The football player Michael Sam, not the gay football player
The critics say the NFL isn’t ready for an openly gay male athlete in the locker room, one man is ready to challenge that statement. Michael Sam, not only an All-American defensive player at Missouri, but also the man who is set to become the first openly gay male athlete to play one of the three major professional sports in the United States.
By Cameron Jacobs
The critics of Sam’s decision are as many as the supporters that back him on his journey into the NFL as an openly gay male. The NFL is notorious for being the place the manliest of men play football. Players are supposed to be the most aggressive, strongest, and most controllably violent men on the planet. And for a gay male to invade this culture is seen as absolutely crazy, and something that wouldn’t be accepted by the men of the NFL, but as we have seen in recent years more and more college athletes are announcing their sexuality and more former players in the professional sports world are coming out to share with the world their sexuality. Leaving some to see this as an appropriate time for the first openly gay male athlete to come into the sport.
Michael Sam leaving college looks to be a mid-round draft prospect, a late-round prospect at the worst, but many have projected him to go later than expected due to the fact that the publicity of his decision to come out. Many don’t want to be the guy who drafted the first openly gay male athlete, almost the same as when no one wanted to be the first to let an African-American male into the league, but just like the latter it is bound to be someone who takes a shot on the highly productive player out of Missouri.
Understanding why so many believe that the time isn’t right for an openly gay male athlete in the NFL is harder to understand than you may think. It mostly comes from the notion that a gay male would be checking out the other males in the locker room, just because they’re gay and the other men of the locker room do not want to have that. Not every man is that kind of man, so that’s just an illogical argument to make against Michael Sam.
Michael Sam, in the NFL, is a professional football player, not a gay man in the professional world, just a man making a living playing professional football. Making it anything more than that is not only unfair to the man Sam is, but also the football player Sam is. Sam is a professional man, playing a professional sport, so he should be allowed to play the sport and make a living without being scrutinized about his sexual orientation.