Sport

Kaepernick vs. the NFL and The First Law Of Holes

In November, Colin Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL alleging collusion.
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, grievances are processed within the NFL according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This means that a discovery period occurs, where both sides get to review the evidence, and where depositions can be requested and taken under oath from witnesses and interested parties.
We are now entering the deposition period of this grievance. One of the underlying weaknesses of the NFL is beginning to undermine the NFL’s whole defense to the collusion allegations.
What is known in the public eye as “The NFL” is really 32 independent businesses, all of which (with one exception, the Green Bay Packers) are privately owned, usually by a family that controls the majority of the equity in the team. The NFL organization, with Roger Goodell as its commissioner, has very limited authority over the 32 teams, because it really functions as a head office, PR front, and mechanism by which the NFL, under its limited anti-trust exemption (codified in the Sports Broadcasting Act) can negotiate broadcasting and other league-wide contracts.
Roger Goodell is employed by and is subordinate to the NFL owners. As one might expect from a collection of businesspeople who own private businesses and have (mostly) total control, the team owners are a feisty bunch of sometimes-cranky folks who mostly intensely dislike being told what to do by ANYBODY. They are also, with one exception, elderly white guys.
Because Goodell has no ability to tell owners what they can and cannot say in public on any subject, the NFL is now slowly, but inexorably, digging itself into a hole over the Colin Kaepernick collusion complaint. Any lawyer with a functioning brain would gather all defendants and persons of interest in a case like this into a room and the first piece of advice would be “stop talking in public about this case or any subject related to this case NOW”. Roger Goodell may have already told the owners this, but his words do not seem to be getting through. Via their own public comments, and a slow but growing number of leaks of information (possibly from Kaepernick’s team), the NFL is being backed into a cross between a corner and a hole over the collusion complaint. In the last 2 weeks the following information has become public:
– Steven Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, apparently announced that he would require all Dolphins players to stand for the National Anthem (despite the reality that he cannot legally do that), only to walk that statement back publicly a few days later
– At least 2 NFL player agents reported that the Houston Texans are “not interested” in signing any player who has protested during the playing of the National Anthem
– John Harbaugh, the coach of the Baltimore Ravens, was apparently advised by a military officer that signing Colin Kaepernick was not in like with the core values of the NFL

None of these actions (and two of them are rumors, not fact) prove that collusion occurred. However, they are slowly placing the NFL in a situation where, even if they win the collusion grievance against Colin Kaepernick, they will emerge having lost in the court of public opinion. The picture that is emerging from the unguarded public comments of owners, and rumors and leaks, is not a flattering one. It shows a league whose ownership is determined to squash dissent from the players, and which is more scared of offending hyper-patriots than it is in supporting social justice.
We can be sure that Steven Ross, John Harbaugh, and the two player agents are now on the list of people who will be requested to give depositions. Their names are going to be added to a lengthy existing list which includes Roger Goodell, his wife Jane Goodell (who ran a fake Twitter account on his behalf), Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, Bob McNair, and Steve Bisciotti.
Kaepernick’s lawyers also want to depose ex-Pappa John’s CEO John Schattner, but that is unlikely to occur since the NFL no longer has a relationship with Pappa John’s (notice how quickly they have been replaced as the NFL Official Pizza supplier?) and Schattner had no direct contractual affiliation with the NFL.
The NFL has emerging challenges that are unavoidable, with viewership steadily declining as more people bail on network and cable television, and its core viewing demographic is ageing.
At the point where the NFL needs a positive relationship with the players, it does not have one. Goodell is widely distrusted by the players over the bruising negotiations at the time of the last Collective Bargaining Agreement, and his approach to player discipline which is seen as capricious and arbitrary.
These are challenges that will be difficult to overcome, and the drip-drip of negative news about the Colin Kaepernick case is making matters worse. If the NFL does not have a plan to settle the grievance in advance of a hearing, it needs one, and fast. Winning the hearing will be a loss if the public perception is that Kaepernick was railroaded out of the NFL.

