As a rookie with the Cowboys in 2010, Dez Bryant was told that it was his responsibility to pick up the tab for a dinner with teammates. Some of those teammates ran wild with the most expensive items they could find on the high-end steakhouse menu, and when the check came, it was $55,000.
Reflecting on it now, Bryant says that it was an eye-opening experience. It made him angry about some of his veteran teammates, and it also made him re-assess how he dealt with teammates.
“The way I look at that is some guys do it just to be [expletive],” Bryant said on FOX Sports 1, via the Dallas Morning News. “I paid $55,000 for a dinner, and it struck me the wrong way. I could’ve easily went off on every last one of them, but I didn’t. I kept myself together, and I wanted to change that. So you know what I did, went out there and did my thing. Now they’re allowing me to call the shots.”
Spending $55,000 on one dinner is, frankly, stupid. Dinners like that are a reason many players go broke despite making millions of dollars. The NFL and the NFL Players Association should tell veteran players to knock it off with that kind of rookie hazing. Now that Bryant is a veteran who calls the shots in the locker room, he should make it clear that no rookie is responsible for picking up a veteran’s dinner tab.