What's the Big Deal?

In the last few weeks in addition to the Olympics the sports new coverage has focused on the announcement by Michael Sam that he is gay.  After the NFL draft in May he will be the first openly gay player in the NFL.  This weekend the NFL combine was in Indianapolis and Michael Sam was the darling of the press.  In one of his interviews he said “I just wish you guys would just see me as Michael Sam the football player instead of Michael Sam the gay football player,”

Being a woman who has never played professional sports I keep thinking "what is the big deal?"   What business is his sexual orientation to anyone?  I would rather see a gay man in a loving relationship play football than a man who ran a dog fighting operation who later went to prison and then went back to playing football.  There is something just wrong about someone who electrocuted non-performing dogs as part of his "business".  The NFL has welcomed abusers of animals and women yet is all in an uproar about a gay man playing on a team?  

So one night at dinner I asked the two hockey players who live with us what they thought about playing with an openly gay teammate. They are players for the USHL and are considered to be part of teams on which some of the elite American hockey players play.  One was fine with it.  He said he really wanted to play with someone who was a good player and helped the team succeed and sexual orientation did not matter.  The other player was totally appalled about the idea of playing on a team with, and being in the locker room with, an openly gay teammate.  He could not give me a reason, it just made him feel creepy.

I asked either of the boys if they had heard of the You Can Play Project (www.youcanplayproject.org) and neither had.  I was a little surprised yet they are teenagers and not that aware of anything outside their sphere of reference (hockey, workouts, food and girls).

Their response did give me a chance to reflect about frame of reference.  I, as a middle aged women, can't see what the big deal is about the sexual orientation of someone playing professional sports.  They, as someone who may face this question directly, found it more of an issue.  Yet both said that the real goal is a winning team.  

As one coach said in an interview, football is an outcomes based business.  If someone can help a team win then almost everything else is secondary.