Several weeks ago, CBSSports.com columnist Bruce Feldman reported that NFL teams may look to ban academically ineligible players from its annual scouting combine as one way to provide extra scrutiny to incoming players in the wake of Aaron Hernandez’s murder arrest.
Early Tuesday morning, Feldman tweeted that the league may go even farther in its background checks of potential draftees.
Spoke w longtime NFL personnel man who said in wake of AaronHernandez teams may use police experts to check prospects tattoos
— Bruce Feldman (@BFeldmanCBS) July 23, 2013
If true, that seems a bit excessive.
Treating potential employees as though they could be gang members because they’re in the majority of modern college athletes who choose to adorn themselves with tattoos may not be as discriminatory as inquiring about a player’s sexuality. However, depending on the method of research, it certainly could be an overreach.
There’s obviously a big difference between a player being forced to stand in front of police experts in his underwear and questioned in a pre-draft interview and a team casually asking a guy why he chose to commemorate his hometown neighborhood on his bicep. From Feldman’s tweet, it’s difficult to ascertain just how far teams would be willing to go, but it’s hard to see how anything beyond the latter would do anything but create misunderstandings and potential profiling.
Would a closer look at Aaron Hernandez’s ink have actually convinced the Patriots not to draft Hernandez in 2010? Is there a detailed story in pictures that somehow told a tale that already stringent background checks didn’t?
Look at Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron. If an evaluator really wanted to, he could conjure up an implausible narrative that suggests that the clean cut back-to-back BCS title winner has some nefarious associations based on his numerous large tattoos.
Mobile gets some love on McCarron’s left shoulder. (Instagram/@agenevievee)
“Not only does he have a tattoo of the urban area of Mobile, Alabama on his shoulder, but he’s also got a mysterious A above it. And the words “home team” tattooed on his chest. Not to mention that he’s always seen with a bunch of young guys who are all wearing the color red!”
It’s clearly a tongue-in-cheek example, but it’s not that far off from some examples of generational misinterpretation between actions and appearances that have appeared in national media columns. If there are investigators, general managers or scouts who want to find something symbolic in the designs that cover a 20-year-old prospect’s skin, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to make a panicked mental leap.
It’s hard to imagine that the NFLPA would allow any sort of organized tattoo inspection to occur, but then again, so was the whole Hernandez situation several months ago.
