We already see how the men who pull the NFL’s most important strings are trying to play this.
Eight of them were quoted anonymously on Sports Illustrated’s website Sunday, in the hours after Missouri linebacker Michael Sam announced he is a “proud, gay man,” eager to become the first openly homosexual player on an NFL active roster when he’s drafted this spring.
None of them wanted to come across as Paleozoic in their own right, of course, so they pawned this off on their players: “It’s still a man’s-man game,” said one; “some players are going to look at you upside-down,” said another; “there are guys in locker rooms that maturity-wise cannot handle it or deal with the thought of that,” said a third.
Sure. Blame it on the knuckleheaded players rather than the knuckle-dragging executives. That’s a sound plan. Except Michael Sam came out to his teammates at Missouri this year, and would you like to know how much of a horrific distraction that was?
Missouri had its best season in more than 40 years. The Tigers went 12-2. They beat Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl. And by all accounts were as tightly knit and close as any team in America.
Yeah. That must have been one torn-to-pieces locker room.
Here’s the thing: Most of the men who populate college and professional football rosters are between the ages of 19 and 29. All of them have come of age in a time when classmates had two fathers, or two mothers; all of them have grown up in the first truly tolerant age of sexual orientation.
And most — not all, but most — realize through sheer mathematics they have already played with homosexuals, played against them, and in multiple numbers, too. Most — not all, but most — have gay friends. Most — not all, but most — understand an NFL locker room might possibly be the least sexual gathering place on earth, a place where sweaty, bleeding men congregate first to play a violent game and then to recover from it.
Whatever notions used to rule in professional locker rooms, things are different now. It is not the players’ sensibilities that will be most affected here. It’s the coaches. It’s the executives. It’s the owners. It’s the old school, not the new age. So it’s wrong to assign blame, 15 minutes after Sam’s announcement, on player proclivities.
Will teams back away from drafting Sam? They may. And the thing that will be impossible to know about his ultimate destination will be similar to the questions still attached to Jason Collins, the veteran basketball player and former Net who came out last year.
Collins has yet to find a job since making his pronouncement, and thus far there hasn’t been a groundswell of resentment because anyone who saw Collins play the past few years knew his career was nearing an end. It is certainly plausible — probable, even — he is out not because he is Out but because he simply can’t play anymore.
Sam? He was the best defensive player in the best college football league in the nation, the SEC, but even before this he was pegged as a puzzle, an undersized defensive end whose 11 sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss are canceled out by his more relevant numbers: 6-foot-2, 260 pounds. And he spent his year playing in the Eastern half of the league, a significant drop from the West of Auburn and Alabama and LSU and Texas A&M.
“His numbers are inflated,” one of the scouts quoted in the SI.com piece said. “You’ve got to see through that.”
That is a fair concern whether a player is straight, gay or celibate, and that should be the lone concern of the men who will determine Sam’s fate at the draft. Is he good enough? Will he help you win games? An executive who answers “no” to those questions and moves on will get no quarrel from anyone.
One who checks “yes” to both and still chooses not to pick him because he believes his locker room has set all its clocks back to 1947?
That’s not only intolerance — it’s intolerable.
It’s malpractice.