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When Sports Illustrated’s cover asked, “Is the NFL Ready for Michael Sam?” they didn’t mean on the football field.
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Some time tonight or tomorrow afternoon, if not already, Michael Sam will hear his name called at the NFL Draft. The Ravens are rumored to be interested in the 2013 Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year, where he might find a role in Baltimore’s 3-4 zone blitz defense. Atlanta, Cleveland, Indianapolis, New England, and the New York Jets are all also believed to be considering selecting the 6’2”, 256-pound defensive end from the University of Missouri.
When Sports Illustrated’s cover asked, “Is the NFL Ready for Michael Sam?,” the magazine wasn’t querying whether the defensive end, currently projected to be drafted anywhere from the third to the seventh round, would be a game-changing player on the field. Instead, when Sam is selected, whether by one of these teams or another, he will virtually certainly become the first openly gay player in National Football League history.
Jason Collins
AP/Jason Zalubowski
Michael Sam’s coming out, carefully choreographed with the New York Times, ESPN, and Outsports, made national headlines—and quickly inspired a flood of articles asking the same question as Sports Illustrated. These articles closely resemble the media frenzy before the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: how would the presence of an openly gay player disrupt cohesion in the locker room? How would 300-pound linebackers be safe in the showers from wandering eyes?
One could look to the relative ease with which the U.S. armed forces accepted the presence of openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to confidently anticipate that Sam’s sexual orientation will be a non-issue in the locker room. Or we could take note of the warm welcomes Jason Collins and Robbie Rogers each received from their teammates when they joined the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Galaxy, respectively, after publicly coming out.
The best evidence, though, for this prediction rests in how in his senior year at Missouri, Michael Sam led the Tigers to a 12-2 season, an SEC East title, and a Cotton Bowl victory over Oklahoma State, earning consensus All-American honors along the way—after coming out to his coaches and teammates before the beginning of the 2013 season.
Having spent the last fifteen years teaching at a wide range of universities in the SEC, the ACC, and Ivy League, I’ve had a front row seat to watch the dramatic growth in support for LGBT equality among younger Americans. Even my most conservative students at the University of Georgia a decade ago, who voted to re-elect George W. Bush, supported the Iraq War, and opposed abortion rights, almost universally saw no reason to object to marriage equality for same-sex couples.
From this vantage point, it’s clear that the only question about whether the NFL is ready for Michael Sam lies among a subset of owners, league executives, pundits,
Robbie Rogers
AP/Mary Schwalm
and agents ill-prepared for the generational culture change that is passing some of them by.
For years, rumors have flown around about which professional athletes might be gay, and which male professional team athlete would be the first to come out while still active. Just this past December, the rumors about Aaron Rodgers’s sexual orientation grew so loud and distracting that the Green Bay Packers quarterback felt it necessary to declare, on the brink of the playoffs, that “I’m not gay. . . I really, really like women.” In April 2013, Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, a vocal advocate of marriage equality, suggested that four NFL players would come out on the same day, to mute the media attention devoted to any single player—a prediction that Ayanbadejo later had to retract.
We have been looking in the wrong place for such pioneers. Michael Sam’s coming out—and that of UMass guard Derrick Gordon last month—shows us that change is coming to professional sports from the college ranks up.
Since the early 2000s, many dozens of college athletes—men, women, and transgender—have publicly come out of the closet, generally receiving support from their teammates and coaches. Those ranks include Andrew Goldstein, the two-time all-American goalkeeper for Dartmouth’s lacrosse team, who told his family, friends and teammates that he was gay in 2003, and whose story became the subject of a 2005 ESPN feature. Goldstein, the first Division I male athlete to come out publicly while in college (and one of the very few college lacrosse goalies ever to score a goal during a game), went on to play for Boston and Long Island in Major League Lacrosse before retiring to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular biology.
Derrick Gordon
AP/Steven Senne
Women’s basketball superstar Brittney Griner came out last year after finishing her senior year at Baylor University. One of the most accomplished players in the history of women’s college basketball, Griner’s coming out surprised few, as her gender-bending personal style drew almost as much attention as her extraordinary talent on the court.
In leaving the conservative Baptist university in Waco, Griner declared, “I am 100-percent happy. . . When I was at Baylor, I wasn’t fully happy because I couldn’t be all the way out. It feels so good saying it: I am a strong, black lesbian woman. Every single time I say it, I feel so much better.”
While Griner was not the first WNBA player to come out, her timing—just days before the Phoenix Mercury selected her with the first pick in the 2013 WNBA draft—differed sharply from those pioneers in women’s sports who paved the way for today’s stars. The first-ever openly gay athlete signed to a Nike contract, Griner’s nascent professional career is premised upon her being out of the closet from the start in a fashion almost unimaginable not long ago.
As pro sports changes from the college ranks up, it is also essential to note that four of this past year’s trailblazers—Michael Sam, Brittney Griner, Derrick Gordon, and Jason Collins—are all African Americans. Indeed, Collins began his coming out essay in Sports Illustrated with the words, “I’m a
Brittney Griner
AP/Sue Ogrocki
34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”
In the myriad commentary over the years about LGBT athletes and professional sports, the default assumption has frequently been that the closeted gays would be white and that African American athletes would be especially homophobic. These four out pioneers shatter both preconceptions.
On May 7, on the eve of the NFL draft, Michael Sam was announced as the 2014 winner of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. While some questions persist regarding whether Sam’s size and physical strength will be sufficient for the pro game, his character, skills, and overall potential virtually ensure that his name will be called at this weekend’s draft. Moreover, a handful of team owners are expected to push their football operations staff to draft Sam, seeing the potential to cement their place in football history, akin to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey shattering baseball’s color line by signing Jackie Robinson.
Michael Sam is indeed ready for the NFL—and the NFL appears to be ready for Michael Sam.
Update: On May 8, as NFL executives settled in for the first round of the draft, Visa announced that it had signed Michael Sam to an endorsement deal. In his first ad, Sam is shown bench pressing, while his voiceover declares, “Judge me for what I do on the field.” Kevin Burke, Visa’s chief marketing officer, explained that, “We felt that Michael’s story was a perfect fit for our ‘everywhere’ campaign, which is meant to inspire people to reach their own personal goals and aspirations.” Like Brittney Griner’s deal with Nike, Michael Sam’s partnership with Visa represents brand-building at the beginning of his professional career, a calculation by advertising executives that spots featuring out LGBT athletes represent a key marketing opportunity, and a generational culture shift recognized more clearly by corporate giants than by some sports pundits.
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Feature photo: AP/File
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