HIP CHECK: ONE PLAY AT A TIME

A lot of folks don’t like coachspeak, and you can certainly count me among the number with a distaste for that athletically Orwellian compound word. Beyond morphology though, the concept itself is one of the least attractive parts about watching sports. We've heard most coaching cliches so many times we can rattle them off ourselves: team effort, everyone's focused, I'm proud of these guys, we'll look at the film, we're moving on to the next game, yap yap yap. And while I will concede there’s rarely anything of importance gleaned from a coach’s in or postgame shibboleths and evasions when faced with the media, there has always been one ballgame bromide that feels more authentic than the rest: a game is not decided by one play.

I like that adage because while it doesn’t soften the blow of a loss caused by a boneheaded mistake or enhance a heroic play at the end of the day, it is still true to a large extent. Competition is, from start to finish, flush with moments that chaotically careen into each other through some kind of contentious butterfly effect. It seems unfair and untrue to say that one specific thing, at one specific time, can be the sole and deciding factor in a game’s outcome. But then of course, Super Bowl 49 comes along and becomes the strongest candidate yet for the exception that proves the rule. 

A great number of things happened in Super Bowl 49 that if turned on their heads would no doubt beget a multiverse of different in-game permutations and sportball superposition, but we’re all really here to talk and think about one thing aren’t we? We’re here to talk about one play. The play that sure as hell felt like it independently and unequivocally decided the game’s winner and loser. Cue a fairly-well-executed segue…

Since my last post was all about the Buckeyes, I thought it only fitting to start my quick hit on the Super Bowl with two “threes” that will always be associated with the greatest coach in Ohio State football history: Woody Hayes.

1. Because he felt that a consistent offense should be one in which a run play garnered at least three yards, the media termed his brand of football: “three yards and a cloud of dust.”

2. In order to illustrate this belief in the running game and his aversion to the forward pass unless necessary, Woodrow is said to have said, in some form or fashion: “Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.”

For a guy like Woody Hayes, who had amazing running backs at OSU, including one of the greatest in college football history in Archie Griffin, this run-first, pass-seldom plan of attack was not surprising. Woody wanted to grind you down on offense and smack you in the face with an elite defense, and the best way to do that is to is to run, run, and run some more when you’ve got the ball. And you’d think that Pete Carroll, another great coach in his own right with a string of similarly stout defenses and a comparable running back in the terrific Marshawn Lynch, might have heeded ol’ Woody’s clarion call to the ground game at the very end of Super Bowl 49. But you’d be wrong of course, and I betcha coach Hayes’s words are hitting Pete pretty hard in hindsight.

And yes, this is a case of hindsight, that’s for certain. Fans absolutely love to second-guess a coach or player’s decision-making, and this is always with that very comfort of retrospect ready in their apoplectic quiver. It’s very easy without any pressure and the outcome already in front of you to say what you would’ve done. You, the guy on the couch, not the guy that’s a coach. You, the guy playing armchair quarterback, and not the guy with men the size of armchairs flying at him. We all can say what we would’ve done to make a game different, but we’re usually delusional, if not totally full of shit. But what if, in this case, we aren’t faced with of a matter of “I would have” but instead a matter of “you should have”?

I make this somewhat murky distinction because I want to give Pete Carroll and the Seahawks the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the decision to throw the ball with time winding down against the Patriots last Sunday. Yet just like so many armchair quarterbacks before me, I simply can’t. That’s because the moment the ball was snapped and Russell Wilson dropped back to pass, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’m not alone of course, as the entirety of sports media and the general public alike have followed suit in pillorying Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell for the decision not to hand the ball to one of the league’s premiere running backs with only three feet to go on the road to a Super Bowl title. 

I mean gentlemen, this is Marshawn Lynch. Marshawn freaking Lynch. The man whom, ever since he described his attitude on the field to a reporter at an NFL Rookie camp in 2007 as “Beast Mode”, has lived up to that maniacal, threatening moniker with vicious aplomb. A runner whom when called determined, determines what that concept even means. This indomitablity has helped him truck dood after dood after dood throughout his career and become a runner whom renown has yet to outrun. I bet even A.E Housman knows that Beast Mode, the attitude-turned-noun, could’ve dotted the Patriots’ “I” from one yard out and prevented Tom and Bill from getting that elusive number four.

Yes, he eats a lot of Skittles and grabs his crotch to celebrate a TD and won’t talk to the media unless you absolutely force him to, but he was a storyline in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl more so because he is the best player on the Seattle offense, and probably the best player on the entire team (Sherm, I hope you’re not reading this and good luck with that Tommy John sitch!) than for any off-the-field antics. The Patriots’ coffin seemed all but sealed in those final 30 seconds of action, and I might, if I were coach Carroll, have been creative on second down if there were some mere mortal in my backfield, but with a hammer like M. Lynch, you go ahead and try and hit that final nail.

