
CHICAGO — An assistant for Jimmy Sexton, the most powerful agent in football, stood face-to-face with a client, Laremy Tunsil, the 6-foot-5, 310-pound offensive lineman from the University of Mississippi, in a crowded media room in the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University on Thursday night.
Tunsil had just been selected by the Miami Dolphins with the 13th pick in the first round of the N.F.L. draft. But he was also suddenly at the center of one of the biggest calamities in draft history. Sexton’s assistant, Amy Milam, prepped him for the onslaught he was about to experience. Sweat was pouring off his brow as soon as reporters and microphones pressed against him and began lobbing questions.
After a couple of minutes of questioning, Milam, maybe a foot shorter than her client, quickly barged forward, declared the interview over and pushed Tunsil to the door like a wounded president ducking for cover.
The N.F.L. draft, the league’s glitziest showpiece after the Super Bowl, has long derived cringe-worthy drama from highly touted players’ being passed over. The farther his stock falls on draft night, with millions of TV viewers watching, the greater the spectacle.
But what happened here on Thursday night was an are-you-watching-this? misadventure for the league akin to Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show — but in the social-media age.
And this time, the wardrobe involved a bong attached to a gas mask.
Minutes before the draft began, a video of Tunsil had been posted on his Twitter account showing him wearing the gas mask and seemingly smoking marijuana through the bong. The draft turned dark and chaotic when Tunsil, the most coveted offensive lineman in the country, was deemed persona non grata by several teams.
The video, and Tunsil’s Twitter account, @kingtunsil78, were quickly deleted. Later, the account was restored and Tunsil posted an apology. Several other Twitter users managed to grab the video before it was taken down.
LAREMY TUNSIL SMOKING OFF A GAS MASK pic.twitter.com/3hnGA9tK3r
— Kev (@ImNotLit) April 28, 2016
His account had been hacked, he said. But by the time he had the chance to explain, he had fallen very far, very fast. The No. 3 pick in the draft — where many experts believed Tunsil would be chosen — is projected to receive a contract worth more than $25 million. The deal for a No. 13 pick will be about $12 million.
Continue reading the main story“It’s one of the worst things, one of the worst lessons to learn,” Robert Nkemdiche, a college teammate of Tunsil’s, said in a TV interview after he was drafted 29th by the Arizona Cardinals. “That’s just the way the world is now.”
Brian McCarthy, an N.F.L. spokesman, declined to comment on the video and other revelations about Tunsil that surfaced on Thursday night, though he said that players could be referred to the league’s substance-abuse problems to “give the player the best opportunity to succeed in the league.”
The draft often serves as a demonstration of Sexton’s formidable status in the sport as his clients are paraded across the podium to greet the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, and to hold up their new team’s jersey. On Thursday, those celebratory images were overtaken by a player in a gas mask.
Pick-by-Pick Analysis of the N.F.L. Draft's First Round
The first round of the 2016 N.F.L. Draft started the way most people expected it to — with quarterbacks going Nos. 1 and 2 — but turned into a surprising mix of controversy, trades and questionable picks. Here’s what happened.

Sexton has a stable of clients ranging from Alabama Coach Nick Saban and Florida State Coach Jimbo Fisher in the college realm to Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and Dolphins defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh in the N.F.L.
His ties to the Dolphins are particularly deep. He helped facilitate Saban’s abrupt departure to the Crimson Tide in 2007, and he represents the former executives Bill Parcells and Jeff Ireland, as well as the former coach Tony Sparano and the team’s current coach, Adam Gase, who was hired in January.
The team’s executive vice president of football operations, Mike Tannenbaum, has a strong relationship with Sexton. He considers Parcells a mentor and, as the general manager of the Jets, endorsed the hiring of Rex Ryan, another Sexton client.
Milam, Sexton’s assistant, was Tunsil’s handler after he was drafted. It was an exercise in crisis management.
Tunsil, decked out in gold and black studded shoes and a snazzier bow tie, somehow looked small as he sat hunched over and alone at a table on the podium, ready to answer questions after he was picked by the Dolphins. He responded to a series of questions with standard platitudes like, “I’m just blessed,” and, “It’s just a blessing to be in this position.”
