Top college football prospect [Michael Sam] comes out

It’s February. The slowest month of the year for American sports. If he announced this last month with the NFL playoffs going on, it would barely be a blip on the sports radar.

It’ll get some mention during the draft and on the first day or two of training camp, but it will soon be forgotten.

Meh.

His problem is, and has always been, he’s a mediocre punter at best. At worst, he’s in the bottom ranks of NFL punters. Yes, it’s great that he’s outspoken for a good cause, but he’s got to be good at his primary job first.

And that’s really the problem. It’d be nice if the guys who are outspoken are all stars instead of the borderline cases.

This is getting wall to wall coverage in the middle of the Olympics, but sure - slow news day. Anyway Sam went public now for a specific reason: the NFL draft process is about to start. He wanted to get the news out there, get ahead of the story, and let the reaction fade a little before the combine and the draft. Announcing it in the middle of the NFL playoffs (Missouri’s season ended in early January) would have been odd.

He came out because he was going to get outed. He wanted to control the story rather than have the media frame it.

Does anyone know why Sam decided to come out now? From what. I’ve heard, his team knew for over a year, and apparently no one felt the need to call TMZ and out the guy. Was there someone telling him that he was going to be outed in the press before the combine, so he decided to take matters in his own hands?

Has Kordell Stewart officially come out? If so, when? There were strong rumors swirling around him for years, but I never saw the official “Kordell Stewart announces he’s gay.”

Who were the players from the '93 Oiler team? You mention them as if it is common knowledge, so can you tell us who they were?
As to Sam, I honestly don’t think it will be as big an issue as people are thinking. Is it a story? Sure. Will it be covered during the draft, training camp, and pre-season? Sure. But if he makes an NFL roster, i highly doubt it will a blip on anyone’s radar schpreen by mid-season.

Assuming he makes a team, yes, there will be homophobic slurs from fans (especially on the road), but that won’t last. There will also be people on his own team that will not be happy, and may be vocal about it within the locker room. But I doubt too many players will make their feelings known to a national audience. Unless of course, someone figures out an angle that they can make money from it, like Richard Sherman did when he trash talked Michael Crabtree after the NFC Championship game. If someone can’t figure out how to make himself more marketable by showing his homophobic stripes, I think it will be a small story by mid-season.

Now, if he actually can play in the NFL, forget about it. His team’s fans will cheer him and his teammates will accept him as much as they accept anyone that may rub a few folks the wrong way. And there are players that aren’t loved in locker rooms. Riley Cooper was supposedly going to get his ass kicked for being caught using the “N” word on video, but no one took him out. Not only did his team accept him, not one opposition DB clocked him going across the middle. I personally believe that the media often try to create a shitstorm that simply isn’t there. And I believe this is one of those cases. This is 2014. Are there really that many guys who give a shit if a teammate is gay? As long as he isn’t hitting on anyone in the locker room or in public, it will cease to be an issue once the season gets underway.

So, unless he walks around the showers with an erection and is staring at his teammate’s crotches, no one will even notice him any more than the next guy. Men’s team locker rooms aren’t places where gay men are looking to pick up someone, are they? Players will get showered, dress, talk to reporters and go home, just like they do now. Aside from fielding a question or two at the beginning, how many times will we have to hear a player say “I don’t care if he is gay or straight, as long as he keeps playing at a high level” before we get bored with it and move on to other stories.

The biggest concern every team will have with him is where to play him if they draft him, not where to put his locker in the locker room. He is, as people have pointed out, a tweener… So if his coaches find a place for him, he will stick. If not, he will get cut, simple as that.

If Denver was willing to waste a first rounder on Tim Tebow, someone should pick him up, either with a draft pick or sign him as a free agent.

And make no mistake about it…teams will never tell anyone they are high on a player before the combine, unless they want another team to think they are going to draft that player to try to squeeze some trade value for him. Either that, or the team who is picking first will sing the praises of the guy they are going to take with the first pick to get the fans amp’d up. The rest of it is one big poker game.

