Ethan Nichol
Michael Sam has done enough. He may never set foot on an NFL field come game day, but in the most respectful and professional manner, he has blazed an undeniable and important trail.
Let’s take a moment to recognize how remarkable it is for Michael Sam or any college prospect to even make it to the NFL. Every year, roughly 100,000 high school seniors play football while only about 9,000 go on to play in college. What’s more, only 310 college level players are invited to attend the NFL’s scouting combine where teams identify prospective players for their respective rosters based on a series of athletic tests and drills.
Michael Sam was not only a scholarship athlete at the University of Missouri but was a participant at the scouting combine and was one of over 250 players to have been selected in this year’s draft. Black or white, gay or straight, rich or poor, that’s a feat only a select few can ever claim to have reached. Even though Michael Sam was cut from the St. Louis Rams roster this past weekend, unsigned to the team’s practice squad, the fact that he’s made it as far as he has is amazing in itself.
Sam overcame statistical odds to make it as far as he did, and this, accompanied by being openly gay, brought forth a media frenzy only matched by Tim Tebow and LeBron James. However, it was probably the hours of coverage ESPN spent drooling over Tebow’s potential as a quarterback in the NFL or LeBron’s gloried return to Cleveland that may have benefitted Sam the most; he was surely taking note of these sports media icons and avoiding the same public gaffes they did.
Tim Tebow routinely tells media members that he’s willing to do anything to help the [insert one of the team’s he’s fibbed to here] win, yet once the prospect of changing positions comes into play, he backpedals faster than the defensive backs to whom he so often threw. Tebow presents a lack of positional flexibility with his unwillingness to consider changing positions at the request of many coaching staffs. As a third string quarterback on any NFL roster, that’s not the best strategy to secure yourself a paycheck each week.
As for LeBron James, I’ll spare you from a rehash of the stinging after-school special he held in 2010 when he left Cleveland to pursue championships in South Beach. However, “The Decision” in 2010 left James, already the main media focus of the NBA, inundated in a flood of spiteful and unwanted attention for nearly the entirety of his stay in Miami.
So what do Tebow and James have to do with Michael Sam? Sam kept a low profile, unlike the other two.
From the very start, Sam wanted to be known as Michael Sam “the football player,” never as Michael Sam “the gay football player.” He had a very particular set of skills that made him an attractive candidate to play not one but several positions across the defensive line for the Rams. Furthermore, when offered the chance to have a camera crew from Oprah’s TV network detail his story throughout training camp, he declined, citing it as a potential distraction.
When it comes down to it, Sam put himself in the position to be just another NFL player, and his current status as a free agent proves he’s just that: another football player. In the ultimate meritocracy that is the NFL, Sam set out with the mission to prove that all that matters is who you are and what you bring to the field. To that I say: mission accomplished.