After a poor performance in the BCS Championship Game for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish coupled with an embarrassing hoax revealing a fake girlfriend on top of a weak showing at the NFL Scouting Combine, things have not gone well as of late for hopeful 2013 NFL Draft pick Manti Te’o. Unfortunately, things may be about to become even more difficult for runner-up to the Heisman Trophy. Leading up to the 2013 NFL Draft, many teams will be asking Te’o questions about what has taken place off the field more so than what he has done on the gridiron. According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk and NBC Sports, NFL teams will ask is Te’o gay before they decide whether or not he is worthy of being selected in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft.
“On the field, you still have to account for what happened in the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama,” Florio told the Dan Patrick Show. “Here’s the elephant in the room for the teams and it shouldn’t matter, but we have to step aside from the rest of reality and walk into the unique industry that is the NFL. Teams want to know whether Manti Te’o is gay. They just want to know. They want to know because in an NFL locker room, it’s a different world. It shouldn’t be that way.”
Even in a day and age where well known actors and celebrities and politicians have come out and announced that they are gay, it is still not taking place in the world of professional sports. A few players have come out as gay after they announced their retirement, but none have done so as active members of the NFL.
Whether or not Te’o is gay should not matter. It shouldn’t But in all likelihood, it would.
The issue may be whether or not teams can even ask the question. If they ask is Te’o gay, it could widely be perceived as discrimination, especially if those teams passed on drafting him. But even asking the question may be bad enough. As of now the worst question an NFL general manager asked a prospective draft prospect was when Miami Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland ignorantly asked Oklahoma State Cowboys – now Dallas Cowboys – wide receiver Dez Bryant whether his mother was a prostitute.
Florio also referenced that faux pas by Ireland, adding that “If you go Katie Couric on Manti Te’o, it’s going to come out that some team, some GM some coach asked Manti Te’o if he’s gay. Then you’ll have to deal with all the distraction and all the stuff that flows after that.”
Te’o appeared on Couric’s show to discuss the fake girlfriend hoax involving a woman he said he believed was Lennay Kekua, when in actuality it was a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Many wondered whether or not Te’o really knew the truth behind the Twitter hoax, questioning whether he played along to detract from his true sexual preference.
Florio added
“It’s been described to me as the proverbial elephant in the room and I don’t think anyone knows how to solve this dilemma yet. It’s just that they want to know what they’re getting. They want to know what issues they may be dealing with down the road. We just assumed that at some point there would be an openly gay player in an NFL locker room and the team would have to work with the realities and make sure that everything’s fine. Now you have a situation where you have a guy who was in a relationship with a fake girl who ended up being a real man, and the man has said to Dr. Phil that he was romantically in love with Manti Te’o, it just raises a lot of questions that the NFL at some point is going to have to deal with.”
Whereas many teams have done their homework when it comes to character concerns and other off the field issues with draft prospects, this is an entirely different scenario. From the beginning, this entire incident involving Te’o has been nothing short of bizarre. That is not going to change in the near or distant future.
“Tony Dungy makes a great point on this,” Florio concluded. If the NFL were ready for an openly gay player, there would be an openly gay player. Nobody knows better the feel of an NFL locker room than someone who’s in it. I’m not saying anyone would take Manti Te’o off the board if they suspected he’s gay or know he’s gay. That’s just the thing that’s out there that they want to know the answer to.”
The dilemma is, will any of them pose the question?
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