Some NFL Teams Want an Answer to a Personal Question

There are some questions an employer cannot ask you during an interview. Eight to be exact. Bet you can't name all of them without looking.

Well, these are the things they can't ask you about:

1. Your Age
2. Your Marital Status
3. Your U.S. Citizenship
4. Any disabilities you may have
5. Your Religious Views
6. Your Smoking, Drinking, Drug Use
7. Your race
8. For women, if you are pregnant

Seven of the eight relate to the company that is the National Football League. There's been a lot of talk at the NFL Combine about Manti Te'o and the fake girlfriend story that followed him to Indianapolis. Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio on the Dan Patrick Show Tuesday brought up the idea that NFL teams will want to know about Te'o's sexuality. Te'o became involved in an online relationship with who he thought was a girl and turned out to be a guy, who told Dr. Phil that he was in love with Manti.

The topic that is an openly gay player in the National Football League. Te'o made it clear that he is not gay, but many who are skeptic about the whole scam have their doubts. The interviews at the NFL Combine are the equivalent of any normal job interview. Yeah, they interview for jobs like the rest of us. You just don't see it in Us Weekly.

Any sly and creative employer might try to split hairs and phrase questions to avoid any problems when interviewing potential employees. Could some organizations in the NFL be trying to do this?

Michigan's Denard Robinson joined Dan Patrick today and said some teams asked him if he had a girlfriend, if he was married or engaged. So, some of these teams asked one of the seven they are not allowed to ask. Is there an exception for the league? Was this their was of trying to find out if a player might be gay or straight? Maybe it's just me, but how is this process any different than the guy who interviews for an accounting job at Smith and Barnes?

An openly gay player in the National Football League remains one of the issues the country's most successful professional sports league struggles with. With Chris Culliver's comments during Super Bowl week and the macho mentality that is carried from the high school locker room into the professional one make it the elephant in the room when stories like Manti Te'o's surfaces.

You can say that it's a closed-minded thinking of some players or front office personnel looking to avoid a large media gathering on a teams facility every day during OTA's, training camp and the regular season. We all saw the result of "Tebow Mania." ESPN hunkering down at Jets camp for two weeks last summer was the tip of the iceberg.

So maybe they're looking out for that player that might be the first player coming out of the closet. The fear that this player will be swamped by pestering reporters every time the locker room doors open is understandable, but isn't it also the duty of the NFL to create a platform to accept all players regardless of sexual orientation?

The NHL took a stand with the "If You Can Play, You Can Play" campaign. Professional football is one of the best in good publicity. Maybe work on that, instead of contemplating the relocation of a team to London?

A part of getting older includes having an open mind. Maybe it's not just these NFL clubs that have this issue. Maybe we should be more open too. As Bob Dylan once sang, "The time they are a changin." Maybe this is the time for the league, it's teams and players and us as fans to make some changes.

Intolerance, interrogation and witch hunts have not had positive outcomes in the history of mankind. As a guy who minored in history in college, I had to throw that out there.