The year 2017 isn’t quite over, but I think it’s fair to say that it has been the year of the “C” word.

Collusion. (Wait, what did you think I meant?) You hear it applied to the Russkie investigation. And you hear it applied to the NFL owners’ possible blackballing of Colin Kaepernick over his National Anthem protest. The latest is that Kaepernick’s attorney has subpoenaed the phone records and emails of certain key owners. I for one can’t see what good this will do. Collusion – the legal term would be conspiracy – is difficult to prove. After all, you can’t force people to give you a job, as the anti-Kap posters like to point out. The owners could say individually that they just didn’t need him.

Except that a lot of teams are hurting right now, like the Houston Texans. It may come down to whether the desire to help a team on the field outweighs the risk of alienating conservative fans.

But even if he never plays another game, good on Kaepernick for not going down without a fight. At this point, he has nothing to lose and, possibly, much to gain.

Not so the owners. They have the power, and the first rule of power is the maintenance of power. The second rule is the attainment of more power.

We’re in a terrible moment in this country as we move from a white male-dominated society to a multicultural, female-centric one. I think it’s one reason we’re seeing Trumpism, nationalism, mass shootings (usually by white men) and, at last, the exposing of Harvey Weinstein and other bigwigs as the predators they are.

Jill Filipovic put it brilliantly in her piece for the Sunday New York Times: “White male power remains a dominant force in America, but it is no longer the only force that matters. For many men, this is not a leveling of the playing field but a plundering of what was rightly theirs.”

White men don’t want to share the toys in the sandbox.

Maybe Kaepernick will force them to do so.