Psychology is something that really fascinates me. How our brains work and the processes we use to think are things I find really interesting. It applies to many different aspects of life and has changed my understanding of how people interact with one another.
This understanding even applies to the National Football League, where in the last several days former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, filed a grievance against the NFL team owners for alleged collusion. What that essentially means is that Kaepernick believes the owners of the 32 teams in the league have colluded to keep him off of any and every roster.
This could perhaps be a result of his playing abilities, his personal politics or simply the color of his skin, but either way, we are six weeks into the new season, and Kaepernick is yet to be signed to any roster.
Kaepernick hopes the grievance, if successful, will terminate the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. For those of you that don’t know, this is the agreement the owners make with the players to ensure their fair treatment. This can be achieved if Kaepernick and his team of lawyers are able to prove the collusion of owners.
The next step would be to draft a new CBA that prevents collusion against players, and the kneeling Kaepernick would potentially have a team on which to play. This, of course, is the ideal chain of events, except for one possible roadblock: he is a mediocre player.
To think that he can take on the NFL and prove them guilty of something so subjective as collusion is ridiculous. It’s why I mentioned psychology earlier. It seems to me like Colin Kaepernick is guilty of intentionality bias.
Intentionality bias is a phenomenon that occurs often in humans when ambiguous events happen. We instinctively assume that the ambiguous event was intentional. Conspiracy theorists usually possess this bias (you know the guy that assumes every plane crash is intentional and thinks every house fire is an act of arson).
I don’t believe the league is intentionally dropping Kaepernick because his stance makes people uncomfortable. I don’t think it is simply because of his skin color. Michael Bennett still sits and is a Pro-Bowl level player. If Aaron Rodgers took the same stand, he’d still be in the league next year because the difference between Rodgers and Kaepernick is that one is really talented while the other simply isn’t.
It’s Kaepernick’s lack of play-making ability plus his politics that are enough to make owners hold onto their money. If Kaepernick had Aaron Rodger’s arm, or Dak Prescott’s game management, then there’d unquestionably be a spot for him.
Kaepernick, like any frustrated NFL player without a job, is looking for answers. The idea that the owners have colluded against him is one that makes sense, and he will certainly make a case for himself. But the NFL is about profit and PR, and Kaepernick is simply bad PR for the league and many of its fans.
The owners haven’t messaged each other in a 32-person group chat, all agreeing to blackball the kneeling QB. They’ve individually taken a look at his lack of skills, and the bad optics he brings, and made a football/business decision.
I would never ask Kaepernick to change his politics to appease other people, so if Kaepernick would like to play in the NFL again, he should prove in tryouts that he can up his completion percentage.
