It’s not the biggest aspect of Colin Kaepernick’s life that got overshadowed by his kneeling protests of last season. But in the national debate that ensued, it was easy to forget that his days as a 49er were numbered long before he made his protests public.

There’s no reason to forget it now, with Kaepernick officially opting out of his contract. Delete all the personal feelings one way or the other about the protest, and what bubbles back up is how toxic things were between him and the team dating back to Jim Harbaugh’s last season as coach.

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This has been building for a while. Kneeling distracted everybody from it — in fact, it distracted everybody just months after the 49ers had shopped him around trying to satisfy his trade request.

This is just the inevitable taking place.

It doesn't necessarily slam the door on Kaepernick coming back, or even preclude yet another eager, optimistic attempt at bonding with yet another new head coach, new staff and new scheme — plus, for a change, a new front office. In the absolute strictest of football senses, Kyle Shanahan might really be just what Kaepernick needs (although the same was said a year ago about Chip Kelly, for whatever that’s worth).

But enough is enough. It’s a divorce that never got finalized, and the papers are at least getting signed now.

The crazy irony is that, while much of the league (usually under the cowardly cloak of anonymity) condemned Kaepernick’s protests and swore that they wanted no part of him, Kaepernick had no bigger supporter than 49ers owner Jed York, stood up for the QB's constitutional rights and donated to related causes.

As an organization, the 49ers all season long shut down talk that they were ready to drop him for being either a detriment to the team or an enemy of the people (to borrow a recent phrase from a certain politician). Not only did they refuse to inflict an on-field punishment as so many demanded, they made him a starter when it was obvious he was their best option.

Yet none of that washed away the ugliness that marked the last three years Kaepernick has been there.

It never obscured the chaos within the organization throughout that time — from Harbaugh clashing with York and then-general manager Trent Baalke, through the three coaches they’ve hired since pushing him out, to smears on Kaepernick’s character doled out by “insiders," to the clumsiness of his injury diagnosis in 2015, to the trade demand shenanigans of last offseason.

It had to end sometime. The fact that it didn’t end before last season managed to put Kaepernick and the 49ers in a non-football-related spotlight — otherwise, Ground Zero in the debate over police brutality, the oppression of people of color and the right to protest would have been someplace other than Santa Clara.

But it was there with the 49ers, during one of the very worst seasons in their storied history, with another coach being forced to walk the plank … and, thanks to an odd chain of events, with Kaepernick proving he was neither washed up as a player nor locker room poison.

All things considered in a depth-poor NFL quarterback landscape, that’s going to get Kaepernick some interest, and he’s much easier to acquire now than he was a year ago.

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A team could do a whole lot worse, as a backup or even a starter, than a seven-year vet who’s been to a Super Bowl, turned in unforgettable postseason performances, recovered from serious injury to post a 90.7 rating and a 16-to-4 touchdown-interception ratio with almost zero talent around him … and is way tougher and more popular than many want to acknowledge.

Teams have done, and are doing, much worse than that.

It needs to be another team, though. Kaepernick and the 49ers can finally make a clean break. Besides York, he’s the last character in that soap opera to exit the stage.

It's time.