NFL Risks Racial Mess if 'Fins GM Skates

"Are you anti-Semitic?"

The editor asked the question and then stared me down, convinced I was guilty, all because a sports-franchise owner didn't like me and sometimes pressured the newspaper into intimidating me. In another meeting in his office, the same editor forearm-shivered me into a wall as I tried to leave the room and escape his wrath. These incidents happened several years ago at the hopelessly chaotic Chicago Sun-Times, and I relate them now because I, too, have had a Dez Bryant experience.

My guess is, you have as well.

Like many NFL prospects, Bryant (right) has a tumultuous family history, including a mother who served hard time for selling crack cocaine and was just 15 years old when he was born. His is a troubled past that certainly was valid to explore when the Miami Dolphins and other teams were weighing whether to draft Bryant, a gifted wide receiver from Oklahoma State. But it's one thing to investigate a young man's life via behind-the-scenes phone calls and legwork.

It's quite another to ask Bryant -- face to face, human being to human being -- if his mother was a prostitute.

Jeff Ireland, general manager of the Dolphins and a veteran NFL executive who should know better, made that horrific mistake weeks ago during a pre-draft interview session with Bryant. "My job is to find out as much information as possible about a player that I'm considering drafting," Ireland tried to explain. "Sometimes that leads to asking in-depth questions.''