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The F1 engine life fiasco for 2018 and beyond

The FIA and LibertyF1 are digging themselves into a hole over their attempts to reduce F1 powerplant development and running costs.
The current generation of F1 powerplants are extremely complex, comprising 6 component sets:
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)
Motor Generator Unit – Heat (MGU-H)
Motor Generator Unit – Kinetic (MGU-K)
Turbocharger (TC)
Energy Store (ES)
Control Electronics (CE)

Over the last several seasons, the FIA has been reducing the allowed number of sets that any powerplant supplier can use in a season without penalty. In the 2017 season, powerplant suppliers were allowed to use four of each of the six components during the course of a season without incurring penalties. If any car used more than 4 of each component type, penalties were imposed.
Meeting the reliability and life requirements for the component sets proved challenging in 2017 for powerplant suppliers. Honda, in particular, essentially debugged and tested their entire new-specification powerplant in public, chewing through 11 MGU-H units, 9 ICEs…the penalties were enormous. Renault also had numerous reliability issues, especially towards the end of the season when they seemed to deliberately run down their stock of spare components, which led to a public row with Toro Rosso, who at one point suggested that Renault was deliberately supplying them with end-of-life components in order to make it possible for the Renault works team to leapfrog them in the Constructors championship and gain more revenues from the F1 prize pool.
The practical target mileage for an entire powerplant package in 2018 is to be able to run for 7 race weekends – 3 free practice sessions, qualifying (which uses higher-power modes and is harder on the powerplant) and the race. This is reckoned to be around 750kms at nearly all race weekends. That is around 5300 kms for 7 races.
As a comparison, the Porsche 919 that won last year’s Le Man 24 Hours race travelled a total distance of 5000 kms in the race…
So…the ask for F1 powerplants is now for them to be as long-lived and reliable as a Le Mans LMP1 powerplant. Requiring that a 2-hour race powerplant be as reliable as a 24 hours endurance powerplant seems to be a mismatch of expectations vs. function.
Mario Ilien, who should know a wee bit about F1 engine and powerplant design and support, said this in July 2017:

…Next year, having three engines is more expensive than producing four engines.
All the new parts you are developing have to go through testing on the dyno, to make sure you have achieved the mileage for three engines a year. And that is expensive.
I think even four is not enough. We’re half way through this season, and half the field has got a problem.

Well, today, Cyril Abetiboul of Renault effectively admitted that Renault may actually formulate a powerplant usage strategy for its works team based on accepting that they cannot survive on only 3 sets of powerplant components. He appeared to be hinting strongly that Renault may decide to use more than 3 sets of components, and work out how to accept the penalties at the most advantageous points in the season. This is a pretty strong indication that at least one powerplant supplier is not prepared to stick to the 3 component set limit if it feels that exceeding it will allow it to provide a more powerful powerplant package.

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Professional negligence in the NFL

