LGBT in sports; will Michael Sam be drafted to the NFL?
Forbes has an interesting article today reminding us about Michael Sam and his prospects for being drafted to the NFL . Michael Sam achieved considerable notoriety several months ago when he came out as a gay football player who happened to be the SEC defensive player of the year and who would become the first openly gay man to star in the NFL if drafted by a team this weekend.
My question for Pipedot: regardless of teams' decisions to draft Sam or not, will the decisions be accepted as based on his skills or football ability alone or will they be judged in terms of their support for or avoidance of support for homosexuality in American football? And, what are the central obstacles to people being judged on skills alone when competing for opportunities (I'm thinking about ageing programmers and so on as similar-type challenges)?
My question for Pipedot: regardless of teams' decisions to draft Sam or not, will the decisions be accepted as based on his skills or football ability alone or will they be judged in terms of their support for or avoidance of support for homosexuality in American football? And, what are the central obstacles to people being judged on skills alone when competing for opportunities (I'm thinking about ageing programmers and so on as similar-type challenges)?
This could be great for the NFL *if* Sam gets along well in his career. If he hits any roadblocks or anyone mistreats him, because he's gay or not, it'll boil down to he's gay. I don't want to discount that there are going to be bigots and dickheads who will harass him because he's gay, but really it's not going to matter if that's the real reason or not.
By drafting him the Rams may have delayed people screaming the NFL is discriminatory, for now, but there's no doubt the first time Sam fails to preform or talks about his difficulties adjusting there's going to be ten times the commotion. That said, hopefully I'm wrong and we can take this as an all round victory.