ESPN's Dick Move -- or would you call it a dildo? + UPDATE

UPDATE 9/3/2014 --

Dallas Cowboys Add Michael Sam To Practice Squad

Dallas CowboysVerified account‏@dallascowboys

.@MichaelSamNFL will wear #46 pic.twitter.com/8ablRpM4Ed

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Except for the Pats I don't follow football much but it seems pretty obvious that ESPN's story was a dick move . . .


NFL Player Says ESPN Is To Blame For Michael Sam Going Unsigned
The Huffington Post | By Michael Klopman
Posted: 09/01/2014 9:50 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/01/michael-sam-espn-eric-wood_n_5749774.html?&ir=Gay%20Voices&utm_hp_ref=gay-voices





Michael Sam didn't make the St. Louis Rams' 53-man roster. Sam, the first openly gay player ever to be drafted into the NFL, didn't make the Rams' 10-man practice squad either. No other team claimed Sam on waivers over the weekend and now he is a free agent who can sign with any practice squad. But that hasn't happened yet, and Buffalo Bills center Eric Wood thinks he has an idea about why that is.

After Ross Tucker of the NBC Sports Network wondered on Twitter why Sam hasn't been signed to a practice squad despite his solid performance in the preseason (11 tackles and three sacks), Wood pointed to ESPN.

1. 
   Michael Sam performed much better than most expected and still isn't even on a practice squad?

Eric Wood        ✔ @EWood70

Follow

@RossTuckerNFL blame that on espn. No one wants the distraction

6:39 PM - 31 Aug 2014

Earlier last week, ESPN reporter Josina Anderson discussed Sam's showering habits when asked on "SportsCenter" about how he was fitting in with his teammates. ESPN later apologized for the report, saying in a statement that "we collectively failed to meet the standards we have set in reporting on LGBT-related topics in sports."

Despite the apology, Rams coach Jeff Fisher ripped ESPN and called Anderson's piece"very, very unprofessional." The awkward report also drew Rams defensive end Chris Long's attention.

After releasing Sam -- who spoke publicly about his sexuality for the first time in interview with ESPN and The New York Times back in February -- Fisher told reporters that the 2013 SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year was not a distraction throughout the team's training camp.

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?

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24687900/espns-josina-anderson-issues-statement-on-michael-sam-shower-story

ProFootballTalk.com reports that Anderson hasn't been suspended by ESPN. Regardless, Coach Fisher was livid.

"I'm extremely disappointed in her piece," the coach told the St. Louis Post-DispatchWednesday. "I think it's unethical. I think it's very, very unprofessional. Not only the piece itself, the content. The manner in which she did it."

Fisher went so far as to suggest Anderson "manufactured" the story.

"We have a media policy, and we're very flexible," he said. "We have open practices. Players are available. We have open locker rooms. She was out of line because she went and contacted several players on their personal time. Misled them with questions and then put this piece together. ...

"Obviously she came in, in all likelihood to see if there was gonna be a roster move at the 75 cutdown as it relates to Mike Sam," Fisher continued. "That didn't happen. But she needed to do something, and it's my understanding that she manufactured this story."

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And Wonkette's excellent take . . .

"Oh yes, we are given to understand that Michael Sam also plays a sport of some kind, in addition to all that GAY naked time in the shower..."

http://wonkette.com/558394/espn-has-serious-questions-about-who-showers-with-michael-sam-who-is-gay

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Amazing Story and Vid of the Evening

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/dale-hansen-michael-sam-gay-nfl-video_n_4775165.html

Texas Sports Anchor Delivers Jaw-Dropping Speech On Gay NFL Players

The Huffington Post | by Ryan Grenoble
Posted: 02/12/2014 7:10 pm EST

Updated: 02/12/2014 7:59 pm EST

Sports broadcasts are typically known for their punchy lists of best plays, epic goal countdowns and testosterone-fueled commentary.

Which makes Dale Hansen's address Monday night all the more remarkable. The Dallas sports anchor for ABC local affiliate WFAA took a break from the standard script to address the issue of Michael Sam, a defensive lineman poised to become the first openly gay player in the NFL.

The approximately two-minute segment, titled "Hansen Unplugged: Celebrating Our Differences," opens with a joke about Sam's "shocking" circumstance -- that he's the "best defensive player in football's best conference," yet only a third to fifth-round NFL pick ("Really?!?") -- before adopting a more serious tone and addressing Sam's critics and haters alike.

In particular, Hansen focuses on athletes who are deeply destructive to the world and people around them, yet are still revered for their on-field performance:

You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You're the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft. You kill people while driving drunk? That guy's welcome. Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes? We know they're welcome. Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away? You lie to police, trying to cover up a murder? We're comfortable with that.

Hansen then drives home the hypocrisy: "You love another man? Well, now you've gone too far!"

