XFL commissioner Oliver Luck said in a recent interview that Colin Kaepernick’s salary demands to play in the upstart league were ” exorbitant” and out of the league’s range.
Speaking with NPR, Luck said the two sides had initial conversations about Kaepernick playing in the XFL more than a year ago.
Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who was the first player to take a knee during the national anthem, last played in the NFL during the 2016 season. He has been out of the NFL since, but has repeatedly he said he wants another opportunity.
In 2019, Kaepernick and the NFL settled a grievance in which the quarterback accused owners of colluding to keep him out of the NFL over his political stances. He also held a public workout for the media last fall.
” We gave it some thought,” Luck said of recruiting Kaepernick to the XFL. “We have some pretty significant salary restrictions, you know. 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.
“We spoke with his representative,” Luck said, “and the salary requirements that were broached in that conversation were exorbitant and certainly out of our range.”
The average salary of XFL players is just $55,000, according to Pro Football Talk. Top quarterbacks, according to Yahoo Sports, make slightly more than the NFL rookie minimum — worth $495,000.
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