During a preseason practice this past summer, the defensive end Michael Sam told his teammates on the University of Missouri football team that he was gay. Then he went on to lead the Southeastern Conference in sacks and win the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award. The Tigers went 12-2 and won the Cotton Bowl. It was a good year.
On Sunday night, Sam came out as gay in interviews with the New York Times and ESPN. Prior to his announcement, Sam had been predicted by analysts as being a likely selection in anywhere between the third and seventh rounds in the N.F.L. draft, this May. A third-round selection would mean that he’d have a very good chance of being signed by the team that drafts him, while a selection in the later rounds would make his prospects more unsure. If he makes a team, he would be the first openly gay player in the N.F.L. Sam’s breakout performance this past season elevated his draft stock, yet there are concerns that he may be too small to play his position in the pros, and would have to be converted to linebacker.
But it is not Sam’s football abilities that will prove controversial among N.F.L. scouts, executives, and coaches over the next few months. Already, on Sunday, Sports Illustrated quoted a handful of unnamed league sources who predicted that Sam’s coming out would hurt his position in the draft. An assistant coach, quoted anonymously, said:
There are guys in locker rooms that maturity-wise cannot handle it or deal with the thought of that…. There’s nothing more sensitive than the heartbeat of the locker room. If you knowingly bring someone in there with that sexual orientation, how are the other guys going to deal with it? It’s going to be a big distraction. That’s the reality. It shouldn’t be, but it will be.
An unnamed “personnel assistant” said that the league wasn’t ready for a gay player: “In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game.”
When it comes to gay male athletes in professional sports, this talk of the locker room is often a euphemism for “the showers,” meaning the purported fear that some straight players would have in showering or changing next to a gay teammate. (Never mind that they surely have been doing so, perhaps even knowingly, since the day they started playing.) But it also extends to what has become the “D” word when it comes to gay players, or players who become identified as outliers for other reasons: distraction. Richard Sherman was branded as a distraction after he revealed himself to be excited after making the Super Bowl, and chided for putting himself before his team. (Things worked out fine for Seattle.) And, so the thinking goes, Michael Sam, and his sexuality, will be a distraction, as well. Football teams operate as machines, the thinking goes, and franchises want conformity from their players. As former Minnesota Vikings punter and gay-rights activist Chris Kluwe recently said to ESPN: “In the ideal NFL world, you show up to play on Sundays, and that’s it—they take you out of your box and put you back in.”
Yet it is deeply unfair and disingenuous of N.F.L. personnel to somehow suggest that Michael Sam has made himself into a distraction by coming out. Rumors about his sexual orientation were reportedly already being passed around by teams. And, last year, the word leaked that, before the draft, teams were asking prospective players questions like “Do you have a girlfriend?” and “Do you like girls?” Sam hasn’t made his sexual orientation a so-called “issue,” he simply took control of his story before the N.F.L. could.
Meanwhile, for the people saying saying that football players simply couldn’t tolerate a gay player in their midst, there is, thankfully, evidence to suggest otherwise. Just look at the Missouri Tigers. Speaking of the effect that his announcement had on his college team, Sam explained to the Times, “I never had a problem with my teammates. Some of my coaches were worried, but there was never an issue.” (On Sunday, several of his former teammates, along with his former head coach and university, voiced their support.)
Michael Sam may go on to do amazing things in the N.F.L. But he, and his college teammates, have already completed a historic, and vital, season. In the final minutes of the Cotton Bowl, with Missouri clinging to a three point lead, their opponent, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, were driving deep into Tigers territory. A field goal would have tied it for the Cowboys, a touchdown would probably have won it. On third down, inside the thirty, the Cowboys quarterback dropped back to pass. Sam, in a wondrous combination of power and speed, shot past his blocker on the outside. As the quarterback was flushed from the pocket, Sam sacked him, knocking the ball loose. His teammate scooped it up and returned it for a touchdown. Sam’s play helped seal the victory, and it was obvious to anyone watching just what kind of player he was: a real man’s man.
No matter what happens next, Sam has proven what we already knew: that football, or any sport, isn’t somehow in itself hostile to the breadth of human sexuality. At Outsports, in a great behind-the-scenes explanation of how Sam’s announcement was planned and timed, Cyd Zeigler writes that Sam has no plans to become an activist anytime soon: “His role in the movement toward LGBT equality in sports will be simply playing the sport as an out gay man.” He’s done it before.
Michael Sam Proves Football Is Ready for a Gay Player : The New Yorker
According to our sensationalist press, of course. 
