Dolphins capitalize on NFL's paranoid culture with Tunsil pick

If you plan to play in the NFL at any point in your life, you may as well delete your Twitter account.

Ole Miss lineman Laremy Tunsil was the victim of a well-timed hack of his social media accounts moments before Thursday's draft, and NFL teams reacted exactly the way the antagonist wanted.

When the dust settled, 12 teams passed on the best offensive tackle prospect since Tyron Smith after a video of Tunsil taking a bong hit in a gas mask and online conversations in which he appeared to ask coaches for money were exposed.

On its face, these seem like serious infractions, but ask yourself what these bombshells proved.

That Tunsil has smoked marijuana at some point in his life? That he accepted financial help from coaches while taking part in a college football system widely derided as unfair and exploitative of student-athletes? That he lacks judgment because his personal online presence was co-opted in the same way as those belonging to a Secretary of State, the head of the CIA, and countless respected celebrities?

Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn summed it up best: "If we took players off the board because they smoked pot in college or marijuana, like half the board would be gone."

Consider the cases of young cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Tyrann Mathieu. Both saw their draft stocks fall because of a connection to marijuana and both have excelled at the NFL level - on and off the field. Both highlight the growing disconnect between an accepted social activity and the NFL's archaic personal conduct policy that paints all recreational drug use with the same brush.

It's not about taking the best player available anymore - it's about taking the player you can best sell. The NFL is hardly a paragon of morality, yet it demonizes select behaviors it deems harmful to its image.

Teams will likely offer the stale party line in the coming days, questioning Tunsil's "decision-making process" and "the people he associates with," and they have every right to do so when investing millions of dollars in young men.

But if your favorite team passed on Tunsil because of Thursday's revelations, you have to ask yourself: Aren't these the things scouting departments should be aware of prior to the draft? Should Tunsil smoking pot and asking for a handout as a college kid have come out of left field if teams did their homework?

Perhaps the highly fetishized perception of NFL franchises as de facto spy organizations with the resources to unearth any secret from a prospect's past is a complete myth.

In reality, Tunsil was victimized by someone with a serious grudge against him, and about 10 NFL teams freaked out before sanity was restored by the Dolphins. Most of those teams will likely regret their decision to play into the NFL's paranoid culture.