Michael Sam – Page 2

Why A Gay NFL Player Matters

This chart from Derek Thompson helps explain why Michael Sam coming out is so significant:

Marc Tracy wonders who will draft Sam:

If you are an optimist … you believe that the 32 NFL franchises will be making their decision on Sam the same way they would any other player: analyzing his merits (his college play, his “measurables” at the upcoming combine, what their research says about his character) and then deciding how good a “system fit” he is for their rosters and defensive schemes. “I think that sports, at its best and purest, acts as a meritocracy,” NFL historian Michael MacCambridge emailed me Sunday night. “And what we’re seeing is simply another chapter in the realization that if someone can help you win, it doesn’t matter if that person is black or white… and ultimately, it won’t matter if the person is straight or gay.” …

“Much is made about football’s macho culture,” MacCambridge argued, “but you also have to remember that virtually every player in the NFL spent at least three years on a college campus, with the accompanying socialization and exposure to different lifestyles.” He added, “That heterogeneous college experience tends to supply people with lessons about diversity and tolerance, whether they’re conscious of it or not.”

Earlier thoughts from readers here. Nancy Goldstein tries to understand the squeamishness of NFL executives:

So what’s up with the tut-tutting from the NFL’s front office? It may be that the big difference between their panic and the NCAA College Football’s maturity is money—particularly the big money that corporate sponsors and advertisers bring to the NFL and don’t bring to the NCAA. When an anonymous official in Sports Illustrated says, “the league isn’t ready for this,” it’s likely code for “We’re afraid that having an openly gay player on board means that ticket sales will drop, or male viewers will be turned off, or that Bud Light and Marriott and Pepsi and GMC won’t want to pay top dollar to advertise with us.” In short, members of the NFL’s front office may be afraid that Sam will compromise their brand.

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman dismisses such concerns:

Really? Seriously? It has now been years — not weeks, not months, years — since gay men and lesbian women have openly laid down their lives for our nation in combat. And you, Mr. NFL executive who does not even have the slightest whiff of moral courage to even use your name, say that America is not ready for gay NFL players? Really? You think that the nation is cool with gay men dying in combat, in service to our nation, in desperate distant places, but you don’t think the country is cool with them playing in your game?

Are you on crack?

Kavitha Davidson joins the conversation:

As we saw with Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson and baseball’s integration, management might be reluctant to progress, but eventually somebody will stop spitting in its face to open up a new pool of talent. Sam doesn’t need to be a Hall of Famer; he just needs to attract the eye of a team in need of a solid tackler and to work on translating his game from college to the pros. In the past decades, the conversation around homosexual athletes has shifted from whether gays can play sports in the first place to the slightly more palatable question of whether gays can be accepted in sports. Sam and his predecessors have already addressed the former — he just needs management to give him a chance to prove that the latter is no longer an issue.

Scott Shackford’s bottom line:

[A]ll eyes are on Sam because this is the final doorway in America for cultural acceptance. It marks the end of certain silly ideas about how masculinity informs sexuality that have had lasting impacts on the psyches of straights and gays alike for decades. It’s a huge deal, though the impact may not be fully grasped except in retrospect years from now.

Earlier Dish on Sam here and here.

“A Comparison To Jackie Robinson Is Not Entirely Inappropriate”

Gay NFL players now must decide whether they want a rookie to be the first open one in the league

— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) February 10, 2014

Readers sound off on the coming out of Michael Sam:

It is also encouraging that he plays in the SEC – basically the Bible Belt conference. An African-American NFL prospect came out to his teammate in a conference that runs through some of the most conservative parts of the country. An inconceivable idea not that long ago.

Another:

He came out before the draft. He knew this would possibly negatively impact his chances of being a top draft pick, and he still came out. There are already anonymous NFL sources saying it will negatively impact his draft chances. How “brave” of the NFL sources to remain anonymous as they predict his chances.

Another:

I moonlight as a college football writer, so I feel I can contribute on the Michael Sam coming out party. First, I think the acceptance by his Mizzou teammates speaks volumes.

You will sadly find NFL execs who say “the players’ culture isn’t ready for a gay teammate.” This is such obvious bullshit, and reflects the homophobia of the execs themselves. They tend to be older white men who rose up through the culture of homophobia that is the NFL.

Michael Sam is a fine football player, but as an NFL prospect, there are some question marks. Sam is a defensive lineman who weighs in at 260, very small by NFL D-line standards. Sam is also not quite nimble enough to move to linebacker. He is what is known as a tweener.

What Michael Sam has is tenacity and intelligence. In short, he is a bulldog on the field, but also has clearly responded to coaching and knows how to position himself to make plays. Guys like him get overlooked and devalued in the NFL draft every year. Before coming out, Sam was projected as a third round draft pick.

