Running back asked about his sexuality
When NFL prospects speak with team officials at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis, they expect some unusual, and possibly even upsetting, questions — but they are not supposed to be asked about their sexuality. Yet one highly regarded running back said that was exactly what happened to him.
LSU’s Derrius Guice was speaking on SiriusXM Radio on Wednesday when he was asked about the process of getting interviewed at the predraft combine, which began last week and ended Monday. “It was pretty crazy,” he said, according to USA Today. “Some people are really trying to get in your head and test your reaction.”
“I go in one room, and a team will ask me do I like men, just to see my reaction,” Guice said. “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?’ ”
Pro Football Talk cited “a source with knowledge of the situation” in confirming that “the question was asked” about Guice’s sexuality. It remains unclear which team posed the question, but the NFL likely will investigate the matter, as it did in 2016, when Ohio State’s Eli Apple, who went on to become a first-round pick by the Giants, said he was asked the same question by a Falcons staffer.
DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association, said Thursday the team should be prohibited from attending the combine.
“Find out what team did it and ban them from the combine,” Smith told “PFT Live.” “The question is inappropriate. Questions along these lines are always inappropriate.”
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league was “looking into the matter.” In a statement provided to The Washington Post, he added: “A question such as that is completely inappropriate and wholly contrary to league workplace policies.”
After the inappropriate question was posed to Apple, Falcons coach Dan Quinn said he was “disappointed in the question” and added: “I have spoken to the coach that interviewed Eli Apple and explained to him how inappropriate and unprofessional this was. I have reiterated this to the entire coaching staff, and I want to apologize to Eli for this even coming up. This is not what the Atlanta Falcons are about, and it is not how we are going to conduct ourselves.”
In 2013, after Colorado tight end Nick Kasa claimed that he was asked at the combine, “Do you like girls?” Smith said, “I know that the NFL agrees that these types of questions violate the law, our CBA and player rights.”
NFL teams have been known to use their interviews with prospects as ad hoc psychological exams as much as anything else, and they have asked questions meant to be deliberately provocative. Guice’s mention of the question about whether his “mom sells herself” recalled a similar episode with Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant, who would go on to become a first-round pick by the Cowboys, in 2010.
In that instance, the executive who asked the question, thenDolphins general manager Jeff Ireland, quickly apologized.
“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, according to ESPN. “Having said that, I talked to Dez Bryant and told him I used poor judgment in one of the questions I asked him.”