I am not watching any NFL games right now. I think you know why. At least, I already told you.
However, I can read numbers, and my Twitter feed is alive.
The numbers and Twitter told me that Nathan Peterman, promoted to the starting quarterback position today for the Buffalo Bills to replace Tyrod Taylor, who, in the age-old jargon of pro football, was benched, came into the game at the start today against the San Diego Chargers and proceeded to throw 5 interceptions in the first half. Whereupon, he was removed from the game, and Tyrod Taylor, the man he replaced, was re-instated as the quarterback.
The Bills were down 40-7 at halftime when Peterman was replaced. They ultimately lost the game 54-24.
In other words, with Peterman under center, the Bills were outscored by 33 points. With Tyrod Taylor under center, the Bills gained back 17 points on offense, but gave up another 14 on defense.
Peterman was a good college quarterback not playing on a title-winning team. The Bills had drafted him in the 5th Round this year, and he had won the number 2 spot on the quarterback chart in the pre-season. So, with the Bills seemingly no longer convinced that they could win with Tyrod Taylor, he was The Man when they decided to bench Taylor.
Now, I keep reading all of the time these days that the NFL is nothing like college on offense. Most college teams do not run NFL-style offenses any more, relying heavily on read-option-based offensive schemes that require limited check-downs by mobile quarterbacks. The lament I read is that many college quarterbacks are nowhere near ready to run an NFL-style offense out of college. This implies that many rookie quarterbacks are essentially “project” players, not expected to play for at least 2 seasons.
Peterman’s scouting reports out of college reveal a smart, fairly accurate passer, but one lacking the deep-throw arm strength prized by many NFL coaching teams.
So, I wonder: just what the hell were the Bills doing throwing a 5th round draft pick with limited pre-season game experience and only mop-up regular series experience into a game at a crucial point in the season, with the Bills’s season finely poised at 5-4?
What possible improvement could he provide over Tyrod Taylor?
He does not have a cannon for an arm, so the idea that the Bills could suddenly become a vertical passing team makes no sense. That is before you even look at the Bills’ receiving corps, which does not scream “deep threat”. In fact, it doesn’t even scream “receiving threat”. The Bills do not have a single top-drawer receiver, and their best current receiver, Jordan Matthews, was inactive for today’s game. So Peterman did not exactly have much in the way of likely downfield targets. He can scramble, but lacks the fleet-footed elusiveness of Taylor, who has excelled in the past at escaping from seemingly hopeless broken-play situations and making something happen, usually with his legs.
At this point some bright spark will say “but…Tom Brady!”.
OK Weisenheimer, let’s look at Tom Brady.
Brady was drafted in the 6th round out of Michigan. He was the number 3 quarterback for all of his first season, mostly inactive on game days. In his second season, he moved up to the number 2 spot on the quarterback chart. He was then promoted early to starter after Drew Bledsoe suffered a serious chest injury.
At the time of his promotion, Brady had already been in the Patriots’ system for over a season, and had played in 2 seasons’ worth of pre-season games. By any objective standards, he was far more experienced in the NFL than Peterman was when he ran out on the field today. As history shows, Brady was ready and able to assume the quarterback role for the Patriots at the time of his promotion. As today shows, Peterman was not.
But this is not just about Peterman.
It’s also about the team. Peterman was not expected to be the starter, so he had limited work with the first-team offense in the pre-season, and he and the team had 1 week to prepare for the game. Peterman is a fundamentally different player to Taylor – he is basically a pocket passer with some scrambling ability. Taylor is a scrambler first and foremost, and his pocket skills and check-down abilities are said to be weak, which is probably part of the reason that he was benched.
Most importantly, this decision is about leadership.
Bad leadership.
The decision to insert Nathan Peterman today was professionally negligent. If it was mid-December, with the Bills at 4-9 or similar and already eliminated from the playoffs, the decision would have made a lot of sense. With Taylor on an option year for his contract, it would be time to play the rookie and see what he can bring to the team. But, for crying out loud, the Bills were at 5-4, and still very much in the hunt for a playoff slot. Playing Peterman has resulted in a blowout loss, which leaves the Bills at 5-5, and in a much weaker playoff position.
Now…I can think of a reason why the decision was made to start Peterman today. The head coach for the San Diego Chargers, Anthony Lynn, had been the offensive co-ordinator for the Buffalo Bills the previous season, and the coaches may have decided that Lynn, experienced in the play and behavior of Tyrod Taylor, would create a game plan for the Chargers to disrupt a Taylor-led offense.
While this is all logical, swapping quarterbacks at the last minute only works if the team and the new quarterback are prepared to execute a different sort of game plan. As we saw today, that was not the case.
The decision and resulting loss has left the quarterbacks in a bad place. Taylor was benched last week, a signal (probably already received) that he has no real future in Buffalo. Peterman was thrown into the fire, and has been severely singed, with 5 interceptions in 30 minutes of play ringing in his brain. That will shake any quarterback, especially a rookie.
But the bigger negative message will have made its way to the team. By benching an established starter and experimenting with an unproven rookie, the Bills leadership has essentially told the team that they are quite prepared to throw away the season. That is a horrible message to send. It may actually cause the team to quit on the coaching staff.
No matter which way you analyze the decision to play Nathan Peterman, it was a terrible decision. The only saving grace is that the coaches realized that they had made a big mistake and re-inserted Tyrod Taylor for the second half, but with a leaky defense, and a second-rate offense, even Superman would have struggled to bring the Bills back from a 40-7 hole.
It would not surprise me if one or more heads roll in Buffalo next week. There was no saving grace, no visible upside from today’s events. There is nothing that the coaching staff can point to that was obviously good. They might argue from game tape that Peterman did X better than Taylor, but 54-24 as a box score will blow any of that pretty-pretty analysis to hell and back. If Twitter is any indication of fan reaction, the Bills fans were furious with the outcome, and they blame the coaching staff. Something may have to change.

