Just because Kaepernick is physically talented enough to play in the league doesn't mean he has a right to. Every owner has decided independently (with some giving him tryouts I believe and even a contract offer) that he is not quite a big enough difference maker, and too big a distraction to sign. Think about the media circus this invites in. So many of your own fans will hate him. Unless he truly had top level talent (which Vick still did when he was signed, although he was flawed himself) it's just not worth it in any way
I understand that is your opinion, mine obviously differs. There is no point to belabor it here when you believe it would take all teams to be involved and I believe two or more would demonstrate collusion or simply the "organized effort.". This will be decided based on the evidence. Ambiguity certainly exists but I find nothing that indicates all potential players must act for collusion to occur - two will suffice. From a recent article appearing in Esquire referring to larger matters: "Black's Law Dictionary defines collusion as "a deceitful agreement or compact between two or more persons, for the one party to bring an action against the other for some evil purpose, as to defraud a third party..." A conspiracy, on the other hand, is defined as "a combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purposes of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act, or some act which is innocent in itself, but becomes unlawful when done by the concerted action of the conspirators." Got it? You can have collusion without having a criminal conspiracy, but you can't have a criminal conspiracy without some sort of collusion."
You are confusing the necessity of having two or more parties for collusion with two parties can collude to keep a player off 30 teams. Let’s pick two teams — the 49ers and Ravens. They collude together not to sign Kaep. How does that prevent Kaep from getting signed by the other 28 teams? His claim is that the collusion was keeping him from being signed by all teams, not that certain teams colluded to keep him off those specific teams. To prove he has been a victim of collusion with the intent to keep him out of the league he’d need to prove all teams agreed to do so, otherwise you simply have collusion by individual teams not the league. As I said in my first response to you, the courts have ruled that each team is an independent entity so the actions of a few don’t equate to an action by the league as a whole. Just look at the baseball collusion of the 80’s for example. It only was collusion because all of the teams participated in an agreed strategy not to sign other teams free agents and not to sign players for more than 2 or 3 years which kept salaries artificially low. All you needed was one team to start signing other players and the impact of the collusion disappears but that didn’t happen.
I'm confusing nothing. You have your opinion, I have mine - we are not trying the case. I am fine with waiting until the arbitrator and/or courts have a finding.
That may be true, but from a jurors point of view, it's not a long stretch to conclude that if two teams were engaged in collusion then the whole league is guilty. Consider two McDonald's franchises that collude to deprive minorities of employment, as an example. A jury could reasonably hold the McDonald's Corporation liable for infringements by any of it's franchises.
Perhaps but that isn’t a relevant example unless McDonalds franchises have the same legal relationship to McDonalds corporate as the teams do to the league. I don’t know enough about franchise relationships to say they do or don’t; do you? A jury would still have to make a ruling based on the legal relationships of the parties; they can’t arbitrarily make one party liable if their contracts do not make them so.
some teams, Denver/Baltimore? claim they offered him a contract and he declined it. How does his lawyer prove that is false? (even if it is)
But the outcome of the case may not address our disagreement — that two teams in a league of 32 teams can’t collude to keep him out of the league because 30 other independent teams could simply have chosen not to sign him. Our disagreement is about collusion in general not this case. If he proves the league colluded that all 32 teams were in on it, that wouldn’t validate the claim that it only takes two teams to collude. And if he proves all 32 teams colluded it wouldn’t mean it could have taken less than 32 teams to prove it. The outcome is irrelevant to our discussion about collusion. That’s why you can’t simply read the definition and think it conveys the full understanding of collusion to every possible case. When it states two or more parties, all that is saying is that for collusion to exist it requires more than what party to do so, because one party can’t collude with itself to create a market impact (that would be a monopoly not collusion amongst multiple parties). You have to understand existing cases; just read about the MLB collusion cases to see what has to occur for sports teams to collude. For collusion to exist there has to be a market impact first to indicate some sort of collusion amongst multiple parties. Let’s taje meat prices. Let’s say there are five major meat suppliers who overwhelmingly control the market. They, in theory, should be competing with each other which causes prices to remain competitive. If the five suppliers get together and agree to all raise prices 30% and not lower it, that artificially raises the prices — that’s collusion. An agreement amongst the parties that results in an artificial market impact. But if only two agree to raise prices, but not the other three, and the meat customers all then choose to buy from the three non-participants, then there is no collusion because the market doesn’t suffer any impact other than the two suppliers losing business and maybe going out of business. Kaeps claim is specific — he has been frozen out of the entire league, not that a few teams simply conspired against him to keep him off their specific teams. He has to prove that he wasn’t signed by the Colts or Browns or Bills because those teams were in agreement with the other teams that if they didn’t sign him either would the Jets, Steelers and the rest of the league, which created the market impact that he was frozen out of the league. But if the Cowboys and Texans agree together not to sign him to keep him out of the league, but the other two teams tell the Texans and Cowboys to drop dead, they will sign him if they damn well please, no collusion exists that has frozen Kaep our of the league simply because two teams have conspired to do so. The other 30 simply have chosen not to sign him, not colluded against him to not sign him. The impact is the same — he is unsigned but it isn’t collusion. The two is simply a minimum amount required before collusion is even possible, not that two parties indicates collusion has happened.
