By Prince Hakeem
The XFL is up and running and it features some notable former NFL players. Just like the short lived AAF football league, the X-treme Football League is a start-up with much promise. The opening weekend was received well by viewing audiences and returned some solid ratings.
One of the big differences between leagues like the XFL and the NFL is well.. the money. Coming in to this new league, the average player’s salary is $55,000. So when reports about Colin Kaepernick asking for an exorbitant amount of money to play in the XFL started to make it’s rounds, it was a bit surprising.
According to league commissioner Oliver Luck, Kaepernick was in talks to join the XFL. It would have been his first display as a quarterback since his last stint with the NFL back in 2016. However things went downhill fast after salary demands came up. Luck said that after detailing Colin and his team about the league’s initial interest, things didn’t go much further than that. His price tag was too much.
“We have some pretty significant salary restrictions, you know,” Luck said in an interview with NPR over the weekend. “We’re a start-up league, so we want to make sure that we can be fiscally responsible and fiscally prudent.”
“And the, you know, salary requirements that some folks, you know, shared with us were in our case exorbitant, so we, you know, couldn’t go down that path.”
If this is true, this does not leave Kaepernick looking good. Given the way his recent workout with the NFL, and how self-serving it turned into, he certainly isn’t doing himself any favors.
