Coming out can lead to progress

Michael Sam is gay.
That fact in and of itself isn’t much of a revelation.
A lot of people are gay. A lot of athletes are gay.
But not a lot of athletes, none, in fact, have been willing to openly acknowledge their homosexuality before embarking on their professional career in a major American sport.
Yes, it was a big story when NBA player Jason Collins came out publicly last year. But he was a player nearing the end of his career.
And sure, gay athletes have been a reality as long as there have been sports, even if we didn’t know it. (For example, ESPN’s 30 for 30 series recently profiled Jerry Smith, a gay man who played tight end for the Washington Redskins in the 1970s.)
But Sam is only 24 years old, just finished his career at the University of Missouri and is preparing for the NFL Draft in April.
One of the questions that has been asked since Sam came out to the world in a piece in The New York Times has been this:
How will his homosexuality effect his draft stock?
The answer to that should be simple: Not at all.
In fact, the real answer is we shouldn’t even be asking the question at all. It’s unnecessary.
It would be nice if I could say the only thing that a team should consider is whether or not a player can help it win on the field. But that’s far from true.
Beyond the field, teams must consider a variety of factors.
Will a player be a good teammate?
Does he have a work ethic to match his talent?
Has he had trouble with the law? And if so, are those problems likely to continue?
But whom a person loves, that has no business in the equation.
And to the credit of his Tiger brethren, it by all accounts had no effect on his career at Missouri.
Before Sunday, the world didn’t know Michael Sam was gay. But his teammates and coaches did.
During a preseason football practice at which players were asked to talk about themselves, Sam revealed his secret to his fellow Tigers.
Sam said he could tell by the reactions of some of his teammates that they already knew. Some, no doubt, were surprised.
Regardless, they didn’t shun him, as some have suggested might happen in the NFL.
They treated him like a teammate. A friend. A brother.
They kept his secret, allowing Sam to come out to the world on his own terms, in his own time. And when he did this weekend, they were there to support him.
“Proud of My bro Mike for finally coming out man takes a tremendous amount of courage!” tweeted Donovan Bonner, a Missouri linebacker who is also headed to the NFL draft this year. “We knew of his status for 5 years and not one team member, coach, or staff member said anything says a lot about our family atmosphere.”
“Michael is a great example of just how important it is to be respectful of others,” said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel in a statement released Sunday night. “He’s taught a lot of people here firsthand that it doesn’t matter what your background is, or your personal orientation, we’re all on the same team and we all support each other.”
And those are the things we should be thinking about in the wake of Sam’s announcement.
Sam, and any other gay person, athlete or otherwise, is a person deserving of respect, of friendship, of compassion.
His coming out to the world can be a great step for football.
It can lead us to a day when an athlete coming out is not national news, when men like Michael Sam can be themselves without worrying about how it’s going to impact their careers, when it isn’t something that has to be revealed to anyone.
When that day arrives, it will be a revelation.[[In-content Ad]]