This past week, a major college football player, projected to be taken in the third or fourth round of this Spring’s NFL draft came out of the closet to the media. His name is Michael Sam. He’s a defensive end and spent the last few years wreaking havoc on offensive linemen in the SEC. The SEC is widely recognized as the best conference in the country and it’s strength is defense. Sam was named as co-Defensive MVP of the league this past year. If drafted, Sam will become the first openly gay player in the NFL.
This story makes me feel proud. It makes me ashamed. And it makes me feel old. I’ll tell you why.
Sam coming out makes me proud in the same way (but to a lesser extent) as the election of Obama. I’m against any exclusion based on an unchosen personal characteristic not germane to the task at hand. If you want to keep the NFL free of people who can’t do more than five push ups, fine. For most people, that’s a choice (I’d rather write than lift weights) and it’s not hard for them to change that choice if they want. But race, homosexuality, gender, hair color (Andy Dalton, trailblazer,) etc. should not be held against someone. I’m proud to have lived through the election of the first black president and hopefully soon, the drafting of the first openly gay football player.
Then again, it’s about time, isn’t it? This is where the shame comes in. As Jason Whitlock pointed out in his fine on Sam, (http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=10437883&src=desktop) sports is really, really behind the curve on this cultural shift. We’ve had gay congress people for years, gay television stars, favorite gay characters (hell, Obama’s favorite character in the Wire is a gay hold-up artist named Omar.) When Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, he was the head of the arrow of integration. Sam is somewhere amidst the fletching. This is not his fault, but everyone involved in sports should feel at least a little shame that this took so long; that major sports are, (at least on this issue,) woefully behind.
From shame I transition seamlessly to old. Look, it’s a shame that still real weight of being the first is going to fall on a yet-to-be-drafted college senior. Really? With close to 3,000 men on and off NFL rosters each year, that group of grown, professional men is going to let a young-adult bear the burden of this? The truth is though, that the generation ten years younger than me has grown up under different circumstances and with different values. They were eight the last time anyone could reasonably think that America was not only a force for good but that everyone in the world felt that way too. They were fifteen when the State of the Union was first given by a black man. They couldn’t care if Michael Sam was straight, gay, identified as queer, identified as a woman, or was asexual.
When new values line up with mine, as they do here, it’s great, but it makes me feel a little old that my generation couldn’t have achieved this. It makes me think of some talking head’s comment on one of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speeches that focused a lot on education — even in the “Jobs” section of the speech. What he’s saying, this talking head said, is that there won’t be a solution for the current generation of workers; the future will be the future.
Michael Sam is taking the sports world to the future and I’m proud, I’m ashamed, and I’m feeling just a little old.
Of course… that could have been the roughly 16,000 steps I climbed today on a hike from Vernazza to Corniglia. Thanks for reading,
Ezra
I agree with your thoughts… and, of course, I smiled at your last line!