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Hell hath no fury like a quarterback scorned

Today’s news gets more and more interesting, or more and more worrying if you are running PR for the NFL.
Hot on the heels that the Houston Texans went out and signed two quarterbacks today to replace DeShaun Watson, neither of whom is named Colin Kaepernick, comes the news that the legal team acting for Kaepernick in his case against the NFL has officially asked that several NFL owners, including Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Bob McNair, be deposed. Additionally, other teams are being asked to turn over all communications that might be related to Colin Kaepernick, including emails and mobile phone records.
Now, I have one question for you all: what are the chances that a voluble self-promoter like Jerry Jones, who cannot publicly keep quiet about the anthem protest, and who is now busy claiming that Pappa Johns’ founder John Schattner is a “fine American”, kept quiet privately about Colin Kaepernick?
I assess those chances as somewhere between diddly and squat. Ditto Bob McNair, whose “inmates running the prison” comment maybe revealed a lot more about his underlying attitude to players than he intended or wanted to reveal. Robert Kraft was probably a lot more careful. He is usually very measured in all of his public pronouncements, and, by all accounts, has been a key figure behind the scenes in mediating disputes between owners and between the NFL and the players. But Jerry Jones? No. Jones cannot stop yapping in public, so I regard it as highly likely that he has said some things in private that Kaepernick’s legal team would love to read and/or hear. That is, if they can be included in discovery.

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And the circumstantial collusion evidence pile keeps growing…

With the expiry of the trade period in the NFL, any team needing a quarterback can only sign a free agent.
Yesterday, the Indianapolis Colts officially owned up to something that was becoming rather obvious – that Andrew Luck will not play this season. He underwent major shoulder surgery in the off-season and has not recovered enough to even practice properly. The Colts had already traded for Jacoby Brissett from the Patriots to be their starting quarterback for the season, so this does not impact any free agent moves.
Meanwhile, down in Houston, DeShaun Watson, the new starting quarterback for the Houston Texans, ruptured his ACL in practice yesterday and will miss the rest of the season. The Texans have Tom Savage as a backup, who was benched after 1 game for Watson. Watson is a running quarterback whose playing style is close to that of a free agent quarterback named Colin Kaepernick. However, at time of writing, the Texans appear to be about to sign another free agent not named Kaepernick.
These kinds of decisions by NFL teams are simply adding to the pile of circumstantial evidence that will be pointed to by Kaepernick’s legal team as evidence of collusion. There still needs to be a “smoking gun” uncovered in discovery for a ruling of collusion to be possible, but even if the arbitrator rules against Kaepernick, the overall impression of a sports league bent on punishing a player engaging in peaceful protest is likely to be difficult to ignore.

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The Mark Geragos 10 day claim over Kaepernick

