week after Kaepernick’s benching, the 49ers announced he’d suffered a season-ending shoulder injury that required surgery. Had that been a career-ending injury, Kaepernick would have been due $61 million.)
In 2016, suspecting he’d worn out his welcome in San Francisco, Kaepernick restructured his contract so he could become a free agent at the end of the 2017 season. Yet he regained his starting job in the team’s sixth game of the year and ended up having a pretty good statistical season—he threw 16 touchdowns against four interceptions and achieved a 90.7 passer rating, which ranked him 17th in the league and comparable to the rating he’d achieved in 2013 (91.6, 10th among starting NFL quarterbacks) when he was perceived as a dual-threat star, and some observers saw his rise as a watershed event. (“I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever,” ESPN’s Ron Jaworski said during the 2013 pre-season. “I love his skill set. I think the sky’s the limit.”)
But this minor comeback was overshadowed by something else Kaepernick did during the 2016 season. In the third pre-season game, he sat on the bench during the playing of the national anthem.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he explained, referencing a series of deaths of black people at the hands of police. He said he would continue to protest until the flag represented “what it’s supposed to represent.”
Beginning with the fourth pre-season game, after talking with former NFL player and U.S. military veteran Nate Boyer, Kaepernick modified his protest. Instead of sitting on the bench, he genuflected during the anthem. Reid and other players followed his example.
There was an uproar. An American president called these players “sons of bitches.” The NFL felt a quiver in its bottom line. And when Kaepernick became a free agent, nobody signed him.
Lots of people argue that no team signed Kaepernick because no club thought his skills were enough to offset the circus atmosphere his signing would inevitably bring. Maybe so. But the NFL routinely gives thugs and criminals second and third chances if they think signing them will give the team a better chance at winning. Disingenuous arguments aside, Kaepernick was—maybe is, since he’s only 31 years old—by any metric at least an average or slightly above-average NFL quarterback. In a league where quarterbacks are always in short supply, wouldn’t one team want to make him an offer?
You might argue that if you exercised your First Amendment right to free speech in certain ways, you might find yourself out of a job, or even unemployable. Many of us are in that position.
But it’s not that way if you’re a professional athlete in a team sport. You’re not really an interchangeable employee; you’re more like a partner with the team owner. The conditions of your employment are collectively bargained. Your union negotiates certain protections for you. One of those is a promise from the NFL that a player wouldn’t be blackballed for speaking his mind.
Had the case proceeded, it would have fallen on Kaepernick and Reid to prove that the NFL colluded against them, which is an awfully hard thing to do. I don’t think they could have proved it. I’m not even sure it happened.
But had the grievance advanced to a hearing, there would have been something like a trial. Witnesses would have been called, documents would have been produced. Kaepernick and Reid would have had the right to look at the NFL’s internal communications and seen emails sent between the NFL and various owners; all kinds of things would have been hauled out into the disinfecting sunlight of the arbitration chamber.
It wouldn’t have been public, but we’d have learned things. There would have been leaks. I don’t think the NFL wanted to take a chance on some of this stuff getting out.
So they wrote checks. Maybe when the publicly held Green Bay Packers issue their financials later this year we’ll be able to deduce something from their books. Maybe not.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaepernick doesn’t end up richer than he would have if that $126 million contract had been a real thing. Good for him, I guess.
I thought Kaepernick would hold out, that he wouldn’t be bought with money. On the other hand, I suppose I could be bought with money. And that maybe he can do something with that money that will matter more than genuflecting on a sideline ever could.