Ready or not, NFL about to have first openly gay player

Michael Sam, a defensive end from Missouri who was the SEC defensive player of the year and was expected to be a high NFL draft pick, today publicly came out as being gay.

Interestingly, Sam was already out at the college level and told his teammates before the last season. So, a real test case for pro sports. Will NFL teams draft him? Someone better, or the NFL is going to look awfully bad.

This is an important story and it says a lot that it took a college player to finally break the ice.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football … ?eref=sihp
By BearinFW | 02/10/2014 12:17 AM | 5 comments
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  • Hansen is a Dallas institution. He's been sports anchor at one or the other local TV station for well over 30 years now. He's always been outspoken, but it surprises me a little that he would do such a great on-air piece against discrimination. Although Dallas itself has become a liberal city, the DFW area as a whole is still very conservative.
    BearinFW 02/13/2014 08:07 PM
  • @MG Great video. I had not seen nor heard about the piece, but it's great. I've never heard of Dale Hansen either, but he really holds the mirror up to the NFL, and it should make plenty of people squirm. Trying to find out more about Hansen, I came across this in the Seattle's , "The Stranger" talking about the commentary: "So this video lit the internet on fire yesterday afternoon/last night. (At least by my clock.) The monologue comes from Dale Hansen of ABC's Dallas affiliate WFAA. It's perhaps surprising that one of the most salient pieces of commentary on Sam and the NFL comes from the heart of Texas, but that just makes it all the more excellent."

    Indeed, the piece probably has more than a few fundamentalists in Texas fuming. Good.

    Thanks for posting.
    furball 02/13/2014 11:49 AM
  • He's going to get picked, and when it's all said and done, it's going to happen with a big whimper. Really, at the end of the day it's going to be a non-news story. The clubs that don't have owners or upper management that are full of bigots are only going to be looking at him as a resource--can he play? Remember Manti Te'o, who was the tackle from Notre Dame with the non-existent girlfriend? Te'o's whole story was truly embarrassing, and it was speculated it would cause him to fall in the draft and that he would be a distraction. He wound up being drafted in the second round by the Chargers, and while he had a less than stellar rookie season (he played the better part of it with a broken foot), he survived getting hit by the big guys, taunting fans, and a press that is always looking for a scab to pick, and he got better as the season progressed. Sam will get picked and endure. He's tough.

    The SI article reads more like Wikipedia post in severe need of citations; all the assistants and management quoted where allowed to remain anonymous. We know how that works. Regardless, being allowed to stay anonymous did not take away that a good portion of those comments--far from dispassionate-- were flat out bigoted and so stereotypical that it only demonstrates the vitriol that exists for gay people by some people, but certainly not a reflection of attitude in the clubs and locker rooms as a whole.

    Frank Bruni in today's Times writes a good article about Sam and commenting on the SI article, too. One of my favorite lines in Bruni's article, in reference to getting a naked in the locker room, "It’s a locker room, for heaven’s sake. Not last call at the Rawhide." I thought it was funny. Bruni's article 'Panic In The Locker Room' here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/opinion/bruni-p … ef=opinion
    furball 02/11/2014 01:38 PM
  • Since Sam had already come out to his teammates, a number of NFL teams were already aware of it. This link as a reaction from some NFL people shows just what a bunch of neanderthals the NFL is.

    Sam was generally projected as a 3-5 round draft pick. Now NFL personnel men are guessing he may not be drafted at all.

    That's shameful, but what do we expect from most football players? Honestly now.

    If the NFL is smart, what they will do is arrange for some more progressive team to draft him somewhere around the 5-6 round if he's still sitting there (maybe with a compensatory pick to sweeten the pot if needed). Surely the NFL would realize how bad it would make them look if he goes undrafted.


    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football … ?eref=sihp
    BearinFW 02/10/2014 04:05 AM
  • I'm real proud of him--as a man of color it can not be easy. You're right Bear'nFW, there are going to be a couple of teams that will not touch him, but there will be teams that will try to pick him for their team's needs and his abilities. He is a first-team all-American and was named the Associated Press defensive player of the year. I wish the best for him and the team that picks him.

    Very cool...
    furball 02/10/2014 02:10 AM