"I'm not always comfortable when a man tells me he's gay; I don't understand his world," Hansen adds later. "But I do understand that he's part of mine." 

The segment made waves on social media -- from the jocular ("BREAKING: Texas has sane people too") to the more sentimental ("Proof there is still hope for humanity").

UPDATE: 6:52 p.m. -- In an email to The Huffington Post, Hansen said he's surprised at the response his segment unleashed. "Some people don't seem to believe this -- I honestly didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," he said, adding he's received more than 700 "overwhelmingly positive" emails from around the U.S. and one from a young high school boy in Canada.

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And in other sporting news, Michael Sam

If you haven't seen or heard about it yet you will soon. The football world is going nuts -- one way or the other -- about Michael Sam. The first link is about how and why the story came out now . . .

http://www.outsports.com/2014/2/9/5396036/michael-sam-gay-football-player-missouri-nfl-draft

. . . and next is the best commentary I've seen from, believe it or not, the NYTimes . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/opinion/bruni-panic-in-the-locker-room.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Panic in the Locker Room!

A news flash for every straight man out there: You’ve been naked in front of a gay man.

In fact you’ve been naked, over the course of your life, in front of many gay men, at least if you have more than a few years on you. And here you are — uninjured, uncorrupted, intact. The earth still spins. The sun rises and sets.

Maybe it was in gym class, long ago. Maybe at the health club more recently. Or maybe when you played sports at the high school level, the college level, later on. Whether we gay guys are one in 10 or one in 25, it’s a matter of chance: At some point, one of us was within eyeshot when you stripped down.

And you know what? He probably wasn’t checking you out. He certainly wasn’t beaming special gay-conversion gamma rays at you. That’s why you weren’t aware of his presence and didn’t immediately go out and buy a more expensive moisturizer and a disc of Judy Garland’s greatest hits. His purpose mirrored yours. He was changing clothes and showering. It’s a locker room, for heaven’s sake. Not last call at the Rawhide.

On Sunday evening, in a story in The Times by John Branch and elsewhere, a college football star named Michael Sam came out. Because Sam is almost certain to be drafted, he could soon be the first openly gay active player in the National Football League — in any of the four major professional sports in the United States.

Most reactions from the sports world were hugely positive, even inspirational.

Some were not.

“It’d chemically imbalance an N.F.L. locker room,” an N.F.L. personnel assistant, speaking anonymously, said to Sports Illustrated. I think steroids, Adderall and painkillers have already done a pretty thorough job of that, and on the evidence of his comment, they’ve addled minds in the process.

Sports Illustrated quoted an unnamed assistant coach who also brought up the fabled sanctum of Tinactin and testosterone. “There’s nothing more sensitive than the heartbeat of the locker room,” he said. “If you knowingly bring someone in there with that sexual orientation, how are the other guys going to deal with it?”

To his question, a few of my own: When did the locker room become such a delicate ecosystem? Is it inhabited by athletes or orchids? And how is it that gladiators who don’t flinch when a 300-pound mountain of flesh in shoulder pads comes roaring toward them start to quiver at the thought of a homosexual under a nearby nozzle? They may be physical giants, but at least a few of them are psychological pipsqueaks.

And they’re surprisingly blunt and Paleolithic. When NFL Network’s Andrea Kremer recently brought up the possibility of an openly gay player with Jonathan Vilma, a New Orleans Saints linebacker, he said: “Imagine if he’s the guy next to me and, you know, I get dressed, naked, taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he looks at me.”

“How am I supposed to respond?” Vilma added.

Well, a squeal would be unmanly, Mace might not be enough and N.F.L. players tend to use their firearms away from the stadium, so I’d advise him to do what countless females of our species have done with leering males through history. Step away. Move on. Dare I say woman up?

Or Vilma could use a line suggested by the sports journalist Cyd Zeigler on the website Outsports.com: “I’m so telling your boyfriend you stole a peek.”

The anxiety about the locker room makes no sense in terms of the kind of chaotic setting it often is, with all sorts of people rushing through, including reporters of both sexes. It’s a workplace, really, and more bedlam than boudoir.

The anxiety depends on stereotypes of gay men as creatures of preternatural libido. (Thanks, but I lunge faster for pasta than for porn.)

And it’s illogical. “Every player knows that they are playing or have played with gay guys,” John Amaechi, a former pro basketball player who came out after his retirement, told me. It’s just that those gay guys didn’t or haven’t identified themselves. Why would doing so make them a greater threat? Wouldn’t an openly gay athlete have a special investment in proving that there’s zero to worry about?

Michael Sam proved as much at the University of Missouri, where teammates learned of his sexual orientation before their most recent season. They finished 12-2, and are publicly praising him so far. Nothing about trembling or cowering in the showers.

The person who raises that fear, Amaechi said, “is a bigot finally falling over the cliff and grasping for any straw that might keep their purchase. When every rational argument is gone, you go with that.”

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