The NFL Combine is one of the most important days in any player's career, while a few players make it into the league without being invited to the Combine, it's safe to say if you're not invited your chances of ever playing in the NFL are low. The Combine is tantamount to the biggest job interview in a young prospect's life. There is an immense amount of pressure to preform on the field, as a bad day here could mean losing out on millions of dollars. Orlando Brown went into the Combine as an All-American projected to be a first-round pick, however, after a 5.85 40 and putting up only 14 reps on the bench press scouts are now wondering if he is even draftable.
Needless to say, there is an immense amount of pressure to preform and LSU RB Derrius Guice responded to this pressure phenomenally.
Guice measured in at 224 pounds, and ran a 4.4 40 while also managing to look good in other drills when factoring in his size. He did all this after dominating the field at LSU, rushing for over 3000 yards and scoring 32 total touchdowns despite backing up NFL star Leonard Fournette for most of his career. Yet the questions teams asked were not about how he feels he could fit into an offense, his grasp of an NFL playbook, or anything relating to his play on the field.
Guice was instead asked highly inappropriate questions about his sexual orientation and his mother during interviews.
As Guice himself put it during an interview on the SiriusXM show "Late Hits": "It was pretty crazy ... I go into one room and a team asks me do I like men I go in another room, they'll try to bring up one of my family members or something and tell me 'hey I heard your mom sells herself. How do you feel about that?'" While Guice appears to have taken this in stride, and some sources inside the league have said that teams simply will ask a prospect anything just to try to catch them off guard, these questions are completely unacceptable.
Not the first time
While the NFL Players Association responded with a relatively strong statement by saying that the team that asked about Guice's sexuality should be banned from the Combine, the NFL office gave a much weaker response with the statement that they are looking into it and that the question was "contrary to league workplace policies." The response from the league front office just shows how far behind the times the NFL is.
This is not the first time this has happened, as NY Giants cornerback Eli Apple reported that "The Falcons coach, one of the coaches, was like, 'So, do you like men?' It was like the first thing he asked me." Before Apple, Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant was allegedly asked whether or not his mom was a prostitute leading up to the 2010 draft. There are multiple other instances of prospects being asked inappropriate questions, yet the NFL has yet to punish a team for this. This is unacceptable, situations like this keep occurring because no one faces any consequences for their actions. Guice is not the first player this has happened to and as long as the front office of the NFL refuses to do something, he won't be the last.
Shut up and play
Some might argue that athletes like Guice should take anything thrown at them with a smile because teams simply want to know every possible detail about someone that they are about to spend millions of dollars on. The fact of the matter is that these types of questions have no place in any workplace and that includes the NFL. The Combine for all intents and purposes is a job interview and the amount of money someone is set to make has no relevance on whether or not questions such a these are appropriate. If Apple interviewed their next CEO and asked whether or not they were gay, or if their mom was a prostitute, the company would be rightfully thrown to the wolves, and this should no different. What someone's mom does and what their sexual orientation is is irrelevant in terms of playing football, so why ask the question in the first place?
