Colin Kaepernick has been out of the NFL for whatever reason since the end of the 2016 season, and despite his obvious talents through his six-year NFL career and the general dearth of overall quality at the position throughout the league, no team has taken a chance on Kaepernick as a player who could improve its fortunes.

One generally assumes that the league has colluded to keep Kaepernick out because of his political stances and protests during the national anthem, but collusion is hard to prove. To best prove collusion against the NFL, Kaepernick and his legal team, led by attorney Mark Geragos, would be best served to put his abilities on the field in an alternate venue and see where the chips fall.

Which is where the Alliance of American Football may very well come in.

The standard counterargument to the notion of collusion is that Kaepernick is a quarterback who never developed first-level skills, and whatever skills he possessed have eroded over the last two seasons. Well, here comes the AAF, which starts playing games this weekend, and looks to have more on the ball than your standard expansion league.

As our own Michael Colangelo recently pointed out, the league run by Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian has established coaches such as Rick Neuheisel, Steve Spurrier and Mike Martz. Yes, each of those coaches have had his mercurial moments, but at least we’re not talking about a league without coaching talent. And if you look at Pro Football Focus’ AAF Fantasy Football rankings (yes, this is a thing), you’ll see quarterbacks with NFL experience like Zach Mettenberger, Aaron Murray and Christian Hackenberg.

And that’s where Kaepernick could be a major factor here — both for himself and for the league. Nobody is going to watch this league specifically for quarterbacks like that. But if Kaepernick were to join the league, you can bet that the eyeballs on those upcoming telecasts would increase. And Kaepernick would be able to display his current talent level against what is essentially a developmental league. He wouldn’t have to jump back into the NFL without having read a defense in two seasons.

Moreover, if Kaepernick slays in the AAF, and he still isn’t signed by an NFL team while guys like Mettenberger and Hackenberg get more chances to throw their far more limited wares against the league in the late summer and early fall, Kaepernick and his representatives would have a lead-pipe lock of a collusion case against the league.

It’s time for the drama of Kaepernick vs. the NFL to come to a head, and the AAF could be the perfect vehicle for that.