Well, to be fair, the successes and openness of todays gay people and families has created a backlash. While overall, society is moving towards acceptance, there is a polarization that drives anti-gay people to be even more anti-gay. In other words, in the ‘old days,’ homosexuality was ‘politely’ ignored in a if you don’t talk about it, I won’t talk about it sort of way. Out and proud did cause a bit of regression.
I think you overestimate any backlash that would come from his getting cut.
He came out already. It’s not new information. Anyone picking him in the draft has full knowledge that he is gay. More importantly, we all know that they know he is gay. If he gets cut, the fact that he was upfront about it actually gives the team cover because they knew he was gay when they drafted him. In other words, if being gay was a problem then the drafting wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Had he come out after being drafted and before getting cut, then you would have speculation about the reasons. But that isn’t the case here.
So Michael Sam, defensive end at Missou and SEC Defensive Player of the Year, is gay. He let his team know in August (although he says they pretty much all knew already), and Missou has been officially quite supportive (although at least one teammate has suggestedthat support in the locker room has not been all that great).
As kunilou points out in another thread, Sam’s draft prospects might have dropped as a result of his coming out:
Now, third round isn’t exactly superstar material, but for a defensive end it’s not awful. And while some folks might suggest that
despite being an All-American and, again, the SEC Defensive Player of the Friggin’ Year in one of Missou’s best seasons in decades, it seems pretty clear to me that any drop in his draft prospects will be a direct result of his coming out.
But I might be wrong.
So what say y’all? Is Sam going to face a lower draftday paycheck for being out? Will there be a team or a coach willing to embrace the inevitable, potential fallout be damned?
And hell, since I’m on the subject, is this the thin end of the wedge for out queer players in the NFL?
That’s fair. But I think most of them see the writing on the wall, too.
Fair point, but I’d say they can suck it up.
The NFL would like us to believe they are putting the best possible product on the field. Not the best product constrained by how much media scrutiny they care to handle. League teams can live up to the standard they set for themselves.
It’s fairly safe (if a tad tautological) to say that any drop in his draft prospects that would not have occured if he had not come out is a result of his coming out.
But, you’d need to be able to identify where he “should” have been drafted. Given that his prospects were dubious (given his size, speed, and the opponents he faced) before he came out, that’s difficult to do.
To your last question, absolutely. Assuming he gets drafted and actually plays for a few seasons, and the sky doesn’t fall in, and his teammates accept him, then it just takes the piss out of all the “you can’t do that in the NFL” arguments.
Not that it will be a smooth ride for him or other gay players who come out. Stupid doesn’t die easy.
Roddy
Sure they can suck it up. If it was Andrew Luck he would still get grabbed up in the top spot and damn the circus. We are not talking about Andrew Luck or any other 1st round talent. Who wants to “suck it up” for a player they have serious performance questions about? There are dozens of those types of players in every draft.
What leads you to believe his prospects were dubious? Dubious that he’d be drafted at all? Per kunilou’s first cite above, he was independently estimated at around #110…do you have other, lower estimates on hand?
If he’s cut, then there’s going be plenty of conspiracy theorists that believe he was cut for non-football reasons. That perhaps his presence was causing problems in the “neanderthal world of the NFL locker room.” If I were a coach I wouldn’t want to deal with that conjecture. You wouldn’t be able to convince some advocates that it was purely a football decision.
Isn’t it just a lot easier to break this barrier with an established player on a team that also happens to be gay and encourage him to come out publicly? If that were done than it would surely minimize the media circus and make it much easier on kids like Sam. We wouldn’t have to endure folks like Rush Limbaugh saying that the only reason Sam made the cut was because of his sexual preference OR the reverse argument from the activists on the other side in case Sam gets cut.
Jackie Robinson was hand-picked by Branch Rickey. He was 28 years old, and was considered an exceptional talent as well as a man of maturity and discipline and commitment. The chances of Jackie not making it in MLB were miniscule. There must be dozens of gay men in the NFL right now. Get one of them to stand up and come out, don’t leave it up to a marginal NFL prospect.
It’s too early to tell. If he has a good combine and good workouts, then I think it’s unlikely he slips past the 4th or 5th round. Even if a lot of teams are ‘hands-off’, someone will think he’s a good enough risk to take him.
I think he will get drafted, I’m not sure if this hurt his draft prospects. When talking about athletes I’m reminded of something Curt Schilling (who I otherwise don’t care for, but he’s right on this) once said, that while it’s easy to point to someone in the major leagues and say ‘they suck’ the reality is even the worst guy in the majors is probably better at his sport than anyone you’ve ever personally known in your life. He was probably the best player on his High School team by a mile and if he played in college he was probably near the top of his college team.