When I wrote the essay on the Mark Geragos claim that Colin Kaepernick would be signed within 10 days, I was discounting (for now) the possibility that the weight of circumstantial evidence would become too great for the arbitrator to dismiss it.
I may be about to revise that viewpoint. The NFL is constantly adding to the pile of circumstantial evidence.
Two attempted quarterback trades occurred at the trade deadline. The 49ers succeeded in acquiring Jimmy Garroppolo from the Patriots. Then an apparent fiasco unfolded right at the trading deadline, with the Cleveland Browns attempting to acquire A.J. McCarron from the Bengals for draft picks, only to have the trade fail to complete, seemingly due to internal SNAFUs in the Browns organization.
From the viewpoint of Kaepernick’s legal team, here are two more clear examples of teams with a quarterback performance issue desperately trying to find another starting quarterback without even asking Colin Kaepernick if he was interested.
The situation will now only get worse for the NFL. With the trade deadline now having passed, if an NFL team loses its starting quarterback to injury, or suddenly becomes desperate for a new option at quarterback, they cannot now trade for a quarterback from another team. They have to sign a free agent, or (far less likely) win a waiver claim contest for a quarterback suddenly released from a team. (That latter scenario is extremely unlikely, since most NFL teams only have 2 quarterbacks on their rosters, and they would not release a quarterback in the season since it would leave them with no backup quarterback in a game).
Colin Kaepernick is a free agent.
So…from this point onwards in the season, any team that signs a free agent quarterback not named Colin Kaepernick is simply adding to the pile of circumstantial evidence that Kaepernick’s legal team will point to as evidence of collusion.
Another underlying challenge in all of this is that Roger Goodell is relatively powerless to influence NFL team behavior. He works for the teams, not the other way around, and since NFL teams are officially forbidden from colluding on any issue other than broadcasting rights, Goodell is now unable to say anything of substance on the Colin Kaepernick issue, especially now it is the subject of a lawsuit, since anything that he does say can be parsed though a viewpoint that asks the question “so were the teams colluding?”. This, by the way, is also why Goodell spoke very carefully about the anthem protests. He cannot be seen to be suggesting to the teams, collectively, what they can or cannot do, and in the case of the anthem issue, his hands are also tied by the CBA, which does not specify any requirements on player behavior for the National Anthem.

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Colin Kaepernick vs. the NFL – lawyer makes a big claim

Mark Geragos, the lead lawyer for Colin Kaepernick in his collusion grievance against the NFL, made a bold claim today, during an appearance on the Adam Carolla Show:

“I think within the next 10 days somebody will sign him,” he said. “I think somebody’s gonna sign him. I think the NFL has to come to their senses, and realize every day that goes by just proves the collusion case even more.”

Now…that is a pretty bold and specific claim. Several possible motives for the claim spring to mind:

1. Geragos is trolling or bullshitting
2. Geragos believes that discovery will uncover evidence of collusion against Kaepernick
3. Geragos believes that discovery will likely uncover other evidence of collaboration or collusion between teams and owners that may put the NFL in a difficult legal position

(1) still seems likely. Absent a clear communication between two teams along the lines of “remember don’t sign Kaepernick”, it is still likely that insufficient direct evidence of collusion exists. Whether Geragos thinks that the circumstantial evidence of collusive intent (via the intemperate public and leaked comments of the POTUS and several NFL team owners) is strong enough is open to debate. However, absent a “smoking gun”, the case may well become a trial in the court of public opinion. (there may well, of course, be other private comments from owners that will turn up in discovery that could be damaging. We just don’t know that those might be).
(2) and (3) would add up to multiple problems for the NFL. If (2) is proved, they would would be forced to pay Kaepernick a large pile of money for effectively running him out of the NFL – that sum could easily be more than $50m. They would end up with an enormous PR black eye.
However, (3) represents the more serious risk for the NFL owners. The NFL currently enjoys a limited exemption from anti-trust legislation via the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. This was passed specifically to allow the NFL teams to collaborate on negotiating broadcasting deals. That is the full scope of the exemption. The NFL teams are not allowed to collaborate on any other commercial matters, or they risk being found guilty of violations of anti-trust law.
This means that evidence of collusion on any matter other than broadcasting rights carries two risks for the NFL. Firstly, it may make it easy for the arbitrator to rule against the NFL in Colin Kaepernick’s grievance hearing. However, secondly, and potentially much more dangerously, it may open the NFL to being charged with broader violations of anti-trust law. The TV broadcasting rights exemption has already come under fire on multiple occasions in the past, with threats being made to repeal the 1961 Act. A clear-cut finding of collusion on any subject could result in the entire act being nuked, leaving the NFL unable to operate as a group in negotiating distribution rights for broadasts of games.
Now…this is where it could get interesting…if the Sports Broadcasting Act was repealed, then theoretically any NFL team could do its own deal for broadcasting rights. They could sign a deal with a network or they could set up their own broadcasting operation with live streaming of games and other exclusive or non-exclusive content. For teams in big media markets (like Dallas, Washington, Seattle, New York etc.) this could actually be more lucrative than the current mechanism where all broadcasting revenues are pooled then distributed equally to all 32 teams. In other words, some of the new-wave aggressive owners like Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder might not care about the loss of the anti-trust exemption, since they may have done the math and concluded that they can make more money selling their broadcast rights direct to the public.
However, any evidence of any sort of collusion will be embarrassing to the NFL, and will increase the chances of a ruling against them on the Kaepernick issue. More seriously, it opens the entire NFL up to complaints of anti-trust violations, which could be very expensive, not for fines, but for other remedies that a court might order. Courts have a LOT of power when punishing violations of anti-trust law.

