It may seem more than a little odd that the first openly gay football player to be drafted by a National Football League team, after a fabulous and award-winning career at the University of Missouri, and who performed well in the pre-season, did not make an active NFL roster or see one bit of action. Nevertheless, Michael Sam's story is worth getting acquainted with.
Sam was recently named as "Game Changer of the Year" by GQ magazine.
"The first openly gay player in the NFL? When you take a good long look at the path Michael Sam took to get here—the sleepless nights in the backseat of his mother's car, the routine beat-downs from his outlaw brothers, the fact that his own father barely accepts who he is—coming out seems like the easy part."
In the run-up to an interview with Sam, Andrew Corsello sets the stage:
[O]n the evening of May 10, after the St. Louis Rams made Michael Sam the 249th overall pick in the NFL draft, [s]pontaneously/on cue, Sam burst into tears and then, like countless jocks before him, performed the kiss. It all seemed reassuringly familiar. Oh…wait. Scratch that: On account of the fact that the significant other on the receiving end of that kiss was a guy named Vito Cammisano, it was mind-blowing.
Read Corsello's piece @
http://www.gq.com/...