There's No Crying in Football, Either

Every year at NFL Draft Combine time, it’s the same bitching and moaning. Only the majority of the complaining doesn’t come from the incoming players that are questioned, poked and prodded, or, well, treated as I wish every middle-aged, middle-eastern man would be at airports.

All the gloom, despair and agony talk comes from NFL executives upset that some college hotshot won’t work out for them. As one GM was quoted this year, “We are all here, so why doesn’t the guy just run?” Really? That’s your rationale? Because you are all here?

It’s called bidness, buddy. Executives understand it deep down because they are doing the same, exact thing the player is doing by way of all of their complaining. As they know, all parties involved at the combine are, in essence, in preliminary talks with an eye toward forming a business relationship and should be expected to behave as such. A player is protecting his business interests with his decision whether to work out, and management is jockeying in their own best interests by bitching about it.

Assuming the player has a solid agent working on his behalf (or even Andre Smith’s), the decision to workout is based on numerous factors and not taken lightly. Like most business decisions, it’s a risk-reward thing.

For instance, all the talk around Georgia quarterback Matt Stafford paints the guy as a fluffy pansy simply because he is doing what is ultimately best for himself and his future. Does not throwing really mean he’s a wuss? So, facing down some of the fastest, most athletic defenses in the country on a weekly basis isn’t good enough to clear the ‘girly man’ hurdle? Please.

Would NFL brass really want a quarterback to lead their team who is so blindly short-sighted that he would neglect his primary responsibilities during this process just to prove he has onions? I’ll take the guy with the discipline to do what he knows will be unpopular when the lights come on and the courage of his convictions to trust his decision in the face of peppering by others.

Besides, NFL management is simply projecting. Big time. Unless they want to be back home playing patty-cake with Mike Shanahan, managers at every level in the NFL understand that in order to make the best, most advantageous draft decisions for their program, they need all possible data available.

If they can goad a player into running under less-than-ideal conditions, even to that player’s potential detriment, all the better to help them save their jobs. Eff the player that may lose millions by giving in to all the baiting about his manhood. In the end, all of the crying is simply the ole game of CYA — the same game the player is playing.