Friday’s developments regarding Texans owner Bob McNair will have an impact beyond Houston, apparently.
In his weekly Reasonable Doubt podcast, attorney Mark Geragos characterized McNair’s comment that "[w]e can’t have the inmates running the prison” as being directly relevant to quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s claim of collusion against the NFL.
“Remember when I indicated that I thought pretty soon a smoking gun would come up?” Geragos said on the podcast he hosts with Adam Carolla. “That’s about as good a smoking gun for collusion as you can get. ‘We’re not going to let the inmates run the prison.’”
While that statement in and of itself doesn’t show express collusion as to Kaepernick, it possibly constitutes implied collusion not only as to Kaepernick, but as to pretty much everything. The direct message is that we do what we want, collectively. The indirect message may be that if doing what we want to do requires collusion, we’ll do it.
Regardless of how Geragos ties the McNair remark to collusion, McNair has purchased a ticket to be the first person question under oath in the collusion case. Geragos disclosed during the podcast, which was taped on Friday, that he will demand on Saturday the deposition of McNair. Geragos then intends to question 49ers CEO Jed York, whose recent comments about owners no longer being afraid of an angry tweet from President Trump become, in the opinion of Geragos, evidence of prior collusion based on fear of Trump. Next, Geragos said he plans to explore what happened in Seattle, where the Seahawks flirted with Kaepernick but didn’t offer him a contract.
Through it all, Geragos continues to make it clear that the whole thing can go away quickly, if the NFL simply does what hasn’t been done since March.
“Make this a tough decision,” Geragos said. “Tell the owners sign him if you want. . . . I can think of seven teams right now that could use him, and convince his crazy lawyer to go away as a condition of the thing. All he wants to do is play. I mean, it’s crazy how they have painted themselves into a corner and all they have to do is stop the collusion and it can all go away. But they just don’t know what to do. They’re frozen. They’re almost paralyzed.”
As discussed in the October 25 edition of the PFT PM podcast, some believe that former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue would have handled this mess by targeting a team that seems to be in need of Kaepernick and cutting a deal with that team to sign Kaepernick in return for something, like hosting the Super Bowl or the draft. Current Commissioner Roger Goodell hasn’t done that yet or, if he has, Goodell has yet to find someone who will agree to do it.
Geragos has agreed to appear on the PFT PM podcast, via a special edition that will be taped later today.