I think that’s true in football as well. So in “general” I think Sam is a very good player, but there is a hierarchy. If you’re pretty good in a BCS conference in college, you’re a good football player, period. You can argue much of Sam’s statistics came against weak opponents and you’d be right, but even those weak opponents were made up of fairly good players. Even kids in FCS football are near the top of the football pyramid. But to get to the actual top of the pyramid, going from big time FBS football to actual professional football in the NFL is a big step. There are lots of All Americans, even Heisman winners, who are lucky to ride the bench for a few years in the pros before moving on to a non-sports life.
I think Sam may fall into the category of one of those good players that just lacks what you need to be successful in that final rung or top level of the football pyramid. Sam plays defensive end, and is good enough at that in college, but his size (particularly his height which obviously cannot change) isn’t really right for the DE position at the pro level. That means you would most likely draft him with plans to convert him to a LB, but his performance at the Senior Bowl and general qualities about Sam make it seem like it would be quite a project indeed to have him be successful at LB.
His projected draft position actually dropped after he announced he was gay, but that seems to be much more about the rankings being readjusted across the board as happens in the lead up to the combine, lots of prospects see their rankings fall during this time and given Sam is one of those players that is a “project” player to get him into being a contribution to an NFL team it makes sense he’d be one of the players to drop in desirability. Is it possible some teams might be interested in Sam but will choose not to draft him because he’s out? I think so, some teams executives will just not want their image associated with anything that could be controversial. There will probably be a decent amount of goodwill for whatever team does draft him, but some teams have really rough blue collar fanbases and for them it might be wise to pass on Sam. I doubt a team like the Seahawks or Giants would have much of a fear of issues, but there are teams in parts of the country that it might not be the best thing for anyone for Sam to be drafted there.
I suspect he goes because after a few rounds you need to fill in roster spots and eventually you do start drafting “iffy” guys like Sam, as far as “iffy” prospects go he’s one of the better ones on the defensive side of the ball.
I’m not expert on the issues (although I found the discussion herequite informative), but as I understand it, a great deal hinges on whether or not his is fast enough to play linebacker since he’s too small to say at his current position (in addition to claims that his college performance is inflated) and that a lot would come from his performance in the combine.
Now, maybe there’s a coherent way to judge these factors independent of his sexuality, I don’t know. All I’m saying is that his prospects appear to have been someone questionable such that it would be difficult to judge his “proper” draft point with his “actual, gay-motivated” draft point.
An NFL roster has 53 players. 32 teams = 1615 total players. 5% of 1615 = 80 players. Assume that football players are less likely to be gay but also assume higher percentage of gays for those in their 20s and 30s that are college educated.
If you were a coach, why would you give a crap? Here’s what happens if you coach an NFL team: every single day people say your team needs to fire you because you suck. They demand that you fire your staff and change your offense and your defense. They demand that you acquire, cut, and bench or start players. All of that is a constant, and it takes place on TV, on the radio, and on the internet all the time. If you can’t handle that, you won’t be an NFL coach for very long.
To hear some people tell it, you’d think the NFL is a little minor league that eschews publicity. The NFL is a multibillion dollar marketing giant that stages the biggest event in sports and the most-watched show on TV every year. NFL teams may not welcome distractions and controversy, but those things are a fact of life and the teams are more than used to handling them.
Draft projections go up and down every day until the actual draft. 3 months out they’re basically worthless.
Here’s a ranking of mock drafts from last year that were released just days before the draft:
Of the top 5, they were about 80% accurate on have the correct players picked in the first round. Only 35% accurate on what actual pick the player would go. And once you get past the 1st round, it just gets less and less accurate. So a projected third round pick could go pretty much anywhere. I think Kyle Long was projected early third round last year and he went with the 20th pick.
There’s always a minority that you can’t convince of basic facts.
While neither of us know what would happen. I assert that the majority of gay and lesbian advocates would not go apeshit over Sam getting cut if he is given a fair shot after being drafted. It’s common sense. And while not everyone adheres to common sense, I think the majority will see that “willing to draft” shows a lack of homophobia.
To answer directly:
[ul]
[li]Yes to lower draft pick, but he will be picked.[/li][li]Yes to team willing to embrace the fallout, although a subset of all teams. Not everyone is so worried about their ability to handle “distractions”.[/li][li]Yes to the thin edge of the wedge. A the very least, I would expect a few former players to come out in the wake of Sam signing.[/li][/ul]
Now, as for longer term prospects - In addition to the draft, he would have to survive and make the roster, and there is always the possibility of post-draft trades. Every move made with him will be closely watched - playing time, starts, etc., and the inevitable day he is finally cut.
