Will the Nfl Let Kaepernick Play Football Again
Kaepernick Won. The NFL Lost.
It doesn't matter how much he made from the settlement announced on Friday; he bested the league.
About the writer: Jemele Loma is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.
Technically, Colin Kaepernick withdrew his collusion case. Technically, the NFL did not admit that it conspired to blackball Kaepernick from the league after he began taking a knee joint during the national anthem to protestation racial injustice. Only nontechnically speaking, the NFL lost. Massively.
The terms of the settlement, appear on Friday, were not disclosed. But it doesn't matter how much money Kaepernick ultimately receives from the NFL; what matters is that he bested a league that has a long history of pummeling its opposition in court, particularly players.
In a way, the NFL had no other choice. Terminal August, arbitrator Stephen Burbank rejected the NFL's request to have the example dismissed. That meant he believed Kaepernick's squad had compiled enough receipts to nowadays their instance. With another hearing reportedly scheduled for next month, did the NFL really desire to let Kaepernick's legal squad expose those receipts in court?
Of course non.
Owners and coaches had already given depositions in Kaepernick'south case, and the details that emerged from those proceedings did non look expert for the NFL.
For one, the depositions showed just how much league owners were petrified of President Donald Trump, who had loudly criticized the player protests. According to The Wall Street Journal, Jerry Jones, who owns the Dallas Cowboys, testified in a deposition that the president had told him in a phone conversation, "This is a very winning, strong issue for me," and "Tell everybody yous can't win this 1. This 1 lifts me."
Trump felt that public sentiment was on his side when it came to the role player protests, and was alarm that he would not back off. That conversation with Jones, and split ones with the Miami Dolphins possessor Stephen Ross and the New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft, suggested that the league was allowing their fear of Trump to influence how information technology dealt with Kaepernick and the other protesters.
Had Kaepernick's example gone further, at that place was no question that more sensitive and damaging information would have come out. Who knows what was said about Kaepernick or other players in texts and emails. Even if Kaepernick had lost the case, the NFL would accept been left with a significant mess.
Some are already criticizing Kaepernick for settling, not realizing how rare it is to see the NFL backed into a corner, especially by a role player. Tom Brady, arguably the greatest quarterback e'er, couldn't beat the NFL in court. Even he eventually had to accept his four-game intermission for Deflategate in 2016.
That Kaepernick was the one to brand the NFL eat crow is a special kind of karma. This is just punishment considering the league incompetently handled the histrion protests, starting with Kaepernick'due south, from the first. Had the league not been so heavy-handed in policing the protests, this issue likely would have abated sooner. Had the league ignored Trump instead of cowering to his bullying, appeasing Trump wouldn't have become a priority. Had one league owner had the guts to sign Kaepernick, this collusion example would take been a nonstarter.
Only too often the NFL has shown an embarrassing commitment to existence on the incorrect side of history for the sake of profits. The league settled a $i billion class-action concussion lawsuit brought by former players, but in the process, the NFL wasted a lot of time looking absolutely foolish denying its culpability. And regardless of the money information technology spent trying to make the issue go away, concussions and caput trauma nonetheless haven't disappeared from the public consciousness.
I still doubtfulness that Kaepernick will always play in the NFL again, but the bespeak of suing the NFL wasn't necessarily about resuming his football game career. It was about holding the league accountable for something that was entirely preventable.
Though this legal battle with Kaepernick has been resolved, he isn't going away either. The league will forever have to live with the fact that it was complicit in destroying someone'south career simply considering he wished to bring attention to the injustices suffered by his people. If owners and Roger Goodell believe that they no longer volition have to face up questions about why Kaepernick isn't in the league, they're incorrect. No matter what an arbitrator rules, how the NFL treated Kaepernick will ever be the mistake they can never amend.
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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/colin-kaepernick-won-his-settlement-nfl/582994/
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