By Will Van Gelder ‘16

University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam publicly announced himself as gay recently. This is widely seen as an act of courage by many due to the fact that Sam is preparing for the NFL draft and is considered an early to middle round draft pick. While many NFL franchises have already publicly announced that they would support Sam and wouldn’t care if he’s gay the NFL and football players in general are widely considered to be homophobes.

While Sam showed great strength and adversity there may also be a fair amount of consequences of his actions. According to an article in The Washington Post, soon after the announcement Sam’s draft stock dropped considerably, moving him from being an early round draft pick to possibly being a middle or even late round pick.  Sam also will have to face difficulties with his family: his father reportedly felt disgusted when Sam told him and said he “didn’t want his grandkids to grow up in that environment.”

Although Sam has to face these difficulties in his attempt to enter the NFL, he could also be regarded as an inspiration to many gay athletes and convince them that they can make it in the world of sports as well.   Soon there may be players in the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, and the NHL who are gay and that would change many peoples’ perceptions of gay athletes and gay people in general. In other words Sam may cause a domino effect that could eventually lead to gay people being more widely accepted not just in the world of sports but by the whole group of people who are avid watchers of sports. This could eventually lead to a much bigger majority of Americans having support for gay athletes and gay people in general.

While Sam is a brave man, he may sadly face much worse hazing then many other players. And some of his teammates may not respect or like him. I truthfully hope that this doesn’t widely happen to Sam, and I hope that most of his teammates will be able to respect him. This may end up happening because Sam received nothing but widespread support from his college teammates when he came out to them in August, and soon after his announcement many current and former NFL players came out to show their support for him over twitter.

While Sam may face a lot of difficulties entering the world of the manliest men, he could be a shining beacon of hope for every gay athlete out there.