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Today’s For Fish’s Sakes moment: NFL player protests

Sometimes, The Stupid, it hurts.
And sometimes it goes beyond stupid into the For Fish’s Sakes zone.
The really bad arguments against NFL players have just gone into that zone.
There is a multi-part narrative (I’d call it a theory, but that would be giving it way way too much credit) that comprises the following assertions (again, I’m not calling them arguments because they never have any evidence to back them up):

1. NFL players cannot be oppressed or treated unfairly because they are paid a lot of money to play the game
2. Therefore, NFL players should shut up, be grateful, and play the game.
3. And they should respect the flag and stand for the National Anthem because…if my employer told me to stand to attention for the National Anthem every day I would have to do it, therefore those greedy whiny-ass NFL players should damn well do it too

(3) is bullshit and hokum, and I already wrote about it here. Only idiots, assholes or totalitarian regimes think that it is OK to demand respect and fealty to symbols. Despite the whining of the POTUS, the NFL is not going to mandate that the players stand for the anthem for two compelling reasons:
(1) it is not a requirement in current player contracts under the NFL CBA,
(2) it will likely be ruled a violation of the Constitution by SCOTUS, which has ruled multiple times in the last 75 years that nobody can be compelled to perform those actions. (This is why Roger Goodell, a lawyer, deliberately uses the advisory “should” and not the instructive “shall” when commenting about the current NFL rules).
The argument about other employers not allowing employees to protest on company time is a false equivalence. Technically, the anthem ceremony is not part of an NFL game, and it did not exist prior to 2009 except on special occasions. Any employer, especially in the IT or tech sector, that tried to implement a rule forcing the players to stand daily for the national anthem would immediately drop to the bottom of the list of places to work, and would rapidly lose most of its best people. Young, mobile or highly qualified knowledge workers have a low tolerance for totalitarian horseshit. Most employers would not touch this idea with an extremely long barge pole. They are not stupid.
(2) is also bullshit. Being well-paid confers no obligation on any person to surrender their rights to public comment on any issue. If that were true, we would not be hearing a peep from corporate CEOs, television and movie stars, and famous musical artists. The idea that people should shut up because you might not like what they have to say reeks of totalitarian, intolerant conceit. it’s also an argument I have been reading and hearing for years. It has been bullshit all of that time, and it will continue to be bullshit.
I mean, I want world peace, but I am not entitled to get it any time soon.
NOTE to Daniel Snyder: You can claim that 96% of NFL viewers want the players to stand (wherever that claim came from), but here’s the reality, you authoritarian dickweed; opinion polls and fan surveys do not trump legal or constitutional rights.
(1) is also bullshit, for two reasons.
Firstly, most NFL players do not initially enter into freely negotiated contracts with their employers. They are drafted. A team selects them, and their consent to be drafted by a specific team is legally immaterial. (One or two players, most notably John Elway and Eli Manning, managed to maneuver themselves into playing for the team that they really wanted to play for, but the rarity of such outcomes tells you about how invariable the process normally is).
Secondly, once drafted, NFL players have next to no ability to negotiate their contracts. They are bound by the rookie wage scale, which “slots” player remuneration according to position and draft selection sequence. Any variation is financially minor. The deals are all for 4 years with the team having the option to unilaterally extend for a further year.
Once upon a time, in England, people could be “pressed” into service in the Royal Navy by being, essentially, kidnapped, and placed on board a navy vessel. They were then informed that they were serving in the Royal Navy. No way out existed, since by the time they were actually untied, the ship was already at sea. To me, the NFL entry process for many players looks remarkably like the press gang.
Most NFL contracts are not guaranteed, and a team can essentially fire a player at any time. Now…some players mitigate this via pre-paid bonuses. However, the bottom line is that players are, in most cases, press-ganged into the NFL, and are vulnerable to being fired at any time. I cannot recall that I was ever press-ganged into joining an employer like that.
Now…did the players enter into that sort of arrangement as part of the NFL collective bargaining agreement? Well, yes, and No. The NFLPA agreed to the CBA. However, college football players are not members of the NFLPA, and they certainly did not agree to the CBA. So the players entering the NFL, in most cases are stuck in a process they did not agree to that they cannot vary, where they have no real freedom to negotiate. Now, is that slavery? In the sense of them being forced to work in perpetuity while enduring grinding poverty…No. However, they have a lot less freedom than most regular folks to select an employer, negotiate a contract, and change employers.
Secondly, as most people soon find out, money does not cure all ills or guarantee happiness. The idea that if we all had 10 million dollars we would be happy is a superficially attractive one, but most of us eventually meet people in life, who have a lot of money, who are some combination of miserable or assholes. So the idea “you make a lot of money so you should be happy” is total bullshit. As the old saying goes, money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a better class of misery.

