After nearly three years away from the game, Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who became a lightning rod for taking a knee to protest social injustice during the national anthem, is one step closer to being back in the NFL.

Kapernick, a once-electrifying player who has a Super Bowl appearance on his resume, got notice from the NFL on Tuesday that a private workout has been arranged for him on Saturday in Atlanta.

All 32 NFL teams — those same teams that have refused to sign him following the anthem controversy — will be invited to the Atlanta Falcons facility in Flowery Branch, Ga.

The former Pro Bowl quarterback, who played with the San Francisco 49ers, last suited up for an NFL game during the 2016 season. Kaepernick appears to have been caught off guard by the league’s sudden interest, tweeting Tuesday evening:

“I’m just getting word from my representatives that the NFL league office reached out to them about a workout in Atlanta on Saturday. I’ve been in shape and ready for this for 3 years, can’t wait to see the head coaches and GMs on Saturday.”

The scheduled workout presents a long-awaited opportunity for Kaepernick to quiet doubters and show he can still play at an NFL level.

It also offers a chance to move past allegations he’s levied against the league that all 32 teams colluded to bar him from playing. Kaepernick and the league settled a grievance in February. A similar settlement was reached with Eric Reid, who knelt with Kaepernick during the Star Spangled Banner. Reid wasn’t immediately picked up when his contract expired but now plays safety for the Carolina Panthers.

Then and now, Kaepernick maintains that the demonstration that began during a preseason game in 2016 was meant to call attention to police shootings of unarmed black people and inequality in the criminal justice system.

Critics, including then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, derided the displays of kneeling as disrespectful to U.S. troops and the American flag.

Before the start of the 2016 NFL season, Trump blasted Kaepernick and the protests, suggesting “maybe he should find a country that works better for him.” In 2017, the first season Kaepernick went unsigned, now-President Trump suggested that the NFL “fire or suspend” any player who didn’t stand for the national anthem.

The news of Saturday’s workout was first reported by ESPN, which adds that “several clubs” have put out feelers about Kaepernick’s “football readiness.” The sports network also notes that Kaepernick’s representatives initially “began to question the legitimacy” of the invitation.

“Because of the shroud of mystery around the workout and because none of the 32 NFL teams had been informed prior to Tuesday, Kaepernick’s representatives began to question the legitimacy of the workout and process and whether it was just a PR stunt by the league,” ESPN writes.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter who broke the story, tweeted that Kaepernick’s representatives asked about changing the timing of the workout but that the league would not budge.

“Kaepernick’s reps asked for workout to be on a Tuesday, the day of most workouts, but NFL said it had to be this Saturday. He asked for a later Saturday; NFL said no,” Schefter said.

Tyler Tynes, a staff writer at the sports and culture website The Ringer, points out that Saturdays are complicated for league staff because that’s when NFL scouts fan out across the country to evaluate top college prospects and because it’s too close to Sunday NFL games.

“Kap’s representatives were told that the NFL needed an answer ‘in two hours’ if Kaepernick planned to go through with the workout,” Tynes tweeted. “A lot of people had to rearrange their schedules. They thought it conflicted with college football scouting schedules and NFL Sunday game day prep.”

NPR reached out to the NFL Players Association for comment on the timing of Kaepernick’s workout, and was directed to a five-word tweet by Executive Director DeMaurice Smith.

“Long overdue; well deserved chance.”

On social media, some people wondered whether the whole exercise is a public relations stunt.

Malik Spann of Blitz Magazine tweeted: “NFL is literally treating Kaepernick like an ex-offender trying to make him do the most obscure things for re-entry…it’s so disingenuous & fraudulent, it’s an humiliating PR process or stunt that no capable play has ever had to deal with to get back on the field.”

And Jamele Hill, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said the move by the NFL feels “disingenuous.”

“I know Colin wants to play, but this feels so disingenuous on the NFL’s part,” she tweeted. “I’ve said this since the first time Donald Trump called him out at a rally: Colin Kaepernick will never play in the NFL again. I hope I’m very wrong about this, but NFL owners are cowardly.”

Others lamented that it “will be a distraction” for any team that signs him.

“Why is it not OK for an NFL team to simply say “we aren’t interested in Colin Kaepernick because we feel like he will be a distraction to what we are trying to accomplish” Why is that not OK?” tweeted Colin Dunlap, host of The Fan radio show in Pittsburgh.

According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the workout is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET Saturday and will play out similar to the NFL combine, where college players perform physical and mental tests for teams ahead of the NFL draft.

