Monday, February 10, 2014

Michael Sam: The Good News, and The All-Too-Probable Bad News

February 9, 2014 should have been another one of those days that sports entered the 21st century.

February 9 2014 should have been another one of those days where Football Nation America entered about the 20th century.

On that date, a very important event occurred.

Unfortunately, it is about to be followed, by all accounts, by a predictably discriminatory one.

Meet Michael Sam. Defensive lineman from Missouri.

On February 9, 2014, Michael Sam came out, almost certainly becoming the highest-profile current American-football player in the country to announce his homosexuality. He is the first NFL Draft prospect in history to come out. He did so on his own terms. No one outed him.

This is important for a very real reason: Michael Sam is about to enter the NFL Draft. In his senior season at the University of Missouri, in leading that school's defense to aid in the SEC East championship in it's best season in many years, Michael Sam was voted the SEC's best defensive player, the conference's Defensive Player of the Year.

This is no Johnny-come-lately. Eight of the last nine SEC Defensive Players of the Year went in the first round.

He was projected to be drafted, and, even after he announced that he was gay, Mel Kiper, stating he did not believe that the announcement would impact his draft stock, said that there was much divisiveness anyway about Sam's accomplishments last season (for one example, some detractors felt that Sam had racked up statistics against lesser competition).

On November 7th, 2013, Kiper chatted that he felt Sam could grade out into the 2nd or 3rd round.

Kiper believes that Sam is about a 4th-round pick, comparable to many similar players in the NFL currently, but there were identifiable issues with his size and his ability to go into proper coverage. Varying other predictions had Sam falling anywhere on the third day of the Draft (Rounds 3-7), before this announcement.

Don't fool yourself, Mel. Sam, at least, is a high enough prospect that we will know that 32 teams will collude to keep him out of the National Homophobia League.

But keep in mind the Jason Collins story. Even in an NBA that is clearly, on a corporate level, the most accepting of the major sports leagues to the GLBT commmunity, Collins has not entered his 12th NBA season, and it is believed he is being shut out.

If that's taking place there, how does anyone expect, in the world of “The Gauntlet” for rookies at training camp and the like, that Michael Sam has a snowball's chance in Hell of making an NFL team?

I would put the odds better that we read Michael Sam's untimely obituary due to a “shocking accident” than hear of a successful pilgrimage onto an NFL roster, in which he would be the first openly gay active NFL player in known history.

Not only do I believe that 32 owners will gladly shut him out to make a statement, but I believe that, if Michael Sam does try to make an NFL team, that team will gladly take extra liberties, up to and including (if they can get enough “fixing” of the situation to keep it quiet) murdering him in a hazing ritual.

That's the reality of Roger Goodell's league. Even though Michael Sam's achievements should put to bed, once and for all, the perceived disjoint quality between heterosexual “manhood” and being a good football player, perception is much greater than reality.

In talking to several NFL officials, Sports Illustrated found, to a one, that Michael Sam has obliterated any real chance of an NFL career.

  • "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."
  • "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?'"
  • Sam's announcement did not come as a surprise to most NFL teams. Sam's sexual orientation was considered an open secret in his college town of Columbia, Mo., and the assistant personnel man said he believed "90 percent of teams" were already aware that Sam was gay and had dropped him on their draft boards. He estimated that of the 32 NFL franchises, only two or three didn't know prior to Sunday night's news. He projected that it will impact Sam's draft status "quite a bit."”
  • "There are guys in locker rooms that maturity-wise cannot handle it or deal with the thought of that," the assistant coach said. "There's nothing more sensitive than the heartbeat of the locker room. If you knowingly bring someone in there with that sexual orientation, how are the other guys going to deal with it? It's going to be a big distraction. That's the reality. It shouldn't be, but it will be."
  • From the February 9, 2014 MMQB article on Sam: ““Should I really care?” one GM said. “Is it going to be that big a deal? Aren’t we beyond this?””
  • It’s not a shocking thing to me, and it won’t be to our organization,” another GM said. “You’ll have old-school guys on your team saying, ‘Are you kidding, putting this guy on our team?’ And you’ll have other guys say, ‘Who cares? I knew two gay guys who came out in college.’ ”
  • One GM who already knew about the story told Peter King that he believes Michael Sam will not be drafted in the 2014 NFL Draft.
  • Sam came out to the entire Missouri team before his senior season. Asked them to keep it secret, and it sounds like they did.

Deadspin had a couple more gems from the National Homophobia League:

  • Herm Edwards basically mirrored most people who believe Sam will never play in the NFL. Homosexuality brings too much “baggage” to an NFL locker room, Herm said, and very poorly at that.
  • The NFL fraternity's Twitter reponses. The ones listed were supportive. Will you be as supportive come May or August?
I'm left with several thoughts here, none of them good:

  • Especially after the Richie Incognito scandal, and doubly so after it seemed the country came down on the side of that piece of shit, how can Sam's announcement be designed as anything but a retirement from football?
  • How did he make it that far in football as an open (and known!) gay player in the world of Chris Kluwe being blackballed, Richie Incognito, etc.? As reprehensible as the thought is, it is shocking (to the positive) that Michael Sam got as far as he did with his sexuality being no secret whatsoever, in such a culture of sport in which rape-level power-over is a common manifestation of supposed “manhood”.
  • After realizing what some rookies have had to go through at NFL training camps, how does anyone not see Michael Sam becoming a murder statistic? If you don't think every NFL team has some players who would openly do in the first homosexual active player in the game to make a statement as to a “real man's game”, etc. and so forth.

Please, tell me I'm wrong. I want him to succeed to shatter the barrier, and get the sport at least past 1950 or 1960.

But this just reads “This ends badly, on so many levels.” so obviously.

I will state it openly: I believe it's more likely that Michael Sam will be killed before Opening Day of the 2014 NFL season than it will be that he ever makes an NFL roster.

I hope I'm wrong on this one. The world will be a lesser place if I am right.

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