Why Jeff Ireland's "Due Dillgience" on Dez Bryant Is Indefensible

One of the more disturbing things about our contemporary culture is the lengths that we will go to defend the indefensible.

Jeff Ireland's question to Dez Bryant concerning his mother was indefensible. Yet a significant portion of fans, media people, and current and former NFL people are defending it!

The typical excuse is "if you are considering investing millions of dollars into a player with a questionable background then you need to take every precaution." That is an inherently immoral position, one that presumes that it is perfectly fine to demean someone just because you are paying them a lot of money.

Under that logic, it is just fine to be a prostitute so long as you get $1 million per encounter, right? How many of you would want your sons, daughters, husbands, wives etc. getting in that line of work if the price were right?

It's amazing how we don't want the people that we know and care about to be demeaned, but we think that it is fine for others to be, just because of the money they make.

Still, the primary fallacy in the defenders of Jeff Ireland is this idea that due diligence, finding everything you can about a player before investing a huge signing bonus in him, takes priority over everything else. Hogwash. I say that decent, moral conduct is the main priority.

Decent, moral conduct includes not demeaning someone else and not demeaning yourself. It means not doing something to someone else that you wouldn't want done to you if the situation were reversed.

And yes, people in positions of power have a particular, added responsibility not to demean the people that they have power over. By asking that question to Bryant, Jeff Ireland demeaned Dez Bryant and he also demeaned himself. Ireland diminished his own humanity, and he abused his position of authority to diminish another person's humanity. It was Ireland's responsibility as a decent, moral human being and a person in a position of authority to prevent that from happening.

How could Ireland have done this? Simple: by not interviewing Dez Bryant in the first place.

If you have such questions regarding a guy's character and mindset that you have to demean him and yourself, then don't consider him. Don't put him on your interview list. Don't put him on your draft board. Problem solved. Simple as that. Instead of interviewing Dez Bryant, interview Demaryius Thomas, Arrelious Benn, Golden Tate, and the many other players at his position.

The Dolphins were not obligated to consider drafting Bryant. So, if considering drafting Bryant inevitably meant demeaning Bryant and themselves, then don't consider it!

It isn't as if there aren't tons of other players to draft. And that is the primary issue that the Ireland defenders refuse to acknowledge.

Are there so many thugs, criminals and people with questionable backgrounds in the NFL talent pool that you cannot help but deal with people like Bryant?

First off, if this is true, then FIND ANOTHER AREA OF WORK. If your job requires you to demean yourself and others, then what makes you any better than a prostitute?

Second, it isn't true. The idea that the NFL has become this zoo-filled with barely caged animals is a myth propagated by people with axes to grind and all too willingly embraced.

The truth is that A: there were far more conduct problems in the NFL in eras past (like the 1970s when movies like North Dallas Forty were made) than there is now. And B: NFL players are no more likely to get into trouble than the population at large. Furthermore when things like socio-demographics (i.e. NFL players are males between the ages of 21-35) are considered, NFL players look even more like the rest of the country. It is only if you embrace A. and B. that nonsense like what Bryant was subjected to makes sense.

So, if you embrace A., and still think the NFL is a madhouse, that means you will be much more likely to resent people than you would if they were closer to you on the economic ladder, especially if you feel the people who are making that much more money than you are undeserving to be so much wealthier than you are. While that is somewhat understandable, it is simply jealousy, plain and simple.

There is also a double standard. Hollywood celebrities such as actors, rock stars and so forth behave no better than NFL athletes, are just as rich, and receive nowhere near the grief that NFL players do from the media and so-called fans.

What little negative scrutiny that Hollywood stars with their notorious behavior get is generally due to their politics. So not only is a lot of it due to simply resenting athletes for making more money than you do, it is a resentment that we don't extend to other wealthy people like Hollywood celebrities and corporate CEOs (and their children) when they misbehave.

But another very real issue is B., which is our conviction that NFL athletes act so much worse than the general populace. It honestly requires a blind spot, a lack of honesty, to maintain that viewpoint.

It means that we have to overlook the high percentage of our very friends and neighbors who—for example—cheat on their spouses (60% of men and 40% of women according to statistics), use illegal drugs (a shockingly high percentage of college students as well as people in certain white collar professions), or get behind the wheel of a car while drunk.

And Dez Bryant came from a broken home? Well in 2007, 60% of children born to women in their 20s were out of wedlock. When you look at overall society, not just the segment of society that many NFL players come from but society at large, it is actually a surprise that there aren't MORE men with severe criminal and anti-social tendencies in the NFL, not less.

So, the idea that it is OK to demean someone during the interview process because the NFL culture is out of control is simply not tenable. If we are to be consistent, then we should ask similar questions to people entering the white collar professions that are notorious for recreational cocaine use, and for that matter we should ask that of politicians as well.

But the best reason why this "we were just performing due diligence to protect our investment" excuse is a sham:

THE DOLPHINS TRADED FOR BRANDON MARSHALL!

So how does that work exactly? You demean Bryant to see if he MIGHT be a character problem down the line, but you trade for a guy who is a KNOWN problem ? Will anyone who is defending Ireland and the Dolphins explain that one?

Does anyone want to compare Bryant's lying to the NCAA over something that wasn't even an NCAA violation and his being late for team meetings to the things that Marshall has been arrested for? Jeff Ireland? Ireland's friends in the media, including apparently Sports Illustrated, the Miami Herald  and ESPN? Dolphins' fans? Anyone?

But I suppose that since we live in an era where defending the indefensible is routine, there will be not a few people well willing to defend demeaning Bryant because of "character/background questions" while trading for the much worse Brandon Marshall.

A sign of the times indeed.