LGBT in sports; will Michael Sam be drafted to the NFL?

by
in ask on (#3KA)
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)?

Re: Yes (Score: 1)

by fatphil@pipedot.org on 2014-05-13 18:21 (#1JM)

The problem is that nowadays TV sports reporting (such as I know it, which is a whisker-thin slice - basically only Formula 1) seems to be more concerned about how people *feel* about their victory or second place, and not about the technical aspects of the event itself. They don't want sport for sportos/stattos/fans - they want sport dumbed-down and emotived-up for the huge bottom layer of the pyramid. Blame marketeers. (And you may read into that sentence the obligatory Hicksian "... who should kill themselves".)

So gays have no hope in that jungle. It's going to be "did you carry an extra pack of pink frilly hankies with you, in case a hard tackle made you cry?" all the freaking way, at least on some channels, and it's going to suck for *everyone*.

This is one reason I like sports "personalities" like Kimi Raikkonen (on a keyboard with no diacriticals, pretend they're there, please). If someone asks a stupid question, he'll give the shortest dismissive answer which almost always makes the interview look stupid. And of course, Kimi was a big fan of James Hunt who had his moments too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjSvfgA6tk
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