Rick Reilly & The Mothers of Inventing Stories

The transition between spring and summer can provide a lull for some sports fans. Baseball is just getting under way. The Red Sox are under .500 and the Nationals are above .500; it's a little too early to know anything. The NBA isn't for everybody and the playoffs can get dragged out. Golf? Only if Tiger is in contention on Sunday.

It is in times like these where stories that would never see the light of day in October or March surface. Stories like whether or not Dez Bryant's mother was a whore.

Honestly, I don't really care about Dez Bryant. My team didn't draft him and I don't care to pick him up in fantasy football. But I do find it interesting/comical/sad that so many people are outraged that Jeff Ireland, GM of the Miami Dolphins, was curious to find out if the wide receiver's mom was a prostitute under his pimp of a dad.

The most shocked people say that his upbringing doesn't really matter. Leading this charge is ESPN's Rick Reilly, who hasn't put two seconds of thought in any article he has written since joining the World Wide Leader. Reilly seems to think that you shouldn't be wary of someone because of their upbringing, an asinine idea that The Big Lead's Tyler Duffy immediately strikes down.

It's almost hard to believe that someone has to come out and prove that kids raised by pimps, whores, drug dealers and criminals actually turn into - wait for it - pimps, whores, drug dealers and criminals. I know this country loves the underdog stories of growing up hard and blossoming out of it against all odds. But these are the exceptions, not the rule.

Now, just because you have a shady background doesn't mean you can't be successful. But if you are Jeff Ireland and thinking about spending millions of dollars on a prospect, wouldn't you want every bit of information you could find? Believe me, children of pimps and crack dealers are far less likely to be stable adults than kids of Duke graduates. It's a red flag, to be sure.

There are two lessons to be learned here. First is that Rick Reilly is about as relevant anymore as Royals playoff hopes. The second is that we need to accept reality. It's alright to say that Dez Bryant has a lot going against him due to his upbringing. Nothing against him personally, but that is a lot of baggage. Most middle-classers still bitch to their therapists about their parents getting divorced forty years after the fact. You can't act like it doesn't matter.

Add that to the fact that Bryant was thought of as a malcontent before this story even broke, and that in his best season he had only one touchdown on the road, then it paints not such a pretty picture. If he ends up being a great wide receiver, fine. But the big business of the NFL has every right to vet rookies.

The past matters. As the saying goes, "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". The NFL learned from the histories of Pacman Jones and others. The only question now is will Dez Bryant learn from his parents' history. Will we see.