Much as we enjoy the hilarity of the Great Kaepernick Freeze-Out (he’s either hurt, or not hurt but just not Chip Kelly’s cup of meat, or not hurt and being Styrofoam-packed for the team’s future contractual protection, or not hurt and saying he is to make one more point out the door), this is just one more way in which NFL players are examining the outer limits of their freedom before the day-to-day slog of the regular season starts.
The more compelling case, though, is not Kaepernick’s – it’s a linear world of “he’ll play if Blaine Gabbert is horrible or gets hurt," period – but the one in which the NFL is ordering four players named in the now-disavowed Al Jazeera report about PED use to meet, be interviewed and give “meaningful responses” to whatever questions the league feels like asking. It’s the same report that named Peyton Manning, who was on a Super Bowl winner and then retired to life of repose and selling us things in a series of short satirical films about capitalism, i.e., commercials.
The four – Packers Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers, Steeler James Harrison and free agent Mike Neal – have so far chosen not to do so at the request of the NFL Players Association, on the theory that the report, which has since been walked back by author Charles Sly, for a news agency that no longer operates in the U.S., is not solid enough to cause an investigation.
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Well, that’s not entirely true. Harrison has said he’ll talk if Roger Goodell comes to his home. Now that’s an interview worth streaming live.
In any event, the players have an August 25 deadline to comply with the league, which has been emboldened by the Tom Brady case, which was a rout for the league based on shoddy union work and players not fully comprehending what the phrase “cop, judge and jury” really means.
They will cave in all likelihood, because football is, even for megaveterans like Matthews and Harrison, is still a relatively short career, and an appealing one (see Cam Newton telling kids that playing in the Super Bowl and its gigantic ratings is way more rewarding than worrying the possibility of brain injury).
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San Francisco 49ers
But these are just bricks in the wall that lead to the next collective bargaining negotiation (the deadline is still four years away), and the question that ought to be on people’s minds when talks begin, namely:
Has the union finally been kicked around enough to actually make player discipline the center of its platform, and to actually be willing to walk out if a more equitable system isn’t fashioned? Or will it roll on its back, get its tummy scratched with a few more dollars, and then kicked around like it has been?
The courts have pretty much ruled through the now-tedious Brady case that the league can pretty much do whatever it wants to whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants, but that ruling was based on the union’s seeming disinterest in/inattention to the ramifications of letting the commissioner do all the deciding at every stage of any proceeding. In other words, the union said, “This is unfair,” the league said, “But you agreed to it, so shut up,” and the union had to shut up because the courts found that “shut up” is binding in labor law.
So now comes another case in which the players have no recourse but to submit to a system that clearly has never had its best interests at heart because the union, as most sports unions do, fought over money rather than player rights.
That time is changing, though. More players are paying more attention to more things outside the confines of the field, and asking questions that players haven’t typically cared about, let alone broach. And watching the league’s ham-fisted approach succeed time and again may finally convince them that negotiations aren’t just about the money, but a definition of employee rights that is wider than the current straitjacket approach.
But can they keep these days in their heads for four more years, and will they be willing to make it the centerpiece of their negotiations even in the face of what will surely be aggressive pushback from the owners on behalf of Employee No. 1? The players have seen face-first what happens when you don’t pay attention to the little details. Now perhaps we’ll see if they’ve learned from it.
We now return you to your largely pointless hand-wringing over Colin Kaepernick, The Man Who Apparently Isn’t There.