The NFL Is Afraid of Manti Te'o Being Gay, but Not Recruiting Criminals
The National Football League, still reeling from a gays-in-the-locker-room controversy that overtook its last media frenzy during the Super Bowl, is now facing an emotional explosion of controversies at once at its annual rookie scouting combine: Manti Te'o, the hoax victim and would-be NFL linebacker who has denied throughout his fake-girlfriend scandal that he is gay, is reportedly raising eyebrows among general managers doing the hiring who "want to know" about his sexuality — all this as teams refuse to speak out about gay players and critics charge that GMs still actively recruit players with criminal pasts.
At the week-long combine for college-football standouts in Indianapolis, Te'o has been underperforming athletically and facing a sea of questions publicly, but privately NFL executives see his sexuality as "the elephant in the room," and it may or may not affect his draft status, according to the well-sourced Mike Florio of NBC Sports. "We have to step aside from the rest of reality and walk into the unique industry that is the NFL," Florio said on Dan Patrick's syndicated radio show Monday afternoon. "Teams want to know whether Manti Te'o is gay. They just want to know. They want to know because in an NFL locker room, it's a different world. It shouldn't be that way." Patrick interrupted Florida to ask if general managers are asking Te'o the question directly, or if they're dancing around it, or if they're doing investigative work to see if he lied to Katie Couric. Florio continued (emphasis ours):
"It's been described to me as the proverbial elephant in the room and I don't think anyone knows how to solve this dilemma yet. It's just that they want to know what they're getting. They want to know what issues they may be dealing with down the road. We just assumed that at some point there would be an openly gay player in an NFL locker room and the team would have to work with the realities and make sure that everything's fine."
Florio was also quick to defend the NFL from questions of outright discrimination: "I'm not saying anyone would take Manti Te'o off the board if they suspected he's gay or know he's gay," he said. "That's just the thing that's out there that they want to know the answer to." Instantly, a media circus began, all stemming from a well-placed member of the media saying the NFL didn't want another media circus on its hands by hiring a former media circus who might happen to be gay.
http://m.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/02/nfl-manti-teo-gay/62538/
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