Sports Editor
Forget
about Johnny Manziel or Jadeveon Clowney; All-American defensive end Michael
Sam from Missouri is the talk of the 2014 NFL Draft. On tape, he’s nothing
truly special. He led the Southeastern Conference with 11.5 sacks and 19
tackles for loss, but he’s not the strongest man on the field and isn’t the
fastest either. He’s projected to go somewhere around the third or fourth
round. So why is a mid-round, underwhelming defensive end grabbing all the
headlines leading up to the draft? All because of an announcement that’s become
commonplace everywhere except in the NFL: Sam is an openly homosexual man.
Only
a handful of former NFL players have come out as gay and there has never been
an openly gay player in the league, but Sam aims to change that. National Basketball
Association player Jason Collins became the first male professional athlete in
one of the four major North American team sport (which are football, baseball,
basketball, and hockey) to come out publicly as gay when he made his
announcement in early 2013, but he has not been signed or appeared in a game
since his announcement. American soccer player Robbie Rogers also came out as
gay in February of 2013, becoming the first openly gay male athlete to join a major
North American sports league when he signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy of
Major League Soccer in May of the same year. But despite the progress made in
other sports in regard to the acceptance of openly gay teammates, no active NFL
player has ever come out due to fear of locker room rejection.
The
current stereotype is that the NFL culture is non-accepting of homosexuals, but
multiple players have refuted this claim and proudly said that they would have
no issues accepting a gay teammate into the locker room. In fact, an ESPN
survey of NFL players revealed that 86 percent of players would be okay with a
gay teammate. Said former wide receiver Donte Stallworth in an interview with The Daily Beast, “To me, it’s like, if
the kid comes in and he works hard and does everything that the coaching staff
is asking him to do and he’s helping the team win games, the fact that he’s
gay, if that gives any players discomfort that’s their problem.” However, not
all players are on board with the idea of a homosexual teammate. "I think
that he would not be accepted as much as we think he would be accepted. I don't
want people to just naturally assume, like, 'Oh, we're all homophobic.' That's
really not the case. ... Imagine if he's the guy next to me and, you know, I
get dressed, naked, taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he
looks at me. How am I supposed to respond?" said New Orleans
linebacker Jonathan Vilma during an NFL
Network special feature on locker room culture. He has since clarified his
comments, saying that he never meant to be offensive and would welcome any
player to the locker room so long as they can play well.
Sam
says he informed his Missouri teammates that he was gay in August, and suffered
no repercussions. The entire team rallied around him and supported him,
demonstrating just how accepting a football locker room can be. The pace of gay
rights and acceptance has accelerated in recent years, but remained largely
stagnant in the sports industry, excluding the cases of Collins and Rodgers.
Sam is well aware of the potential risk to his professional career that he is
taking by making this announcement before the NFL Draft, but he wanted to make
sure that he would be the one to break the news to the world and not someone
else who knew of his sexual orientation. Said Sam to The New York Times, “I just want to make sure I could tell my story
the way I want to tell it. I just want to own my truth.”
But
all of that aside, Michael Sam is still a young football player just trying to
realize his ultimate dream of playing in the NFL, no different from the next
promising prospect. “I just wish you guys would just see me as Michael Sam the
football player instead of Michael Sam the gay football player,” he said.
