In a story that is unfortunately unsurprising — even in 2018 — when it comes to NFL culture, LSU running back Derrius Guice told Sirius XM radio on Wednesday night that a team asked if he likes men at last week’s NFL Scouting Combine.
Pro Football Talk reports that they “confirmed via a source with knowledge of the situation that the question was asked” to Guice, a potential first-round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft.
Running back Derrius Guice said in a Wednesday night appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio that a team asked him at the Scouting Combine if he likes men. (PFT separately has confirmed via a source with knowledge of the situation that the question was asked.)
As Sportings News‘ Alex Marvez notes, that sort of question “is prohibited under the league’s Excellence in Workplace Conduct policy and potentially illegal under state law.”
It’s unclear what team asked this, but sadly there are football people neanderthals that still have this sort of thinking in probably every NFL organization.
In 2016, cornerback Eli Apple said the Atlanta Falcons asked him if he liked men at the NFL Combine.
“I’ve been asked a lot of weird questions. I don’t know if I could say on TV,” Apple said.
“The Falcons coach, one of the coaches, was like, ‘So do you like men?’ It was like the first thing he asked me. It was weird. I was just like, ‘no.’ He was like, ‘if you’re going to come to Atlanta, sometimes that’s how it is around here, you’re going to have to get used to it.’ I guess he was joking but they just ask most of these questions to see how you’re going to react.”
That was after tight end Nick Kasa said in 2013 that an NFL team asked him about his sexual orientation.
After the Apple incident in 2016, the league told Pro Football Talk that the question was “disappointing” and said they would “look into it.”
“This is disappointing and clearly inappropriate as the Falcons acknowledged,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told PFT by email on Friday afternoon. “We will look into it.”
It’s well beyond time for the NFL to take this more seriously and punish the teams and coaches/front office members responsible for such questions to prospects. Otherwise, more prospects will likely get the same questions in 2019.
[Pro Football Talk; Sporting News]
