Last night was supposed to be one of the best nights of Laremy Tunsil’s life. Instead, he’ll have to settle for it being one of the most memorable.
In case you missed the soap opera, the offensive tackle from Mississippi was expected to be one of the top picks in the NFL draft — most mock drafts projected he’d go somewhere between No. 3 and No. 6. But his night took an unfortunate turn when 10 minutes before the draft began, a video was posted on his Twitter account of Tunsil smoking a bong with a gas mask on.
The media immediately went into a frenzy, teams panicked, and the 21-year-old fell all the way to No. 13 in the draft, with the Miami Dolphins. There are estimates the bong video cost Tunsil $8 million.
Looking at last year’s draft, when Jameis Winston was drafted No. 1 despite the rape allegations against him and Frank Clark was the first draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks despite his history of domestic violence, it seems NFL teams are more scared of potential players smoking marijuana than they are of accusations of violence against women.
In both cases, the teams showed no interest in fully vetting the alleged violence against women. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers never reached out to Winston’s alleged victim or her lawyer despite what they called an “exhaustive” search, and the Seahawks never contacted the witnesses to Clark’s incident. The Seahawks general manager even told reporters that he was certain Clark had never struck a woman, even though the publicly available police report clearly documented her injuries.
In the NFL, the motto when dealing with any so-called character issue seems to be: No video? No problem.
Of course, the pearl-clutching over Tunsil only got worse after he was drafted, when text messages were posted on his Instagram account showing Tunsil asking his Ole Miss coaches for money to pay his mother’s electricity bill and his rent. Considering the sham of amateurism, this is clearly a violation of NCAA rules.
Just like that, Tunsil’s integrity and dependability were in question, despite the fact that he merely smoked marijuana — a legal act in some states — and told the truth about accepting money for basic necessities while he was doing work that earned millions of dollars for his school.
Wow can't believe a college student paid rent by generating millions of dollars for his university with backbreaking labor. Kids these days!
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 29, 2016
The Baltimore Ravens — a team that stuck by Ray Lewis through murder charges and made Ray Rice’s wife Janay publicly apologize for her role in a domestic violence incident — took Tunsil off of their draft board after getting wind of the bong video. The Dallas Cowboys, who picked up Greg Hardy last offseason despite the domestic violence allegations against him, passed on Tunsil too.
His free-fall turned into must-see TV, and suddenly, everyone was talking about Tunsil for the wrong reasons. Even commissioner Roger Goodell said that it was “entertaining.”
Todd McShay of ESPN called Tunsil immature for telling the truth about accepting the money from his Ole Miss coaches and refusing to lie or play the blame game, and ESPN even gave the Dolphins one of only three “thumbs down” grades in the entire first round for drafting Tunsil, a player that many thought was a top-five talent.
Despite character concerns due to a video that surfaced online Thursday, the Dolphins took a major risk by selecting Tunsil at No. 13. Ryan Tannehill is the most sacked quarterback (184) in the NFL since being drafted in 2012, and Tunsil should be an immediate starter who will help with pass protection. But there will be plenty of temptations in South Florida and South Beach, and Tunsil must first prove to the Dolphins that he can stay out of trouble.
An hour before the draft, any expert would have said the Dolphins got an absolute steal if Tunsil fell to them on the draft board. How is one marijuana video able to change that? Tunsil has not been marred by excessive partying accusations in college like Johnny Manziel was, and he took full responsibility for the video even though it was years old. He has never failed a drug test.
Lost in all of the false moralizing on Thursday night was the fact that Tunsil was the victim in all of this. Someone was clearly out to ruin him, and while he still got drafted and will get a shot in the NFL, in many ways they succeeded.
As Ian O’Connor wrote for ESPN, “What happened to [Tunsil] Thursday night shouldn’t happen to anyone, never mind a 21-year-old kid about to celebrate the night of his young life.”
Tunsil has been engaged in an ugly and public battle with his estranged stepfather, who filed a lawsuit against Tunsil just days before the draft began. While it’s not clear at this time who hacked his social media accounts — and his stepfather denied that he was involved to TMZ, for what it’s worth — it’s clear that whoever orchestrated this has been planning it for some time.
According to Deadspin, someone had been trying to sell the video for weeks. Obviously, the person didn’t get any takers. Why? Well, because as Deadspin put it, “We will pay for a good story… but a college kid smoking weed is not a story at all.”
And really, that’s the only takeaway here. Sure, you can get on a high horse over the fact that Tunsil recorded a stupid video when he was a teenager, or scold him for not having more secure passwords. Regardless, the video posted on Tunsil’s account should have been a side note, not a scandal. The fact that he admitted to taking money for electricity and rent from his college coaches should be an indictment of the NCAA’s system, not his maturity.
The NFL has plenty of serious problems, such as pain killer abuse, concussions, and violence against women. The fact that Tunsil’s dramatic night overshadowed all of those on Thursday tells you all you need to know about the NFL’s priorities.