Michael Sam would be a story if ESPN shut its doors tomorrow

I've seen several of these in the days since the Rams cut Michael Sam, especially since he hasn't found another NFL job.

ESPN keeps looking for excuses as to why Michael Sam is unemployed. Maybe they should look at themselves. Their coverage pushed teams away.
— Skip Bayless (@FunSkipBayless) September 1, 2014

(Yes, I realize I just posted from a fake Skip Bayless account, but it's both representative of what I've seen and not profane.)

Eric Wood of the Bills seems to think so, and so did whomever talked to Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report about it.

@RossTuckerNFL blame that on espn. No one wants the distraction
— Eric Wood (@EWood70) August 31, 2014

GM tells me: "Teams want to sign Michael Sam but fear the media attention." To me, that's cowardice. But that's just me.
— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) September 1, 2014

However, the people who complain about ESPN's coverage of Sam are missing a couple of points, one of which is that plenty of other media outlets have spent time on him, including Peter King's The MMQB, but more importantly ... that Michael Sam, and his attempt to make the NFL, is a legitimate story.

Michael Sam is a fringe NFL player, drafted in the last round, cut in the final cuts of training camp, looking for a spot on someone's roster or more likely a practice squad. All of those are true, and not particularly noteworthy, but Michael Sam being openly gay is a big deal, at least for now.

The NFL has never had an active openly gay player. Jason Collins is the first one in the NBA, and that's just this year. Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League have never had one. So he's unique in that way, but there are also societal and cultural implications to a male athlete being openly gay in one of our major team sports, especially the biggest one and seemingly the symbol for so-called "manliness," the NFL, especially when there are a lot of people who want him to fail not because he's not good enough, but because he's gay.

Granted, ESPN's "shower" segment on Sam was absurd, and they, like any other news organization, can be guilty of beating a story to death, but if a team can't deal with the media coverage he'd bring at the beginning, that's on the team, not the media.

It will be a great day when an NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL player being gay isn't a story, the same way a WNBA player or a Hollywood actor being gay isn't really a story for more than a few minutes. (When my father and I were discussing the news that Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" was gay, something revealed as almost a throwaway line at the end of a larger profile in the New York Times, in spite of the way the Huffington Post reported on it, he almost dismissively said, "I thought everybody knew that already." He, like I, loves the show.)

But for now, it is a story, and for Collins and Sam, it probably will always be a major part of their story, because they were the first.

Why Michael Sam being gay matters ... at least for now

In all the talk last night about Michael Sam coming out as gay, I saw this on the Twitter machine last night.

Okay....so Mizzou's Michael Sam announced he's gay. No offense meant to anyone, but I just don't care. He's gay; so what?
— Derek Ciapala (@dciapala) February 10, 2014

It's entirely possible he's saying "so what" because Sam's sexuality is truly irrelevant to him, and if so, great. As I replied, although I didn't get a response in return.

@dciapala If that was everyone's attitude, it would be worth saying "so what" over.
— LastHonestSportsFan (@LastHonestSport) February 10, 2014

But I can't help but think that a lot of comments in this vein (and I saw several) were of the "DON'T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT GAY PEOPLE! SHOVED DOWN MY THROAT! AAAAAAHHHH!" variety.

I never heard of Michael Sam until late yesterday afternoon, when I realized that by then it was pointless to try and avoid Olympic spoilers and checked out my Twitter. I read that in spite of his gaudy stats at Missouri, he was a mid- to late-round prospect at best before the announcement, that he could be the classic "tweener" -- too small to play defensive end, not agile enough to play linebacker.

In a perfect world, his sexuality wouldn't matter. If a team thinks he'll help them, they'll draft him. If he's good enough to stick, he'll stick. If he's a good guy in the locker room, his teammates will respect him, even if they don't agree with how he lives his life. (Throw that many people together for that long, and there are going to be lots of disagreements about a lot of things, but things tend to work themselves out most of the time. Why should sexuality be any different?)

But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where:

• in many parts of the country, you can be fired for being gay. (I'll go with the Snopes definition and not the simple "You can be fired for being gay in 29 states.")
• same-sex marriage is only legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia, and that has all come within the past 10 years.
• suspending someone for homophobic remarks is compared to rolling the tanks into Tiananmen Square.
• because it's still a topic of discussion whether Jason Collins is still unemployed because he's gay or Chris Kluwe doesn't have a job in the NFL because of his gay-right stance, even though it's not unreasonable to think there are other factors.
• NFL personnel men can say Sam's draft stock has already gone down because presence would "chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room." Mind you, these are men who could knowingly draft players with positive drug tests or criminal arrests in the hopes that they'll get on the straight-and-narrow and the understanding they may not. Meanwhile, Michael Sam isn't going to get any more gay ... or any less gay, for that matter. He is who he is.

There is going to be a first openly gay NFL player, whether or not Sam sticks. And it will be a big deal with the attendant media circus when it happens ... but it will go away.

And there will always be people who don't like homosexuals, even if there 100 Michael Sams, just like there will always be people who don't like blacks or Hispanics or feminists or whomever.

But eventually, maybe we'll reach the day when being gay is something most people say "so what" over.