Some final thoughts.
An example of the reality that leading practitioners in sports do not forfeit their rights to push for improvements in their sport simply because they are well paid.
When he was driving in F1, Jackie Stewart began campaigning for improvements in car and circuit design and safety, and guess what? Exactly the same arguments being deployed against the NFL players were deployed against him, including “just shut up and drive, you highly paid ungrateful so and so”. People said that motor racing was intrinsically dangerous, and the drivers volunteered to drive, so they knew the dangers and therefore deaths were simply part of the sport. If you want to understand the results of casual acceptance of bad circuit design at the time, Google “helmuth koinigg” (WARNING – Not pleasant viewing).
Jackie Stewart ignored the pushback, and partly due to his advocacy, Formula 1 slowly changed from a sport where at least 1 driver died a year in an accident, and several were forced into retirement due to crippling injuries, to a sport where any serious driver injury is now a rare event.
The NFL is a collision sport, and this always carries risk of injury, although the worst effects seem to be occurring long after players retire, due to body damage and brain trauma. However, the idea continues to be espoused by many NFL fans that the game should be dangerous. This is nothing more than a relic of the prize-fighting mentality, and you don’t have to be a genius to see that a lot of the people making arguments that the NFL is being “wussified” are pretty much the same people who are demanding that the players STFU and stand for the anthem. They are also, from my personal Twitter analysis, mostly elderly white guys (some of them are bots, but that’s another story).
In other words, a lot of the people making the most noise about those nasty un-American players are precisely the sort of people the NFL should not be listening to, because they will not be watching the sport very much longer.

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Colin Kaepernick’s claim against the NFL for collusion

I decided to go read the NFL Collective Bargaining agreement, under which Colin Kaepernick has filed a grievance alleging collusion to deny him employment.
The short answer to my questions is that the bar is set pretty high for a finding of collusion, but that if collusion is found to be widespread, the NFLPA can indeed file to terminate the entire CBA.
The CBA contains an entire section on collusion: ARTICLE 17 – ANTI-COLLUSION begins on page 119.
The probable grounds on which Kaepernick is claiming collusion are almost certainly defined in Section
17 (Prohibited Conduct):

(a) No Club, its employees or agents shall enter into any agreement, express
or implied, with the NFL or any other Club, its employees or agents to restrict or limit
individual Club decision-making as follows:
(i) whether to negotiate or not to negotiate with any player;
(ii) whether to submit or not to submit an Offer Sheet to any Restricted Free
Agent;
(iii) whether to offer or not to offer a Player Contract to any player…

The enforcement mechanism is defined in Section 5:

Section 5. Enforcement of Anti-Collusion Provisions: Except as provided in Section
16(d) below, any player or the NFLPA, acting on that player’s or any number of players’
behalf, may bring an action before the System Arbitrator alleging a violation of Section 1
of this Article. In any such proceeding, the Federal Rules of Evidence shall apply. Issues
of relief and liability shall be determined in the same proceeding (including the amount
of damages, pursuant to Section 9 below, if any). The complaining party shall bear the
burden of demonstrating by a clear preponderance of the evidence that (1) the challenged
conduct was or is in violation of Section 1 of this Article and (2) caused any
economic injury to such player(s).

