Sam’s path to NFL takes detour to Canada
Montreal signs gay lineman to two-year contract
Michael Sam has been out of professional football since the Dallas Cowboys released him from their practice squad last October, but the defensive end’s Twitter handle made plain his ambition: @MichaelSamNFL. But if Sam, pro football’s first openly gay active player, lands back in the NFL, he will go through the CFL first. He signed a two-year contract with the Montreal Alouettes on Friday morning. Financial details weren’t announced. “I am very excited and proud to join the Montreal Alouettes,” Sam said in a statement released by the team. “I cannot wait to put on the pads, get back on the field and work hard each and every day with my teammates to bring a Grey Cup to the great fans here in Montreal.”
Sam arrives in Montreal after being drafted by the St. Louis Rams, then spending the bulk of the 2014 season on the Cowboys practice squad.
And his signing comes two years into the CFL’s partnership with You Can Play, an advocacy group that works to foster inclusion for homosexuals in sport. Executive director Wade Davis says the agreement didn’t influence Sam’s signing, but thinks the relationship will help smooth Sam’s transition to the league.
“It speaks to the CFL being proactive and not reactive,” says Davis, a former NFL player who came out as gay after he retired. “The important thing now is that these conversations are being had. It’s really transformative.”
As a senior defensive end at the University of Missouri, Sam recorded 11.5 sacks and 21 tackles for a loss in the competitive Southeastern Conference.
In 2013 he shared the conference’s defensive player of the year award with Alabama’s C.J. Mosley.
By mid-season Sam had already revealed his sexual orientation to his teammates, and in February 2014 he went public about his homosexuality in a Sports Illustrated cover story. Almost immediately his case became a litmus test measuring homophobia in pro sports.
Other male athletes in major North American team sports had come out as gay after their careers ended. Former L.A. Dodger Glenn Burke never hid his homosexuality from teammates, and believed anti-gay prejudice drove teams to blackball him from Major League Baseball, but he also never publicly declared his sexual orientation during his career.
And when NBA player Jason Collins came out in April 2012, he was already 34 years old and between NBA jobs.
Sam, then 24 with an impressive football resume, gave observers a chance to measure whether entrenched homophobia would dis- courage pro teams from signing a gay player. The verdict? It depends on who’s judging. When Sam wasn’t selected until the final round of the 2014 NFL draft (Mosley went in the first round), experts said his stock dropped because he was a “tweener” — undersized for a defensive lineman but slower than most pro outside linebackers.
And when the St. Louis Rams released Sam after the 2014 pre-season, some NFL executives blamed the media, saying no team wanted the extra attention Sam would generate. But many observers cited homophobia, pointing out that 12 NFL players recorded 2.5 or more sacks in the 2014 preseason, but among them only Sam was cut.
Whether Sam’s career stalled because of prejudice or a lack of an NFL skill set, he’ll have a chance to play with the Alouettes, who in 1946 signed the CFL’s first African-American player, two-way lineman Herb Trawick.
New CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge says Sam’s signing makes the league a leader in another frontier of diversity.
“Today is another indication of how open and progressive the CFL is,” Orridge said in a statement released by the league. “(It is) consistent with our rich and storied history.”
Beyond becoming the first openly gay player to participate in a regular season pro football game, Davis says Sam can emulate players like Warren Moon, Doug Flutie and Miami Dolphins Pro-Bowler Cameron Wake, who all resuscitated their careers in Canada before becoming NFL stars.
“Once the NFL gets a chance to see what Sam can do, he might not be here for long,” Davis says.