I would not be surprised if he went undrafted, but that would just be because teams may feel that they can get a high value prospect without wasting a pick on him. But if a team wants him and feels like another team might take him, they will draft him to make sure they get him.

This is, IMO, just not as big a deal as the media is making it to be. I’ll be shocked if I am wrong on this, but I guess time will tell.

The only way this becomes a major firestorm is if he is undrafted and unsigned as a free agent. THEN the NFL has a problem. Until that happens, I’ll just ignore this for now.

During the draft and training camp it will be a news story not just a sports story. Every single news outlet will be reporting on it. It will be a bigger story than anything else in camp or the draft by several orders of magnitude. It’s going to be a Diane Sawyer 6 pm news story not just an espn story. Many teams will not want to be a part of that.

Mediocre and has been in the league long enough to get paid more. Teams can pick up a mediocre young player with potential for cheaper than paying him knowing he isn’t going to get better.

The same reasons why Jason Collins is unemployed right now.

I’d bet you a large amount of money that you’re wrong.

If Kordell Stewart has come out he certainly is doing it wrong with the marriages and the kids and all.

I think people in this thread are talking about two totally different issues and not hearing what others are saying.

If he finds a spot on a team and becomes an effective nfl player will it continue to be an issue for his entire career? No, of course not. The story will fade away.

Will his status as the first openly gay player trying for a team cause a media frenzy around training camp? Yes it will. Will the possibility of having camp turn into a circus turn off many teams? I think so. Especially since he is a marginal prospect.

Sam’s own explanation, from several of his interviews (which may or may not be spin) is that he had originally planned to keep quiet until after the draft, and then privately tell the owner, general manager, and head coach of the team that drafted him. But when he went to the Senior Bowl, he realized that everyone there pretty much knew, and that once the draft started, it was likely that the media would break the story. He decided that he would rather break it himself, and have more control over the story. It sounds like his agent and other members of his entourage were included in both the original plan and the decision to change it.

His ex-wife claims he’s gay, but he vehemently denies it. But then they were going through a bitter divorce and she isn’t particularly happy that she found out he was divorcing her via twitter.

What part? That it is going to be covered by more than just the usual sports beat reporters? That’s an easy bet for me to win. That teams will pass to not have to deal with the extra press? There is a good chance that will never be acknowledged publicly.

I think there’s a lot of focus on the degree to which Michael Sam will draw media attention and cause “distraction” without really establishing that these things are a net negative. Media attention and distraction also go by the name “publicity,” and with a few notable exceptions while head coaches dislike excessive publicity, marketing people and sales guys and general managers and owners feel differently. The team that drafts Michael Sam will get a considerable amount of free publicity, a token amount of it negative but the majority of it positive. Their names and pictures will be in the newspaper. In particular, there are any number of teams that will not be especially competitive next season. Distraction and media attention would be a net positive for most of those teams, since otherwise they’ll either go unmentioned in the media or draw attention for being awful.

Then there’s the issue of legacy. You don’t think there’s even one owner in the entire sport who on some level likes the idea that someday, Harrison Ford will play him in a movie? That books will be written about him and that his name will become synonymous with a major positive event in the history of football?

He’ll get drafted, higher than people think. Some owner somewhere will look at the positive publicity, the potential for impact on legacy, the fact that breaking this barrier is the right thing to do (which will matter to some decision makers), and - you know - the possibility that Michael Sam might turn out to be a real asset on the football field, and the guy will have a home.

The problem with going after “good publicity” is the large ration of “negative publicity” you’d get if you have to cut the kid before opening day. Sam is a smallish defensive end, and even if he is drafted he’s some where in the 50-50 range of even making a bad team. Not to mention that the “good publicity” would be received least enthusiastically with the NFL’s target market, which, judging by the tv ads during NFL games consists of men who like to drink beer, men who like to drive pickup trucks, and middle-aged men who fantasize of having pharmaceutically, enhanced sex with incredibly beautiful middle-aged women and are willing to risk a 4-hour erection, even if they might have to call a doctor.