The important things to note here are that (1) this is not a court hearing before a judge or a jury; it is an arbitration hearing. (2) the Federal Rules of Evidence apply. This means that full Discovery is allowed as part of a pre-hearing process. (3) the burden of proof is not a criminal burden (beyond “reasonable doubt”) but the civil standard (“clear preponderance of the evidence”).
The remedies for a finding of guilt, however, extend beyond the matter of monetary damages to the player. The ultimate sanction is contained in this section:

Section 16. Termination: The NFLPA shall have the right to terminate this Agreement,
under the following circumstances:
(a) Where there has been a finding or findings of one or more instances of a
violation of Section 1 of this Article with respect to any one NFL season which, either
individually or in total, involved five or more Clubs and caused injury to 20 or more
players; or
(b) Where there has been a finding or findings of one or more instances of a
violation of Section 1 of this Article with respect to any two consecutive NFL seasons
which, either individually or in total, involved seven or more Clubs and caused injury to
28 or more players. For purposes of this Subsection 16(b), a player found to have been
injured by a violation of Section 1 of this Article in each of two consecutive seasons shall
be counted as an additional player injured by such a violation for each such NFL season;
or
(c) Where, in a proceeding brought by the NFLPA, it is shown by clear and
convincing evidence that 14 or more Clubs have engaged in a violation or violations of
Section 1 of this Article causing injury to one or more NFL players.
(d) In order to terminate this Agreement:
(i) The proceeding must be brought by the NFLPA;
(ii) The NFL and the System Arbitrator must be informed at the outset of
any such proceeding that the NFLPA is proceeding under this Section for the purpose
of establishing its entitlement to terminate this Agreement; and
(iii) The System Arbitrator must find that the Clubs engaged in willful collusion
with the intent of restraining competition among teams for players.

Clearly, with only one player grievance, the only grounds on which the NFLPA could apply for the termination of the CBA would be that laid down in Article c (collusion among 14 or more NFL teams). That seems, at first reading, to be a pretty high bar to clear in terms of evidence.
You will also notice that the NFLPA must state before the hearing that they intend, if successful, to apply for the termination of the CBA. They can’t turn around later if the hearing finds in favor of Colin Kaepernick, with proof of more than 14 clubs colluding, and then say “OK now we won, we are terminating the CBA”.

So, there is a spectrum of possible outcomes:

1. Special Arbitrator finds no compelling evidence of collusion; grievance is denied
2. Special Arbitrator finds compelling evidence of collusion among multiple teams, but less than 14 teams are involved; finds in favor of Kaepernick
3. Special Arbitrator finds compelling evidence of collusion among 14 or more teams; finds in favor of Kaepernick and nullifies the CBA IF the NFLPA had requested it as part of the hearing process

I still regard (1) as the most likely outcome, unless a “smoking gun” emerges in the form of informal communications between teams, coaches and/or the NFL. Absent any smoking gun evidence, it will be down to circumstantial evidence, which is unlikely to be compelling enough. Correlation does not equal causation, as the old saying goes. At that point, it then becomes a “court of public opinion” fight.
If (2) is the outcome, the NFL will be on the hook for (I am guessing) up to $50m in damages or more, with a significant public dent in its reputation.
(3) is the NFL’s worst nightmare – the premature end of the CBA, requiring a new CBA negotiation. The current CBA, which is a 10 year agreement with no opt-outs, is generally regarded as more generous to the owners than the previous CBA, which the owners had voided after 3 years in order to force a negotiation for a better deal for them, threatening a lockout as part of the negotiations. The NFLPA is unlikely to be feeling as generous next time around, especially given the strife over the conduct policy enforcement, and things could get messy in a hurry.

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