Vernon Davis on minicamp: 'I plan on being there'

San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis went on 95.7 The Game earlier today, and he told the hosts he planned on being at the team's mandatory minicamp next week. Matt Maiocco pulled some of the pertinent quotations, but the whole interview is actually kind of fun to listen to. It opens with extensive discussion about beef jerky, moved on to discussions about Vernon's art, and then gets into the contract chatter. The contract discussion starts at around 6 minutes in.

Vernon said, "I plan on being there. I plan on being there." The host brought up the stories indicating Davis is not 100 percent happy, and asked him what was up. It was at this point that Davis put together some impressive spin. He said this was not really about his contract, but rather was about the entity that he is. He talked about being a businessman and an entrepeneur. This follows comments in the last couple weeks in which Davis talked about his brand, which lines up with all the Fantex stuff.

I have to give Vernon credit, this is a unique spin on missing the voluntary OTAs. Some have suggested Vernon is just trying to build buzz around Fantex in general, and it's not necessarily about getting a new contract. Others have suggested he's pushing for the contract to get value for his investors. Whatever the case, it's a unique situation in that regard. And Vernon certainly is spinning it as such. He talked about wanting the rest of the league to consider themselves as such an entity, and to work toward taking charge of that.

Maybe it's just wanting more people in on the Fantex thing, or maybe he just wants more players making better business decisions. We hear about players going broke after they get out of football. It would be smart for more players to take a more active role in the brand that is "them". It's an odd dynamic fans are not entirely used to, but it's kind of interesting nonetheless.

All that being said, the most important thing to take from this is that Vernon Davis plans on being at minicamp next week. If he shows up, he'll avoid upwards of $69,455 in fines. If he shows up at minicamp, the next question then becomes what to expect of him for training camp in late July.