The question is, what happens now? If Sam drops below the fourth round, I smell a rat. Unless his pre-draft combine workout is abysmal, which is highly unlikely, Sam’s stock should remain what it was before coming out. That is, unless the team execs decide they don’t want a “distraction.” If this is the case, and Sam falls to the late rounds, it is a very sad indictment of just how off mainstream thinking the NFL is on this issue. The NFL is a win-at-all-costs and win-now league. For execs to pass on the SEC Defensive Player of the Year simply because he is gay would show the just how deep their bigotry runs.

NFL locker rooms are full of hypocrites – guys who blather on about Jesus during the day and meet their mistresses at night. What will be infuriating is the constant talk of the “sin” of homosexuality. Wherever he ends up, Michael Sam is going to have to deal with some pretty ignorant nonsense being spewed his way.

I know he would be accepted here in Detroit. This town wants a winner so badly, so Sam would be judged solely by his play on the field. If the other teams are foolish enough to pass on him, hopefully the Lions pick him up.

A comparison to Jackie Robinson is not entirely inappropriate. From what I know about Sam, he has the character to withstand the ignorance, and the dignity to make them look like the fools that they are. I wish him nothing but the best and will be rooting for him wherever he ends up.

And so will we. Update from a few readers, who take the rare opportunity on the Dish to talk sports:

I wanted to comment on the college football writer, who seems to get a lot of the facts right, and then somehow came to an entirely wrong conclusion. He says that “Guys like him get overlooked and devalued in the NFL draft every year”. I’d argue the other way, that college fans tend to overrate tweeners. But either way, NFL teams don’t tend to like tweeners. As your reader says, he is too small to be a traditional 4-3 DE. In other words, about 2/3 of NFL teams aren’t going to want him since he doesn’t fit their defensive system. For the other 1/3 teams he has the right body type, but would need to move from DE to outside linebacker, something your reader questions whether he’s fast enough to do. And the one game where he did play linebacker he didn’t look good.

After acknowledging all that, your reader claims, “Unless his pre-draft combine workout is abysmal, which is highly unlikely, Sam’s stock should remain what it was before coming out.” It’s exactly the opposite. He needs to impress at the combine, an average performance will almost certainly drop him. Now that the professional NFL teams are going to be able to work him out, as opposed to amateurs and judging him by his playing against inferior competition where his body type isn’t a liability, he is exactly the type of player who tends to drop on draft boards unless he impresses at the workout. Otherwise, just like your reader said, NFL teams will “devalue” him because that’s what they always do to tweeners. He is the classic example of a guy who “falls” from where the amateurs think he should go. And even if a team does like him, say in the 3rd round, since they know he doesn’t fit most team’s defenses, they might grab someone who is rated roughly at the same level as him since there’s a good chance he will be available later and the other player won’t.

I wish him all the luck in the world, but I’m worried to see how many places I’ve seen him mentioned as a 3rd round talent. People who don’t follow the NFL will think that any fall from that position will be because of his coming out, and it’s just not true. Mid-level prospects like him can go up 1-2 rounds by impressing teams, and drop 3-4 rounds by not. And dropping is a lot easier. Any projection of where he should be drafted that is made before the combine is not likely to be a fair evaluation of his potential as an NFL player, and people shouldn’t assume if he falls below the 4th round it’s because of him coming out.

Another:

I just wanted to chime in with an observation regarding Michael Sam’s commendable announcement: I’m assuming that some of the anonymous responses are in the vein of anonymous front-office commentary in the lead-up to every draft. Executives and agents engage in a complicated annual drama, with the former trying to obscure their interest in players and even deflate their draft value, while the latter try to elevate the draft position of their clients. From the executive’s position, it’s a coup to draft a third round talent in later rounds: They’re balancing drafting early enough to get the player, but otherwise as late as possible to maximize their return on early picks. It’s a deeply cynical calculation until the picks are in.

“A Man’s-Man Game”

Marc Tracy eagerly awaits the draft, which is in May:

A comparison to Jason Collins, the National Basketball Association player who came out last spring, is instructive … Collins came out at age 34 and near or at the conclusion of his career as a professional athlete, having made a living playing ball for 12 years. Sam came out at age 24 and the very beginning of his career, with all of his earning years ahead of him. Especially given where they respectively are, Sam is simply better, and therefore risking more.

Sports Illustrated lets anonymous NFL insiders sound off:

“I don’t think football is ready for [an openly gay player] just yet,” said an NFL player personnel assistant. “In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game. To call somebody a [gay slur] is still so commonplace. It’d chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.”

All the NFL personnel members interviewed believed that Sam’s announcement will cause him to drop in the draft. He was projected between the third and seventh rounds prior to the announcement. The question is: How far will he fall?

