Many people’s criticisms of the draft was bolstered when former Oklahoma State star wide receiver Dez Bryant was asked by the NFL’s Miami Dolphins if his mother was ever a prostitute.
Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland confirmed reports that first appeared in the Miami Herald that he indeed asked if Bryant’s mother was a hooker. It took place during the set of interview questions that help pro teams decide who they want to draft out of college.
What could ever make Ireland think it was possibly appropriate to ask such a question? Ireland says he had his reasons, although he later apologized for it.
“My job is to find out as much information as possible about a player that I’m considering drafting. Sometimes that leads to asking in-depth questions,” Ireland said during his hastily prepared mea culpa. “I talked to Dez Bryant and told him I used poor judgment in one of the questions I asked him. I certainly mean[t] no disrespect and apologized to him.”
Now that the outlandish question has been leaked to the public, Bryant and his mother are thoroughly humiliated and he will be subjected to all types of crude and cruel jokes in the brutal, no-holds-barred locker rooms of the NFL.
“I appreciate [Bryant’s] acceptance of that apology,” Ireland said, wishing that he could have plugged the hole in his face that first asked the question in the first place. “I told him I wished him well as he embarks on his NFL career.
Does it matter that, as the Dallas Morning News reported, that Bryant’s mother, Angela, gave birth to him at 15 and sold drugs? Bryant and his mother happen to be close and Angela Bryant attend the draft-day party in New York on Thursday [he was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the first round]. It makes you wonder how Angela Bryant is feeling right now, knowing that some clueless, middle-aged, high-ranking NFL general manager thinks that she was a paid streetwalker and, worse, had no compunction asking her son about this.
The NFL pre-draft period is the same type of process by which NFL teams made black collegiate star Myron Rolle feel bad for having the audacity to put the NFL draft on hold to become a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. They actually asked Rolle if he felt he had abandoned his teammates. What?!
If the NFL — and especially commissioner Roger Goodell — is so intent on administering blistering punishments for player misconduct, then shouldn’t there be some sort of reprimand or administrative action taken against teams for beating down a Rhodes Scholar and asking a grown man if his mother was a prostitute? –terry shropshire
