Teams 'Spying' on NFL Draft Prospects Should Surprise Absolutely No One

Apparently, it's nontroversy week in the National Football League.

Earlier in the week, there was a hullabaloo about quarterbacks Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota choosing not to attend the 2015 NFL draft in Chicago.

Umbrage was taken. Soapboxes were mounted. Hands were wrung. Teeth were gnashed.

Well, only a few days later, there's another brouhaha brewing. This one also involves Winston, but this time he's on the other side of the fence, the victim of the most nefarious scheme to envelop the National Football League since at least Wednesday.

Winston is being spied on.

No, not by that guy.

Or by that guy—although that would make this story infinitely more fun for me to write.

By NFL teams.

I know, right?

This revelation came courtesy of Winston's QB coach George Whitfield, who told Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports that NFL teams have had people watching his young protege:

"

They've staged people. Yeah, there are teams that have staged people on different flights he had, just to kind of be in the midst – a fly on the wall. No [Jameis wasn't aware of it], but I had a team official tell me that. They were aware of another team that said they wanted to do that.

"

Not surprisingly, this news produced ire in many on social media. Robinson's colleague Jeff Passan called it "creepy":

Many fans called it other things—things I can't write here.

I don't know what I find more surprising. The number of people on Twitter who consistently misspell expletives (it's four letters folks—you can do it) or the fact that anyone would be even the slightest bit taken aback that an NFL team would "shadow" its players and/or prospects.

Winston is widely considered the favorite to be drafted No. 1 overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on April 30. Even in today's era of more team-friendly rookie contracts, if Winston does go first overall, the Bucs will be making a substantial financial investment in the 2013 Heisman Trophy winner.

The last quarterback who went No. 1 overall (Andrew Luck in 2012) got $22.1 million in guaranteed money. In fact, his entire rookie contract was guaranteed.

And Winston wasn't exactly a choir boy during his time in Tallahassee. There was everything from shoplifting arrests to sexual assault allegations. Given the current climate in the NFL, those off-the-field issues are a much bigger deal than they would have been even 10 years ago.

Sure, Winston has said and done all the right things over the past few months. But what do you expect? Smile into the camera, nod at the agent who's been coaching him on what to say for weeks and say, "I just want to get my rookie deal signed so I can hit the strip club. Thursday is all-you-can-eat crab legs?"

OK, so the crab legs shot was low—one-point deduction.

The point is, while Winston may well be completely sincere about putting his troubled past behind him, he can say whatever he wants. But, given everything that's transpired, odds aren't good that an NFL team is just going to take him at his word.

Tailing Winston may seem a bit "Big Brother-like," but it's also a very effective way to find out whether the youngster's actions are backing up his words.

It also wouldn't be the first time the Buccaneers did it. As general manager Mark Dominik told ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd (via NFL.com's Chase Goodbread), the team had someone watching wide receiver Justin Blackmon before the 2012 NFL draft:

"

We found out there was a bar called the Cricket Inn, or the Cricket, which was a popular bar there at Oklahoma State. And so [the scout] would sit there for a week. He sat there for one week, went in every day at 3 o'clock every day and stayed till 11 o'clock at night.

That was his job. And we checked: How many times did Justin Blackmon come in? And he came in too many times. And we took him off our board.

"

Given that Blackmon's career has been immolated by his problems with alcohol, it would certainly appear that the Buccaneers' due diligence paid off in that regard.

And guess what? It doesn't stop once the players enter the NFL. The Cowboys have an entire support system set up to make sure Dez Bryant behaves himself. As Hannah Karp of The Wall Street Journal reported all the way back in 2008, teams like the Denver Broncos have employees whose job centers on keeping a watchful eye on players:

"

Dave Abrams, a retired police officer, was appointed security chief by the Broncos last year after a player was killed in a shooting. Mr. Abrams's BlackBerry is loaded with each player's personal information and he has trained dozens of bartenders and bouncers to call him when players show up.

Sometimes he comes to take note of the women they're with and how much they've had to drink. "It's always fun to watch their eyes light up the first time they see me in a bar or a nightclub on a Friday night," he says. "It just makes them realize that someone's paying attention."

"

That's right. This has been going on since the days of BlackBerry.

The notion that this sort of "spying" is somehow a violation of the players' privacy is laughable. If Jameis Winston wanted privacy, he should have become an orthodontist.

In fact, the very same people who are railing about what an "invasion" this is would be the first people to post video of Winston doing something stupid on MySpace.

They still have that, right?

It's a fact of life in 2015. If you are even marginally famous and you fart loudly in public anyone on Earth who might possibly be interested in that information will know about it in a few hours.

As Winston's attorney told his client (per Robinson), "I told him to assume everyone is watching him at all times," David Cornwell said. "We've told him that. People will always be watching every single thing he does."

And that alone should be enough to keep Jameis on the straight and narrow for another month. After all, it takes a special kind of chucklehead to keep acting dumb despite knowing full well that the entire world is watching. Here's the infamous "swan photo" of Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel:

I rest my case.

Gary Davenport is an NFL Analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter at @IDPManor.