“I just know with this going on this is going to drop him down,” said a veteran NFL scout. “There’s no question about it. It’s human nature. Do you want to be the team to quote-unquote ‘break that barrier?'”

A “man’s-man game.” What’s interesting to me is how that assessment of football is used to exclude homosexuals!

But that’s simply a function of ignorance. That formulation equates homosexuality with femininity, but it’s a much more complicated and diverse phenomenon than that. There are, it seems to me, many homosexualities – across the entire male-female spectrum, with many different routes to adulthood. Yes there are many gays who identify with women and the company of women. But there are also many who identify with men and the company of men (and along the entire spectrum in between). There are hyper-masculine gays as well as hyper-feminine ones and everything in between. (There’s also, I’d argue, more muted diversity along these lines among straight men as well.)

What we’ve been witnessing these last couple of decades, as the stigma against gayness has abated, is the emergence of more and more gay men who could have passed for straight and remained closeted or even married to a woman in days gone by. These gay men are often invisible both to gay insiders who revere and enjoy more traditional manifestations of gayness and to straight people who simply assume that more traditionally masculine-type men are never gay. But these gay men exist, are out in increasing numbers, and deserve just as much dignity and acceptance as anyone else. What Sam’s honesty has done is help explode crude and overly-narrow assumptions about gay men – particularly among sports-fans and African-Americans. And yes, I think his race is important. The stereotypes about gay men as intrinsically feminine are deeply embedded in African-American culture. If black gay men are to have the future they deserve, the stereotypes need to end. Michael Sam just opened up a whole new arena for mutual understanding and human dignity.

Ian Crouch also pushes back against the SI piece:

[I]t is deeply unfair and disingenuous of N.F.L. personnel to somehow suggest that Michael Sam has made himself into a distraction by coming out. Rumors about his sexual orientation were reportedly already being passed around by teams. And, last year, the word leaked that, before the draft, teams were asking prospective players questions like “Do you have a girlfriend?” and “Do you like girls?” Sam hasn’t made his sexual orientation a so-called “issue,” he simply took control of his story before the N.F.L. could.

Tyler Lopez expects Sam to make the team that drafts him a lot of money:

Contrary to the age-old “gays hate sports” stereotype, the LGBTQ community is currently embracing sports. And it’s not just the homoerotic spectacle of uniformed men grinding it out on the gridiron. The gay sports world has never been more profitable. … Mike Sam will unite legions of gay sports fans behind one player like never before. (David Beckham doesn’t count.) Aside from bringing more LGBTQ fans to stadiums across the country, Sam’s drafting will signal a sea change for fans who previously feared the testosterone-laden beer pits of the past. While some homophobic fans will avoid your merchandise, Sam won’t be the only player to come out in the next few years. But he will always be the first.

TNC zooms out:

When black soldiers joined the Union Army they were not merely confronting prejudice—they were pushing the boundaries of manhood. And when the Night Witches flew over German lines, they were confronting something more—the boundaries of humanity itself. Groups define themselves by what they are and what they are not: Niggers are never men, ladies are never soldiers, and faggots don’t play football. When Michael Sam steps on a football field, he likely will not merely be playing for his career but, in some sense, for his people.

In that sense he will be challenging a deep and discrepant mythology of who is capable of inflicting violence and who isn’t.

(Photo: Michael Sam #52 of the Missouri Tigers participates in pregame activities prior to a game against the Ole Miss Rebels at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on November 23, 2013 in Oxford, Mississippi. Missouri defeated Ole Miss 24-10. By Stacy Revere/Getty Images.)

Quote For The Day II

“Once I became official to my teammates, I knew who I was. I knew that I was gay. And I knew that I was Michael Sam, who’s a Mizzou football player who happens to be gay. I was so proud of myself and I just didn’t care who knew. If someone on the street would have asked me, ‘Hey, Mike, I heard you were gay. Is that true?’ I would have said yes. But no one asked. I guess they don’t want to ask a 6-3, 260-pound defensive lineman if he was gay or not,” – Michael Sam, New York Times. There’s a great video interview with him here.

What’s so encouraging here is not just that he’s African-American but that he was already out among his team-mates. So there’s no shock in the team, and what seems like a really adjusted, virtually normal life. He’s also really good – and yes, I infer that solely from the fact that the AP named him their SEC Defensive Player of the Year.

This is the next gay generation. You cannot stop their self-esteem. And you cannot pigeon-hole them into any category. You just have to get out the way.

(Photo: Michael Sam #52 of the Missouri Tigers celebrates with fans following a game against the Ole Miss Rebels at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on November 23, 2013 in Oxford, Mississippi. Missouri defeated Ole Miss 24-10. By Stacy Revere/Getty Images.)