DETROIT – 2005: Fernando Bryant of the Detroit Lions poses for his 2005 NFL headshot at photo day in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Getty Images)

Former NFL player Fernando Bryant was fired 20 days after being hired as the head football coach at Strong Rock Christian School in Georgia. He told the television station 11Alive that he was told he was fired because a parent complained about his social media posts.

He believes it was one of his wife’s posts.

“I was told that some parents weren’t happy with my past as a football player, as a professional as far as my social media and different things,” Bryant told 11Alive. “They actually never showed me the post. I can’t sit here and say that’s the only reason. That’s what was on the termination letter. But I was led to believe that it was my wife’s.”

11Alive said a source within the football program sent them the picture the parent had an issue with, in which Bryant and his wife were holding a bottle of alcohol.

Source: 11Alive

Bryant told 11Alive that the school requires that faculty are born-again Christians, but they never said that alcohol was explicitly off-limits. He said that kind of judgement about what Christianity should be is bad for the religion.

“If one parent or if one part of a school can control it that much, as far as Christianity, it makes you wonder what kind of times we’re in. It’s a scary role when you say … and to me, and I’m a Christian, that’s the one thing that gives Christianity a bad name, when we start passing judgments on one another. The only problem I had, and I told them this, the only problem I had is nothing about me changed from the day they started interviewing me, to the day they hired me, to the day they fired me. So it’s hard for me to understand why, what happened?”

See the full interview below:

[11Alive]

About Kevin Trahan

Kevin mostly covers college football and college basketball, with an emphasis on NCAA issues and other legal issues in sports. He is also an incoming law student. He's written for SB Nation, USA Today, VICE Sports, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.

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