Queue up the sappy violin music that usually accompanies left-stream media sob stories. As the Albany Times-Union tells us, it was three years ago today that former University of Missouri football player Michael Sam “came out to the world.” Hauling himself and a huge chip on his shoulder up to speak before a few hundred students at the University of Albany Tuesday as part of “Sexuality Month” activities (take that, NY taxpayers!), he blamed others for his failure to make it in pro football.
Sam said he “always felt like an outsider” and felt “apart from his peers” because two older brothers died, he was bullied by other family members and because of his mother’s Jehovah’s Witness religion.
“I had to prove myself, to show that I was one of the guys,” said Sam, who was just one of the guys – in the sense that he was a good college player and nothing more.
Propped up by The New York Times as more talented than he was, and immediately celebrated by those trying to impose the homosexual agenda on a sports fandom that just isn’t too interested, Sam said he expected to be drafted somewhere in the first three rounds of the NFL draft. But the pro teams knew better, and he went to the Rams in the seventh and final round. He turned off a lot of people that night by kissing his boyfriend on national television. “Should I have kissed a girl? The media made it a distraction.”
No, sir. You – with help from ESPN and others – turned the entire NFL draft into a media distraction. You came out before the draft, ensuring that you wouldn’t be judged on your modest football talents but on your victim status.
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But let’s move on to Sam’s next in a litany of complaints. Which the Times-Union allowed to slide by with the usual minimum fact-checking. In the preseason, "I was cut from the Rams, even though I was in the top five in sacks,” said a befuddled Sour Grapes Sam.
Yes, sacks against other scrubs playing in meaningless preseason scrimmages. He wasn’t up against pro-bowlers, and nobody mistook him for Lawrence Taylor or Von Miller out there. He was playing against some guys who are probably selling used cars today because they, like him, just weren’t that good.
Then Sam complained that he went to the Cowboys and had to prove himself all over again. Gee, Michael, do you think Tom Brady – undrafted til the sixth round – didn’t have to prove himself as a rookie? “And then I was cut there. I always felt like an outsider looking in.”
Again, he leaves out a tiny bit of important information. He was a practice player in Dallas, one of the here-today-gone-tomorrow guys. You can bet if he really had game, the Cowboys would have put him on the actual team roster.
Move it along up north to Montreal. Sam stayed around just long enough to get into one game with the CFL’s Alouettes before leaving of his own accord for personal reasons. No one from the team showed him the door. That was the end of the football version of Moonlight Graham, the one-game wonder of Field of Dreams fame.
Now let’s go to the NFL scouts who rate the prospects for a living. They said Sam lacked three small components, the size, speed and agility to play linebacker in the big leagues. (Other than that, he was incredible!) Those determinants drove down his stock going into the NFL draft. Yet, as Newsbusters previously reported, the NFL called several teams, urging them to sign Sam after the Rams cut him, to prevent a media/PR backlash.
There never was any bigotry involved in Sam’s unrealized pro career. In major league sports, you either can play or you can’t. Not even ESPN, the NYT or the Human Rights Campaign can apply enough pressure to hand you a position on a pro football team if you haven’t earned it on the field.
That fact, along with Sam’s decision to walk away from the game, is the real reason why he is a self-described motivational speaker today, urging others to be true to themselves. Come on, Michael, give it up! First you need to be honest yourself. And while we’re at it, Albany Times-Union, your so-called writers and editors can give it up as well.
America just doesn’t care that there was once a good college football player who announced he was homosexual, got drafted in the last round and flunked out of pro football. If you’re going to be the “gay Jackie Robinson,” you might want to put some semblance of a pro career with it.
