With the nation’s newest pro football league fairly off the ground, some are wondering why Colin Kaepernick isn’t playing for the new XFL. The answer, is typically Kaepernickian.
So, why isn’t Kaepernick gearing up for the XFL? It appears his salary demands priced him right out of the market from the word “go.”
From reports last year, the XFL actually reached out to Kaepernick to see if he might be interested in playing for the new league.
Last year, XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck noted that the XFL reached out to Kaepernick, but the former NFL player asked for an out sized $20 million a season salary. And in a league whose top pay is only $500,000 a season, that is just a touch higher than the league can float. As he has in so many other cases, Colin Kaepernick torpedoed his own chances.
“I think his salary demands are way out of our ballpark,” Luck said when asked about the possibility of Kaepernick joining the league. “He was never really a viable option.”
Still, as Sporting News noted, even if Kaepernick’s salary demands were in line with what the XFL could offer, there is the question of Kaepernick’s anti-American protests.
One of the very first things XFL Owner/CEO Vince McMahon did when he began planning the resurgence of the XFL was to announce that he would tolerate no protests in his new football league.
“People don’t want social and political issues coming into play when they are trying to be entertained,” McMahon told ESPN in 2017. “We want someone who wants to take a knee to do their version of that on their personal time.”
McMahon followed that up by saying he felt it would be “appropriate” for the league to make a rule requiring players to stand for the anthem.
“It’s a time-honored tradition to stand and appreciate the national anthem with any sport. Here in America — for that matter, in any country…so I think it’d be appropriate to do that,” he said.
McMahon’s concept may have been challenged by including Kaepernick.
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