Here is the opening to my Sunday column:
There is something fundamentally abhorrent about the NFL Scouting Combine, recently concluded. Coaches and team executives put prospects through all kinds of drills and ask all kinds of questions. They treat them like slaves.
The NFL slaves can’t decide which teams they will go to. They have no freedom of choice. True, differences exist between real slaves and NFL slaves. NFL slaves make a free choice to enter the draft in the first place. No one from Africa ever asked to become a slave and work on a Southern plantation. And NFL slaves make a ton of money, something real slaves never did.
But you get the point. There is a sense of owner and owned in the Combine.
This year, the sense of owner and owned got worse. As you’ve probably read, one player alleges one team asked about his sexual orientation.
To read the full column, click here.