USA Today columnist Jarrett Bell writes that any team that wanted to do its due diligence on Kaepernick “could have brought him in way before now” but adds that “hopefully” the weekend workout is a signal teams are moving beyond “kneeling as a reason for shutting Kaepernick out of the league.”

Bell adds:

“This is an unprecedented move for the NFL to set up a showcase for one player.

“Kaepernick, though, is not just one player. He’s the one who still has some major credibility in the African-American community for sacrificing his career for a noble cause – detesting police killings of unarmed African-Americans and other social injustices.”

As part of its 30^th anniversary celebrations of the wildly successful “Just Do It” slogan, Nike made the exiled athlete a centerpiece of its 30^th anniversary ad push. One ad showed a black and white image of his face with the words: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

Nike has been working to develop an apparel line for the athlete-turned-social activist and has donated to his “Know Your Rights” campaign, which was created to advance the well-being of black and brown communities.

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Nike says it’s investigating claims of physical and mental abuse in its now-defunct Oregon Project in response to former running phenom Mary Cain’s harrowing account of her time under disgraced coach Alberto Salazar.

Cain says she paid a steep price during her time with the elite distance-running program, from self-harm and suicidal thoughts to broken bones related to her declining health.

She is speaking out less than a month after Nike shut down the Oregon Project in the wake of a four-year doping ban against Salazar, which he has said he plans to appeal. A string of elite athletes — Cain’s former Oregon Project teammates — say they back her claims.

“I joined Nike because I wanted to be the best female athlete ever,” Cain says in an opinion video produced by The New York Times. “Instead, I was emotionally and physically abused by a system designed by Alberto and endorsed by Nike.”

Cain, 23, shot to fame in 2012 as a blazingly fast New York teenager who shattered national records. She began training with Salazar full time after finishing high school, skipping the NCAA track circuit altogether. At the time, she was seen as a prodigy, a sure bet to win Olympic gold and set world records. In 2013, she won the International Athletic Foundation’s Rising Star Award.

But Cain says Salazar and other staff members constantly pressured her to lose weight — and that her health suffered dramatically as a result.

“When I first arrived, an all-male Nike staff became convinced that in order for me to get better, I had to become thinner and thinner and thinner,” Cain says in the Times video.

Cain says that mantra — and public shaming about her weight — led to a spiral of health problems known as relative energy deficiency in sport, or RED-S Syndrome. Also called the Female Athlete Triad, the condition is triggered when athletes take in too few calories to support their training. Next, they stop having menstrual periods — and lose vital bone density as a result.

“I broke five different bones” because of RED-S, Cain says.

Cain says that after a disappointing finish in a race in 2015, Salazar yelled at her in front of a large crowd, saying he could tell she had gained 5 pounds.

“It was also that night that I told Alberto and our sports psych that I was cutting myself and they pretty much told me that they just wanted to go to bed,” Cain said. Soon afterward, she says she decided to leave Salazar’s program and return home to Bronxville, N.Y.

Salazar denies Cain’s accusations against him. NPR’s attempts to contact Salazar for comment so far have been unsuccessful. But The Oregonian quotes a statement from the famous coach in which he says, “To be clear, I never encouraged her, or worse yet, shamed her, to maintain an unhealthy weight.”

In that message, Salazar also says that Cain “struggled to find and maintain her ideal performance and training weight.” But he says he discussed the issue with Cain’s father, who is a doctor, and referred her to a female doctor, as well.

In response to Cain’s allegations, Nike says, “We take the allegations extremely seriously and will launch an immediate investigation to hear from former Oregon Project athletes.”

The company calls Cain’s claims “deeply troubling,” but it says that neither Mary nor her parents had previously raised the allegations.

“Mary was seeking to rejoin the Oregon Project and Alberto’s team as recently as April of this year and had not raised these concerns as part of that process,” a Nike spokesperson said in an email to NPR.

On Friday morning, Cain addressed her recent attempt to rejoin the team, saying via Twitter, “As recently as this summer, I still thought: ‘maybe if I rejoin the team, it’ll go back to how it was.’ But we all come to face our demons in some way. For me, that was seeing my old team this last spring.”

Over the summer, Cain says, she became convinced that Salazar only cared about her as “the product, the performer, the athlete,” not as a person. She adds that she decided to go public with her story after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency punished Salazar earlier this year. Now Cain is calling for Nike to change its ways — and to ensure the culture that thrived under Salazar is eradicated.

“In track and field, Nike is all-powerful,” Cain says in the Times video. “They control the top coaches, athletes, races, even the governing body. You can’t just fire a coach and eliminate a program and pretend the problem is solved.”

