Just Don't Ask

The NFL Combine wrapped up earlier this week. Now, for the most part I find the Combine to be a waste of time, because watching someone do a bunch of drills shouldn't impact the three or four years of play they showed on the football field during games which actually counted. The fact that a guy doesn't have a good time in the cone shuttle really shouldn't matter when you have years of film on him. If anything, I want to back away from the guys who are Combine stars. JaMarcus Russell could throw the ball through the goal posts while on one knee at mid-field. When, exactly, did that skill come into play during his trainwreck of an NFL career? All the Combine does is give NFL executives a chance to over-think things and that is never a good idea. In my mind there are only two interesting parts of the Combine - the physicals and the interviews. The physicals are important because it is the first time most of these teams get a firsthand look at these guys without a team doctor to cloud the results and often they find something other people missed. The interview process is important because it is the first time the teams can officially talk to these kids and see if they would fit the organization. It's a player's chance to show his personality on an individual level and is pretty much the most important job interview the kid will ever had. However, what has happened in the last couple of years is that rather than learn about these kids, we're learning about some of the idiots who run the NFL teams.

Every year a story comes out about one team asking a bunch of weird questions to their potential draftees. Usually it is harmless - they ask you which animal you would like to be for a day because of something a scout read in some low-brow psychology book about which animal you pick as your favorite determining how hard you are willing to work. Occasionally it steers into the crass, such as when the Dolphins asked wide receiver Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute. (Just to clarify, that didn't come out of the blue. Bryant had said his father was a pimp and his mother worked for his father. No one was sure if he was joking.) However, this year it sounds like a few teams wandered passed crass and into illegal. Colorado tight end Nick Kasa recently gave an interview about his Combine experience and said a couple teams essentially asked him if he is gay, which is against the law. Kasa said they never came out and asked directly but hinted by asking him things like if he was married, if he had a girlfriend and ultimately, if he liked girls (which sounds pretty damn direct to me). I can guarantee you that if they asked Kasa, they asked every other kid they talked to.

Look, I can understand why an NFL team would like to know about something like this. With the Manti Te'o/dead-girlfriend-turning-out-to-be-alive-and-a-guy story dominating the headlines for a few weeks and NFL teams hating anything that could be considered a distraction, trying to see if a player is going to be duped like that would be in their best interest. Plus, let's not forget that locker rooms are not exactly known for being where forward-thinking individuals hang out. Sadly, an openly gay teammate probably fracture a locker room. Even worse, it wouldn't end there. For as progressive a country as we like to think we are, the first sports star who comes out as gay while still playing is going to cause a media circus. And in the interest of fairness it should be pointed out that Kasa never indicated that any of the teams which asked him had implied that being gay would negatively effect his draft stock. (Yeah, right.) But even with all that being said, it still doesn't excuse any team from asking that question. There are laws on the books which say that what people do in the privacy of their own home is none of their employer's business as long as it is not illegal and asking them about it during the interview process is a violation of their rights, no matter how much money your league made last year.

Honestly, I kind of hope the teams and the NFL catch some hell for this. Not because they broke the law, but because every now and again they need to be slapped back and reminded that the laws still apply to them. I guaranteed you some lawyer working for whichever teams asked this question said that as long as they phrased it the right way they would be covered. Plus, they probably assumed it would never come out because these kids want to be drafted so badly they will keep any potential legal infractions to themselves to not hurt their draft status. (Here's how messed up football can be: not only is there now zero chance Kasa gets drafted by whichever teams asked him about his sexuality, but sadly there are going to be teams which won't draft him now because they think he can't keep secrets. Seriously, the NFL is really full of assholes.) I love football as much as anyone, but that doesn't mean the NFL gets to trample all over people's personal rights just because a coach doesn't like talking to the media for any longer than he has to. This story just depresses me because I often try to defend football and sports as being a lot further along when it comes to tolerance than people want to give it credit for. Then a story like this comes out which reveals there is still a long, long way to go.