His name is Michael Sam, and he was SEC Defensive Player of the Year, predicted to go in the 3rd or 4th round.
A lot of current NFL execs and coaches feels this seriously hurts his NFL prospects. One big reason I think Sam made the announcement is that he came out to his teammates in August (in Missouri!), and his getting drafted would’ve most likely caused the news to come out (pun half intended) sooner rather than later anyway.
So what do you think will end up happening to Michael Sam? Mel Kiper of ESPN was quite a bit more optimistic towards NFL willingness to take a risk on him. Do you think the concerns of the anonymous higher ups are reasonable? Does it matter, given that they DO have those concerns, no matter their origin?
He’ll be drafted, but later than he otherwise would have been. The one mitigating thing is the NFL or its member teams might dredge up something else to use against him.
I am sure it’s true the NFL isn’t “ready” for an openly gay player. Of course, they never will be until after there is one.
A friend of mine works in the Mizzou athletic department, and at the beginning of the season told me a player had come out to the Team (he didn’t tell me who, and I didn’t ask). They prepared for the news to leak, but apparently they didn’t need to. He mentioned that he had the full support of everyone involved.
Missouri can be very conservative, but Columbia is actually liberal compared to the rest of the rural areas of the state, but I understand the comment.
This is another very cool step toward equal treatment for gays in our society. It’s hard to predict what will happen to Sam because a lot of steps in the NFL draft process haven’t happened yet. I was going to say they’re “important” steps, but it’s more like the frenzied collection of data and desperate categorization of players and obsession over statistics and workout wonders. But this guy was an All-American, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, and led the conference in sacks. He was nominated for national awards as best defensive player and best at his position. Everybody seems to agree he could get drafted as high as the third round. Maybe he won’t get drafted that high because of his sexuality or for a number of other reasons, but someone’s going to take a chance on him. He’s way too good to ignore. And if he slips too far in the draft because a bunch of teams decide they cant handle a gay player, some forward-thinking coach like Pete Carroll will get him, use him to his best advantage, and he’ll be one of those guys who knows he should’ve been drafted higher and gets revenge on the rest of the league.
The Packers should draft him. Lombardi had a very strong anti-homophobic position he enforced as coach. OK, that’s not a good reason, but still one if my favorite things about Lombardi.
I get the sense that all it would take was for such people to observe that, no, their gay teammate is NOT ogling them in the shower 24/7, or trying to hit on them, for them to realize that gay teammates are not a problem.
At this point I assume people who say things like that are full of shit. They’re either assuming people share their own prejudices or they’re making blind guesses. (They could also be trying to tank Sam’s draft stock to give their own teams a shot at him. It’s reported that teams do stuff like that.) In 2008 we heard plenty of people saying the country just wasn’t ready for a black president, and while some individuals sure as hell weren’t ready and there are lots of caveats, voters elected the guy and then elected him again. Nobody’s ever ready for something like this until it just happens. When it does, some people embrace it, some freak out, and a bunch of others get over any hangups right quick. Even before Jason Collins came out, people were wondering when we’d start to see openly gay athletes in the major sports, and the speculation only picked up after Collins’ announcement.
Could the opposite be true; that a team takes him in the first or second round to make a statement? The Vikings and Packers both sort of come to mind in that regard.
Is there ever a time when a scout says something will improve a player’s draft stock? I mean other than surprising physical performance at the combine or pro days?
They’re talking out their collective ass. It’s a stock answer - “it’ll hurt the player’s draft stock”. So what? If there’s an unconfirmed report a player was seen leaving his grandmother’s house at 3am, “unnamed NFL personnel staff” will say his draft stock will tank. “We don’t know if he’s been carrying on an illicit affair with his grandmother. There’s a lot of teams that won’t want to take that chance”.
Maybe he will fall in the draft. Maybe not. But the concept that unnamed assistants can make any accurate assessment on that is really ridiculous. They can’t make accurate assessments on the draft position of the majority of players this far out, even for some of the top guys. So they’ll stick with their safe little answers. The NFL is a copycat league. They mostly stick with the known and the safe until somebody else takes a chance.
Just to nitpick the OP, he is not a top prospect. Before any of this came out he was projected to get picked in the middle of the draft at best. Some were saying later rounds. He is a linebacker sized defensive end. Small for an end, slow for a linebacker (at least by NFL standards). His stats look good until you see which opponents he racked up those numbers against. If he does great in the combine his prospects may go up.
I agree with one of the Sports Illustrated articles. Coaches hate distractions. Coaches especially hate distractions from unproven rookies. Here you have a future rookie that is far from a sure good fit for the NFL who will be a huge distraction. Some teams will pass just for that reason. If he were a true top prospect, a consensus 1st rounder, he would still go in the first round. Business and winning comes first.
I think that the NFL had better man up and become ready. First of all, it’s gonna happen, and they can either be supportive or undermining. Second, young people’s attitudes about sexuality have changed much faster than the people old enough to be important in the NFL realize. At some point - quite soon, I fully expect - an obviously retrograde attitude towards gays will start hurting their ability to draw a new generation of fans.
All it would take would be one single team that doesn’t give a damn about his sexuality, and he’ll be drafted at close to the same round that he would have been anyway.
And that’s assuming that “doesn’t give a damn” is the furthest any team goes, and that isn’t necessarily true, either. Yes, draft slots are precious, and teams will want to get the biggest return on investment possible from their early picks… But for the teams, “return on investment” isn’t just winning games, at least not directly. “Return on investment” is getting seats filled in the stadium and viewers on TV and buyers for the officially-licensed merchandise. Winning games is only valued because it tends to lead to those other things, and anything else that gets the fans spending money is just as valuable. Some team might just figure that not looking like bigots could be worth a lot of money.
His coming out will be a distraction and distractions are leverage for the NFL. Unless he does exceptionally well in the combines and he doesn’t have skeletons in his closet (being gay isn’t a skeleton; but there are any number of other issues which might be) then he’ll probably be drafted in the middle and he’ll be offered a contract commensurate with that ranking.
If he doesn’t do well…unfortunately that will prevent most other gay/bisexual players from coming out as the “perception” will be that “Look at how X did. How do we know that this guy won’t do the same?”. While that’s unfair…so is the world.
We could be here all month listing guys who continued to play in the NFL despite trouble with the law, distracting personal problems, controversial comments, rules violations, and on and on.
This is much more truthful. Coaches will put up with all manner of bullshit from a player if they decide he’s a net positive and they need him. They’ll change their minds as soon as that calculus changes, but professional sports is good at highlighting just how much bullshit an employer will put up with in a competitive environment if they decide they need to.