Before last week's draft, Dallas Cowboys first round draft pick Dez Bryant expressed frustration over some perceived character questions, which were raised after he was suspended three games into his final season at Oklahoma State for lying to an NCAA investigator.
Bryant said that these questions, particularly those concerning his family, were baseless and irrelevant. In one particular case, though, the line of questioning surpassed any discussion of validity, and entered the absurd--and kind of offensive.
“They asked me if my mom’s a prostitute,” Bryant told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports. “No, my mom is not a prostitute. I got mad – really mad – but I didn’t show it. I got a lot of questions like that: Does she still do drugs? I sat and answered all of them.”
Bryant was not among the 19 prospects invited to New York City for the draft, and he believes that his ill-founded reputation may have been responsible. Instead, he watched the draft with his family at a house in DeSoto. Despite the visible chip on his shoulder, though, Bryant is intent on beginning his career with the Dallas Cowboys in the right way, and proving his many doubters wrong.
“I’m not in New York because of what’s been said about me, pure and simple,” Bryant said last week. “That’s got to be it – and that’s ridiculous, man. But it’s good; I’m fine. I’m not taking anything away from anyone in the draft, but I don’t think anybody wants it more than me.
"When I get drafted, I’ll hug some people and celebrate for a minute – but then I’m going to go to work.”
UPDATE: On Tuesday, Yahoo! Sports revealed that Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland asked the aforementioned question. He has since apologized.
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"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 in a statement released through the team on Tuesday. "Having said that, I talked to Dez Bryant and told him I used poor judgment in one of the questions I asked him. I certainly meant no disrespect and apologized to him."
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