He was asked who might have tampered with his Twitter account, and how many people knew his passwords. Only he knew his password, Tunsil said, and he did not know how his account had been breached.
Then he was asked about a text-message conversation that was published on his Instagram account around the time that he was selected by the Dolphins. The exchange seemingly was between Tunsil and an athletics official at Mississippi in which Tunsil asked for help paying bills, a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. When pressed about whether he received money from his college coach, he mumbled, “I’d have to say, yea.”
Milam declared the session over. “Thanks, guys,” she said as she hustled Tunsil offstage.

Milam wanted to keep Tunsil away from reporters, but an N.F.L. employee told her that it would look bad, so Tunsil was ushered into a nearby room, trailed by more reporters, to answer more questions.
Milam stepped in to interrupt that session, as well, whisking Tunsil away for good when the question of payments from his college coach surfaced again.
Tunsil’s high school coaches remember him as a supremely talented player and a respectful teenager. When Tunsil was a sophomore at Columbia High School in Lake City, Fla., the new football coach, Brian Allen, turned to a few members of his staff during spring practice and offered a prediction: Tunsil would be, at worst, a top-five pick in the draft.
Tunsil reminded Allen of the Hall of Fame offensive tackle Walter Jones, who played with Allen at Florida State. “His ability and athleticism was different from anybody you see in high school,” Allen said about Tunsil in a telephone interview Friday. “He could run like a defensive end but he was built like a left tackle.”
That massive frame — 6 feet 5 inches and, by the time he graduated in 2013, nearly 300 pounds — belied a reserved and humble personality.
“He’s one of the best kids I’ve ever been around,” said Doug Peeler, Tunsil’s offensive line coach for three years at Columbia, in a telephone interview.
Whenever an N.F.L. team would call Allen to pump him for information, he would say the same thing: that Tunsil was loyal, likable and, above all, had an aptitude for reading people.
“If you screw it up with him, he’s done with you,” Allen said. “If you do something wrong to him or someone he cares about, that’s it.”
Not once, Allen said, did Tunsil get in trouble during their time together. Even though he was the best player on the field, Tunsil did not boast about his ability. Tunsil’s mother, Desiree, who worked as a nurse while he was at Columbia, dropped him off at school on her way to work. Sometimes, Allen would drive him home.
Allen said Desiree Tunsil was a strong presence in Tunsil’s life, and that the two were very close.
“She’s his world,” Allen said.
Allen acknowledged the missteps that Tunsil made in college — an N.C.A.A. investigation revealed he had received impermissible benefits, including the use of three loaner cars, that resulted in a seven-game suspension.
“There’s wrongdoing that’s there,” Allen said. “All of my kids who come through my program understand: When you’re wrong, you own it. He’ll learn from it and he’ll be better because of it.”
Tunsil was once considered a potential No. 1 overall pick in the draft. But in the days leading up to the draft, the Rams and the Eagles traded into the top two spots to be in position to select the top quarterbacks, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
Then more teams passed on Tunsil.
Ozzie Newsome, the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, told a reporter that he had chosen another offensive tackle, Ronnie Stanley, instead of Tunsil in part because of information the team’s scouts had acquired about Tunsil. Ryan Grigson, the Indianapolis Colts’ general manager, said that he, too, had concerns about Tunsil.
The scouting reports on Tunsil might have included an admission by Nkemdiche, who said that Tunsil had been in the room when he fell out of a fourth-story hotel window in Atlanta in December. The police later found marijuana there and arrested Nkemdiche.
Tunsil was also arrested last summer after an altercation with his stepfather.
Dolphins General Manager Chris Grier said the team had been aware of the video’s existence well before the draft and said it was two years old.
“It’s all part of what makes the Draft so exciting,” Goodell said in a radio interview on Friday morning. Referring to the teams’ decisions, he added, “Sometimes they take risks, sometimes they do the right thing and sometimes they don’t, and we’ll see.”
Continue reading the main story