I wrote about Colin Kaepernick quite awhile ago when he first started to kneel during NFL games. You may or may not be aware that I’m a Jets fan and generally love to watch football. I rarely care about what players do in their personal time. Many of my favorite players are amazing human beings. Unfortunately, when people started to overreact to Kaepernick kneeling that’s when I decided to write. This will be my last post about this, I hope.
Confidentially Agreement
A few days ago, the news broke that the NFL and Colin Kaepernick settled their grievance case outside of court. Rumor has it that Colin made out with around 80 million dollars. However, aside from drawing criticism from being a sellout, there is another interesting and confirmed detail about the whole thing. A confidentially agreement was put in place as result of the settlement. This means that the NFL and Kaepernick can’t say anything or release any public information on the trial.
NFL Wins The Case?
Upon hearing about the settlement and confidentially agreement, I immediately thought that NFL had won this case. The NFL makes BILLIONS of dollars, about 8.1 billion according to google. So imagine Kaepernick only received a mere 1 percent of their yearly revenue. Even better for the NFL, that got a confidentially agreement so Kaepernick or Eric Reid (other player involved) can’t make the NFL look bad. This is a pretty solid win for the NFL because although it is a first amendment right to kneel, the NFL is owned privately. What this result leads me to ask is what exactly were the motives of Kaepernick and Reid?
Money Motives?
If I were to replace myself as either Kaepernick or Reid, I don’t know that I would want to settle out of court even with 80 million on the table. Unless money was my objective. I was tricked, as were we all, into thinking that they wanted to make a political statement against the NFL. They wanted to show that the owners are racist. They wanted to prove that there is some kind of inside conspiracy against them because of their political activism. I’m not gonna say they were wrong about anything because the jury is still debating and won’t come to a decision since they settled out of court. However, you have to wonder why settle unless you knew could crush the NFL? So just maybe, they had no case or a poor case and decided to settle to save embarrassment. I’m just speculating here, but it seems to me that this grievance case either had no weight or they just wanted a payday. Now you could argue NFL put a confidentially agreement to protect whatever evidence they had. I’m sure there was some but it doesn’t matter because that will never be public.
Lesson Of Day
Let’s face it, taking down an 8 billion dollar corporation isn’t gonna be easy. Also if you want to prove a point you don’t settle out of court for money. Its really unfortunate because I thought Kaepernick actually had some balls and real motivation. I think that the NFL has a lot of problems especially in handling big name public relations scandals. They tend to just throw money at it until it goes away. Then they bury or destroy the evidence. I think the NFL handling of the concussion suit that it was hit with a few years ago wasn’t great. For years they denied that concussions were even a dangerous thing. In the lawsuit they settled on like a billion dollars for the healthcare of former players. Of course, in recent they have changed the game to make it safe. But to many purists, its tainting the competitive nature and changing how its play. Its complicated because players get paid a lot and the NFL has no health plan for them. In addition, players choose on free will to play football. So every person has a different opinion on how much responsibility the NFL actually owns for its player safety.
Obviously its an ongoing debate. There are some new football leagues like the Alliance of American Football and XFL which are installing rules that fit player safety standards from the start. Things such as no kickoffs and less full speed contact. Another positive for the AAF is that they actually have a health plan for the players. I think the NFL is gonna have make similar changes especially with other football leagues doing it. Granted, these leagues aren’t directly competing because they run in the spring.
Thanks for reading! If you would like to see more sports-related issues then please let me know!
Please check out my updated Life Experience’s: Advertisement Campaigns if you would like to help me out.
Social Media
Minds @gpslife12
Facebook; Garrett’s Life Experience’s Blog
P.S Tomorrow will be Part 5 of History Less Traveled: Cold War. Check out Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Click the Number!)
Technically Analytics 