Your meat distribution is a perfect example of the situation, but your interpretation is wrong. One need not have total participation of all possible players in a scheme for collusion to exist. If market share was relatively equal between the five, two could have a substantial effect on overall pricing due to the ability of any to influence the marketplace. That is the turning point of our difference of opinion and why I posted the legal definition requiring only two actors to have collusion. You seem to be saying that, in the NFL, if a single team owner said "I want nothing to do with that" the other 31 could do whatever they wanted to stifle competition with impunity. Even if half took place in a plan to blacklist certain players you would not find anyone guilty if the other sixteen refused to go along with such a plan. while the definition identifies any illegal cooperation between as few as two parties as collusion because they do have the ability to influence the marketplace by limiting, to whatever degree, demand for player services. We shall see.
That’s not what the legal definition says. The legal definition says you need a minimum of two actors because one actor doesn’t not equal collusion — collusion is an act that requires multiple actors but, at a minimum, only two are needed. But that two is only applicable depending on the market. It’s not saying you only need two actors to prove collusion. In the NFL all teams are equal; the actions of two teams cannot keep a player out of the league. There simply isn’t an example you can present in which collusion between the Texans and Cowboys has kept Kaepernick from a fair opportunity to be signed by the Jets, Giants or any of the other 30 teams. That’s what collusion requires.
I was speaking to the example of a single team not participating to collude while 31 did and also of a league where half the teams acted and half did not to demonstrate how ineffective a law or practice would be if it required 100% participation in an act to be prosecutable. The action of two teams may be sufficient to restrict the marketplace. There is nothing that requires the marketplace to be completely locked off in order to demonstrate collusion. We shall continue to disagree, I'm sure. Some day we'll have a ruling to second guess. Until then there's a football season ahead of us... Whatever happened to that short, orange wearing gourmet who used to chime in on legal matters around here?
Kaepernick settles with the NFL. Apparently his moral and righteous stand had a price. Hahahahaaaa. Good riddance now go away. https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-colin-kaepernick-withdraws-collusion-case-nfl-190149703.html
There's another side to that coin. The NFL did colluded to restrain trade and bought their way out. It's nice to know that Kaepernick was finally compensated for the disgraceful way the league treated him.
Two companies in an industry with multiple players aren't permitted to collude simply because the industry is so big that it wouldn't fix prices or restrain trade. It's against the Sherman anti-trust laws because it's an attempt to restrain trade or fix prices, which is against the law. In this case the NFL has an anti-trust exemption. That exemption is predicated on a good faith negotiation with the players union. It's clearly bad faith and an infraction on the CBA for any members of ownership to collude to restrain trade in this case in the form of a blackballing. The reason the NFL settled was the threat to their anti-trust exemption. Without that exemption the draft, restricted free agency and salary caps would be gone. The NFL's entire player contract and draft system is built on collusion. But that collusion is legal because the players have a union that negotiated it in good fait.
It's very possible they colluded or maybe they all individually decided his actions were disgraceful and didn't think he was worth it. Disgraceful is in the eye of the beholder.
It is clearly bad faith and collusion to black ball a player. No one knows if he was blackballed. It's certainly not clear. We can all guess and deciding on our viewpoint it would be very clear that the side you reside on is right. The reason the NFL settled likely had to do with what would come out in discovery or the potential of losing the case. Or maybe they just decided they had had enough with this folderol and decided lets just cut this dude a check. It's pennies on the dollar. You realize that it wasn't just the NFL that settled? Kaepernick settled too. He might have settled because he thought he couldn't win the case and decided money was more important than his faux principals.
They settled in order to keep the evidence from seeing the light of day. Obviously there was a smoking gun or the case would have been thrown out a long time ago.