She adds, “My worry is that Nike is merely going to re-brand the old program and put Alberto’s old assistant coaches in charge.”

The list of runners who have stepped forward to support Cain includes Canadian distance runner Cameron Levins, a former Olympian and NCAA champion who trained in the Oregon Project.

“I knew that our coaching staff was obsessed with your weight loss, emphasizing it as if it were the single thing standing in the way of great performances,” Levins said in a tweet directed at Cain.

“I knew because they spoke of it openly among other athletes,” he added.

Another athlete, former NCAA champion Amy Yoder Begley, said she was kicked out of the Oregon Project after she placed sixth in a 10,000-meter race in 2011.

“I was told I was too fat and ‘had the biggest butt on the starting line,’ ” Begley said via Twitter. “This brings those painful memories back.”

Cain says her parents were “horrified” when she told them about her life in the Nike Oregon Project. “They bought me the first plane ride home,” she says. “They were like, get on that flight, get the hell out of there.”

On Friday, Cain thanked Levins for his support and said, “For so long, I thought I was the problem. To me, the silence of others meant that pushing my body past it’s healthy limits was the only way. But I know we were all scared, and fear keeps us silent.”

As for what changes Cain would like to see, she tells the Times that her sport needs more women in power.

“Part of me wonders if I had worked with more female psychologists, nutritionists and even coaches, where I’d be today,” Cain says. “I got caught in a system designed by and for men which destroys the bodies of young girls. Rather than force young girls to fend for themselves, we have to protect them.”

After being off the track-and-field radar for several years, Cain ran a four-mile race on Mother’s Day in Central Park. In an interview earlier this year, she talked about what she would write in a letter to her younger self.

Here’s part of what Cain told Citius Mag:

“I think my letter would say, ‘Go have that milkshake. Go see that movie. Go out with that friend. Love running and commit to running but the best way to do that is to love yourself and commit to yourself. Make sure you’re doing those other things as well so that once you go out for a run, you’re so happy to be there.'”

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Australia’s soccer governing body says it has reached an agreement with its top-flight men’s and women’s teams that will give the teams an equal share of player-generated revenue and lift the salaries of its women’s team.

Under the collective bargaining agreement between Football Federation Australia and Professional Footballers Australia, the two teams will be granted 24% of the revenue that they generate: 19% for themselves, and 5% to be invested in their names in the country’s youth national teams. The share paid to players will rise one point a year.

Salaries for the women’s team will rise under the new deal. Top women’s players will make about $57,000 USD a year in 2020, up from about $38,000 this year.

The FFA says the deal amounts to a 90% raise in guaranteed minimum payments for the Matildas, as the women’s team is known. The men’s team is the Socceroos. (Australia has achieved relative parity in team nicknames.)

The contract promise other improvements for the women’s team. The federation says it will upgrade the parental leave policy to provide more support for Matildas both during pregnancy and when they return to the pitch. Training conditions will now match those of the men’s team. And the Matildas will travel in business class on international flights, as the Socceroos long have.

The agreement is good for four years, governing the payouts for the next men’s and women’s World Cups. Australia is among the nations vying to host the 2023 women’s tournament.

The Matildas have historically fared better on the international stage than their male counterparts. At the 2019 Women’s World Cup, the Matildas were eliminated by Norway on penalties in the round of 16, while the Socceroos finished last in their group at the 2018 men’s tournament.

Under the new deal, players will get 40% of the prize money awarded by FIFA for playing in a World Cup, rising to 50% if they qualify for the knockout round. That’s up from the 30% the teams made before.

But it also represents the contract’s limits in terms of parity, because the payouts from FIFA are so much smaller for the women’s tournament. In 2023, women’s teams will share $60 million, while in 2022 the men will divide $440 million – a pot more than seven times bigger.

Australia joins other countries in improving pay and working conditions for its women’s teams. Norway began paying its men’s and women’s teams equal salaries in 2017, and New Zealand announced pay parity and international business-class travel for its women’s team last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. women’s team lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by U.S. soccer continues. Mediation between the two parties broke down, and the case is headed for trial in May 2020.

Alex Morgan, co-captain of the U.S. team that made “equal pay” their cry of victory at last summer’s World Cup, said in August that she’s hopeful the two sides can find a resolution before going to court.

The team’s fight for parity isn’t for themselves, she said, but for the next generation of players.

“We’re not going to reap the benefits from equal pay and what we’re fighting for,” she told NPR. “That next generation should feel confident that they’re in good hands, and that we are setting up this structure, and this compensation, and this true equality for them.”

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