To think pro ballplayers once had to have offseason jobs to get by. Small wonder many of today’s fabulously enriched pros have an exaggerated, even fantastic sense of self-entitlement.

Who’s to prevent it? They’re invited to live in a world that doesn’t correspond with our orbit. And no one to explain or tell them otherwise. Certainly not Roger Goodell.

In the case of Colin Kaepernick, now over three years old, Goodell, as is his habit, avoided telling plain, practical, common-sense, good-for-all truths. Instead, he led with his feckless, patronizing, pandering make-it-go-away senses that only extended and exacerbated the issue.

First, let’s put the Kaepernick case in context with the world in which most of us live:

You own a prosperous store that sells specialty products in a prosperous niche industry, much like an NFL team owner.

One day, Colin, one of your best-paid employees, ambushes your customers at the front door by kneeling to protest something unrelated to the business, say, bear hunting.

You tell Colin, “OK, you’ve made your point. Now, cut it out.” The store owner doesn’t want to make his customers uneasy, especially his best, steadiest customers, lest they never return.

But the next day, Colin does it again.

Left with no choice other than to let his business decline and lay off other employees, you pay Colin what you owe him, then let him go.

Soon Colin discovers that word of his on-the-job behavior has spread throughout the niche industry. He can’t find work with his previous boss’s competitors. With the industry having determined that he’s bad for business, Colin combats this sensible conclusion by suing for collusion.

The court quickly dismisses the case as not merely frivolous but ridiculous.

But then we have Goodell’s NFL, which this week reached a financial settlement with Kaepernick, who sued for collusion to prevent his further NFL employment for exploiting NFL games, TV and the national anthem to protest police brutality.

He couldn’t have called for a rally? Or would that have drawn flies?

What prevented Goodell, from the start, from explaining why Kaepernick’s chosen venue for protest was in everyone’s, including Kapernick’s fellow players’, worst interests? If Kaepernick and others didn’t know it’s a business, one worth protecting, where did their multimillion-dollar deals come from?

And why didn’t Goodell tell the truth about Kaepernick’s conspicuous game-day, national anthem activism?

Kaepernick is not your standard protester of world conditions such as global warming or bear hunting. He doesn’t aspire to altruistic social change. At last word he’s not even registered to vote. He’s a fringe lunatic, radicalized in thought and deeds.

His police brutality protests are appalling in that he apparently supports the brutalization — and worse — of police. He is a fundraising booster of Joanne Chesimard, now Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army member in exile in Cuba after her conviction for participating in the traffic-stop execution of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, who, at 34, left a wife and 3-year-old son.

Foerster was shot with his own gun, then left to die. His partner was wounded.

It therefore can be reasonably surmised that Kaepernick, while anti-police brutality — who isn’t? — is supportive of those who murder cops. Goodell miss that? How? Why? Irrelevant? How about Nike, Kaepernick’s capitalist business partner and universal influence peddler?

Kaepernick is also a conspicuous acolyte of communist revolutionary Che Guevara, whose sense of justice and free expression was to execute opponents — real or imagined — without trial, when, as researchers claim, he wasn’t holding a Nazi-style book-burning and issuing death warrants for Cuban writers who dissented with his ideology.

And now Nike, which steadily appears on the list of companies that financially and physically abuse Third World laborers to slap together hideously overpriced status-symbol sneakers — also apparently meeting with Kaepernick’s approval — has issued a Kaepernick jersey to celebrate his triumph over the NFL. Surprise! It’s Nike black.

Why doesn’t Nike support the courage of Kaepernick’s convictions by selling those socks depicting police as pigs, worn by Kaepernick for the cameras while also wearing shorts during practice?

You see, if I, and perhaps you, were Goodell, I’d have told Kaepernick, from the start, that the NFL doesn’t owe him a living, so get lost and stay there. Better yet, go to hell. I would not have allowed him to game the game. But Goodell’s NFL paid him off — maybe with your “good investment” PSL money.

Among the employment mysteries within WFAN is why Chris Moore remains tethered to spot-hosting weekend afternoons.

In a sports-radio wasteland that has become easier to avoid than indulge, Moore’s shows make it past several exits rather than halfway to Wawa.

Disinclined to suffer fools among his callers, he politely dismisses them. If someone has something worth hearing, he’s a good listener. Imagine that.

He’s thoughtful, knowledgeable and modest — even self-deprecating. He doesn’t make claims or noises to provoke interest among the easy, and has a good grasp of issues within most sports.

This past Sunday he reminded listeners that the Yankees won 100 games last year, despite widespread preseason claims that players such as Gary Sanchez had to produce.

Moore’s a reliably good, intelligent listen, which may explain why he’s relegated to weekend afternoons.

Education tax dollars at work: In November, Rutgers linebacker Izaia Bullock, 22, was arrested, charged with planning a double homicide that was short-stopped by police. He was formally indicted Thursday.

Last week, Lester Gene Liston, recruited from Grand Blanc, Mich., to play LB for Rutgers — he did so in 2013 and 2014 — was sentenced via plea bargain in Michigan to six to 30 years for a 2017 murder.

In between, there have been arrests and convictions of many RU football recruits, ranging from credit card fraud, rape of a minor, breaking and entering, armed robbery and felonious assault.

Although many were 21 or older, then-Gov. Chris Christie, RU football yahoo and WFAN semi-regular, explained, “Disciplinary problems with teenagers is the normal course on a college campus.”

Readers write: Denny O’Hearn — “I still feel sorta bad for the drubbing of Matt Kuchar as I do for the poor guys with the foresight to have made a prenuptial agreement but, alas and surprise, a new plan!”

(Cheap as Kuchar might be, there was an element of his caddie betting the winner after the race. Only Mike Francesa is so privileged.)

Bill Lennan — “Rare is the moment that makes me see a silver lining in the fact that my dad is no longer alive, but Anthony Weiner released wearing a Mets’ cap made such a moment.”