The NFL is hardly known for it’s progressive stance on breaking social ground. After years of criticism about lack of black head-coaches, the league finally had to step in and mandate that a team interview at least one black applicant for an open coaching position. And although the media will compare the drafting and signing of a gay player to the integration of baseball, they do not equate. Gay men have probably been playing in the NFL since the days of Red Grange. And unlike 1947, there’s no professional Gay Football League with scores of players that could play in the NFL. Branch Rickey was brilliant and religious and probably had some moral motivation to integrate the Dodgers, but he was motivated by winning and knew integration was inevitable and wanted to get the jump on the rest of baseball.

“Drafted, higher than people think,” is beyond vague. Right now he’s projected, talent-wise, to be a late 2nd or 3rd round pick. I have no idea how accurate that is – I suspect he’s being propped up by his agent in an attempt to put NFL teams “on the spot.” That’s the problem you have when you’re trying to mix in non-football considerations. If an NFL Team/GM/Coach is really concerned about legacy and “doing the right thing,” he should seek out a gay player, already on his team, and encourage him to come out publicly. Same result, far less risk and far less drama that would ensue if you draft a marginal prospect out of college.

I am fascinated by the ability of people to project his odds of making a team with such precision. I am astounded that so many posters, and people talking about this issue, aren’t employed in the scouting departments of NFL teams.

His projected draft position was around that before he ever came out.

And I’m fascinated and astounded that you would cherry-pick my comments and leave out the qualifier, " I have no idea how accurate that is." I don’t know how you inferred that I was positioning my words as expert analysis on Sam’s draft status.

A former player takes on the “distraction” distraction:

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24438701/stallworth-if-team-cant-handle-sam-media-scrutiny-already-losers

Not entirely sure. Open secret in the locker room, but nobody’s coming out to confirm names and teammates aren’t giving them out of respect to anybody still in the closet.

The Houston Chronicle report only has comments from their teammates who claim they knew at the time, and that it wasn’t a big deal. Warren Moon more or less confirmed he’s played with gay teammates, too, so it seems like it was true of the Oilers of that era.

Ernest Givens is usually given as suspected, despite denials (though, of course, any athletes in the 90s would deny it).

Even if it’s not true there were such players (though it’s hard to say it isn’t), the attitude is still important. These are “old school” players who say it wasn’t a big deal a couple decades ago to have a gay teammate. Suggesting athletes’ tolerance for homosexuality has regressed in the last 20 years doesn’t make much sense. So, the locker room culture argument is total bunk. It wasn’t an issue to players from a generation ago. Why would it be an issue to players from today?

I am fascinated that a statement made 2 paragraphs later in reference to his draft position can be considered a “qualifier” for a previous statement about his odds of making a team.

Because you made a statement that his odds were 50/50 of making a team. Those were your words. As to his draft position, I was simply pointing out that his draft position was projected well before he came out, so your “suspecting” that "he’s being propped up by his agent in an attempt to put NFL teams “on the spot” doesn’t really make much sense.

To arrive at 50-50 I used this thing George W. Bush called “the google.”

“NFL Draft research says … Consistently in the last 10 years there is a 50-percent hit rate on second-round picks, but you have to account for variance in that some NFL Drafts are stronger than others so there isn’t always your typical 50-percent hit rate every year.”

http://walterfootball.com/nfldraftology408_2.php

I was giving Sam the benefit of the doubt that he’d be as high as a 2nd round pick. So, there’s at least a 50% chance you’ll have to cut this kid and deal with the backlash.

Its not a matter of if a team can handle the media scrutiny. Its if they want to have to handle it for a marginal prospect.