The Media and Michael Sam

A barrier was breached this past Sunday when NFL prospect Michael Sam announced to the world that he is gay. A First Team All American defensive end from Missouri and reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year, Sam will likely become the first active openly gay player in the history of the NFL, possibly the first in any major North American sporting league. He immediately became one of the top storylines leading into the draft and the NFL season.

The biggest issue on everybody’s mind is how a gay teammate will affect the dynamics of an NFL locker room. This is an unfortunately valid question, considering remarks made by a number of players in recent years. A locker room has a reputation for masculinity, and as we found out from the Jonathan Martin-Richie Incognito mess in Miami earlier this year it is not uncommon for players to casually drop homophobic slurs. How will players treat an openly gay teammate, and how will Sam react to such an environment?

Truthfully, I don’t think this will be an issue. There will be a few bad elements on any team, but I think there will be enough supportive members of the team and the coaching staff to make certain they don’t cause problems. It will help if Sam gets drafted by a team with an already established coaching staff and leadership group, but wherever he goes I don’t think he will have an issue. He has been in football locker rooms his entire life—including his last season at Missouri before which he informed his teammates and his coaches of his sexuality—and he understands what he will be getting into. I highly doubt we will see any significant incidents occurring within the locker room because of him.

I think the bigger issue will be the reactions of the fans and media members. In this case I’m not actually talking about the homophobic assholes who will shout slurs and profanity at him as he plays on the field. If you’ve ever been to a football game, you know that they do that regardless of a player’s sexuality. A football field is large enough to insulate a player from the worst members of the crowd, and there will be few if any incidents involving Sam and the fans. I think the biggest problems will arise due to the overzealous fans and media members attempting to support him.

We will hear even more of this as we approach the draft, but already we have been swept up in the discussion of how this will affect Sam’s draft status. On NFLDraftScout.com he fell from the 90^th ranked player to 160^th on Monday Morning. An anonymous NFL GM made a statement that he expected several teams to drop Sam on their boards following this announcement. This led to cries of homophobia and discrimination and general condemnation of this anonymous speaker.

I am certain that several teams have already downgraded Sam’s status on their board, perhaps even taken him off altogether. I don’t particularly like this, but I think attributing it to homophobia is a false conclusion. While there may be some members of a team’s staff with personal thoughts on the issue, I doubt there are any front offices in the league with such an institutional bias. The teams that have downgraded him have done so because they don’t want to deal with the media storm that surrounds him, the same reason a number of teams downgraded Manti Te’o last year and Johnny Manziel this year. Many teams and coaches prefer to operate outside of the public’s eye. They don’t want media following the moves of one single player, fans demanding they play him more or play him less. Fair or not, they have decided that they don’t want Sam associated with their team for reasons related to but distinct from his sexuality.

While there are several teams who have downgraded him, I expect there are probably just as many teams who would be willing to reach for him in order to add a public interest story to their team. The Redskins and Jets are always looking for attention, and the Cowboys may even factor in despite the demographics of their fan base. Both the Vikings and the Dolphins have faced accusations of homophobia within their organization, and drafting Sam could offset much of this negative publicity. It only takes one team to decide he’s worth a pick, and I doubt he will suffer a long fall in the draft because of this announcement.

The problem is, Sam’s stock is already falling and will likely continue to fall up until the draft. During his time at Missouri he showed great ability on the field, but as the process continues that will mean less and less compared against his limited physical capabilities. Sam is undersized for a defensive end, and his athleticism isn’t at an elite level. Some have suggested that because of his size he would be better off moving to outside linebacker in a 3-4 scheme, but his athletic shortcoming leave that a less than ideal option. During the Senior Bowl he struggled when forced to play as a linebacker, and teams have begun to question where he would fit in the NFL. As the process goes on—as he gets measured at the Combine and at Missouri’s Pro Day—his shortcomings in speed and athleticism will become more relevant and drop him down the board.

Sam has always been a controversial figure on draft boards. I’ve seen projections from before his announcement that had him going as high as the second round and others that had him falling all the way to the seventh. Wherever he ends up, the driving narrative will be his sexuality. Expect to hear that Sam is the first SEC Defensive Player of the Year to fall out of the first round since 2005, and only the second ever to not go in one of the top two rounds. The media will ignore that this would have been the case even if he had never made this announcement. They will only see it as a sign that the NFL is not ready to accept a gay player.

I don’t have an issue with Sam’s decision to announce his sexuality. That is absolutely his choice to make, and no one other than him has any right to make judgment on it. But I struggle to think of a worse player to attempt to break this barrier. It would be much better if this was an established veteran player, or even a top prospect headed into the draft. Because Sam is a middle tier prospect with questionable NFL potential, the media will have any number of opportunities to spin the narrative as they want it.

When Sam is drafted, he will go to his new team as one of a pack of faceless rookies added to the roster. Some of the veterans will haze him, but most will probably ignore him altogether. There is nothing malicious behind this—it is the sort of thing that happens to almost every rookie to enter the league—but it is the sort of thing that could easily be spun as a sign of him not being welcomed into his team’s locker room. Had it been a veteran player making this announcement, he would have been already ingrained into the locker room in such a way that this couldn’t happen. But because Sam is rookie he will have to face the normal hurdles in joining a new team.

Sam’s development as a player will be watched by eyes across the nation. Every decent play he makes in the preseason will be held up as evidence that he deserves a major role on the team. A few great plays can turn him into a fan favorite. But the fact will remain that Sam was a mid to late round pick, and such players rarely contribute during their rookie seasons. When his coach chooses to play him only on special teams there will be backlash, and if he is cut before the season there will be calls for lawsuits and investigations. There will be no way for a coach to make a normal, rational decision in this environment.

There are a number of parallels between this situation and the media storm that surrounded Tim Tebow a few years ago. After a surprising playoff run as the starting quarterback for Denver, Tebow was traded to the Jets where he sat on the bench for the majority of the year before being cut at the end of the season. Many fans of him and his religious beliefs developed a sort of persecution complex, feeling that he was banished from the league due to his openness with his faith. They failed to recognize how terrible he was as a football player. We could witness the same sort of backlash if Sam’s career comes to a quick end as happens with many late round picks.

A gay player in the NFL has been inevitable for several years, and now we have to hope that it goes as smoothly as possible. The easiest solution would be to ask for responsibility and rationality from the fans and media, but that doesn’t seem likely. The best outcome is in the hands of several players already within the league. It has been suggested over the past few months that there is already a group of closeted players active in the NFL, a few ready to come out under the right circumstances. Many are probably waiting right now to see how this situation with Sam plays out, but if they truly want to lend him their support they should follow his example as soon as possible. I know it is up to them to announce their sexuality whenever and however they choose, but everything would go much smoother if instead of following the journey of one player through the league the media can focus on a group attempting together to break through this barrier.