We’re so puzzled by Seattle’s decision not to give the ball to Lynch because it makes so much sense to do the opposite, hindsight or no. You need one yard, you have a devastating running back, and you have a time out to spend. Don’t overthink things. Give the ball to that cannonball of a man and let him earn you a Super Bowl. It’s why you have him, it’s how you’ve used him these past seasons over and over again, and it’s why you are in talks to pay him a boatload of money this offseason. Feed the damn beast gentlemen.

Why wouldn’t you take a chance on something that has a more than 50% chance of working with two downs to go? Why wouldn’t you, in a game that we’re told over and over by coach after coach is about big name players making big time plays, let that scenario play out in the most crucial moment of your season? Why wouldn’t you thank your lucky stars that a football caromed off of nearly every part of Jermaine Kearse’s body and somehow landed in his hands, back on the ground, and take the sure route to a TD in the aftermath? Why the hell would you throw the ball? It really is puzzling. I felt it immediately, and I can’t fight the feeling now. The pass was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. It was in all estimates unconscionable. 

Again though, if I may employ an SAT analogy here…

ME : COUCH

PETE CARROLL : COACH. 

I get it. I really do get it. But still…

The only thing I can say that flies in the face of my disbelief, the only real condolence that can be handed Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson, and Darrell Bevell’s way is that Malcolm Butler made an absolutely fantastic play on the football that was thrown on a second down that will forever live in Super Bowl lore. He broke on that thing like a secret service agent on an assassin’s bullet. He knocked Ricardo Lockette out of the way and grabbed Wilson’s pass out of the air with such assurance and speed that the sporting world seemed to freeze for an instant and rotate 180 degrees on its axis. The game moved so quickly from one outcome to the other that I give Russell Wilson props for even walking upright off the field afterward. I would have collapsed, buffaloed and dismayed, paralyzed with the shock usually reserved for catastrophic injury.

But that’s Seattle’s only real quasi-positive takeaway here. That’s it. The kid made a helluva play on the football. Yet Seattle’s offensive braintrust still called the play, and Russell Wilson still threw a little high and wide, and Marshawn Lynch still did not get the football in a scenario expertly constructed for him by the Super Bowl gods. Brady led the Pats to the go-ahead score, but a Patriot did little else between then and that second down play to prevent Seattle from grabbing the victory. Lady luck seemed to be booty-calling the ‘Hawks once again, just like she did against Green Bay in the NFC championship, and the kids from Seattle were going to have one more incredible win to seal rare back-to-back Super Bowl titles. But it was not meant to be, because Marshawn Lynch wasn’t given the chance to make it manifest. A game is not decided by one play, but this Super Bowl was.

JUST SO HAPPY

Now that the euphoria of the Ohio State University’s victory in the inaugural College Football Championship Game has (essentially) worn off to the proper extent, I thought I’d share my thoughts on one of the greatest games of my life as a sports fan. I don’t say that last part with any whiff of hyperbole, because the only game I can really compare it to from a personal standpoint is the last time Ohio State won college football’s national championship back in 2002. That would be the game with the now infamous delayed pass interference call in overtime against a heavily favored Miami Hurricanes team. You might recall it? Miami was loaded with more NFL talent than the current roster of the Jacksonville Jaguars and were thought to be unstoppable. That is until we stopped them, and I threw a chair across my parents' living room, and then proceeded to join my friends and complete strangers alike in a night of pure and uninhibited celebration throughout the streets of Toledo, OH. It was a night when I remembered why I watch sports and root for teams––especially the Buckeyes––in the first place. 

That’s because while the majority of a fan’s experience is usually pain and disappointment, more seasons where you don’t win it all then you do, on the rare nights at the culmination of the rare season, the feeling of coming out on top simply cannot be topped. After a 2014 season that began with the preseason loss of our Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback Braxton Miller, featured an embarrassing loss to a (maybe not even) mediocre Virginia Tech team, and the loss of our second (!) Heisman Trophy candidate and replacement for Miller, JT Barrett, the fact that we were even in that game two weeks back didn’t even really make sense. It didn’t feel completely and entirely real. Not even after we trucked Wisconsin 59-0 to make it into the four-team playoff, or after we manhandled Alabama in the semifinal game. It still didn’t feel right. We weren’t actually playing Oregon for the National Championship with a third string quarterback who played out of his mind in those two preceding games. It couldn’t be real.

But it was, and then that third QB, Cardale Jones, lead the bucks to a third consecutive postseason win to beat Oregon, and then my head nearly came off my shoulders from a combination of screaming, yelling, uncontrollable smiling, and enough alcohol to subdue the Oregon nose guard that 12 Gauge overtook in the open field in one of the game’s signature moments. I was out of my mind with glee, an insane level of adrenaline coursing through my veins, and I’m sure that both the people that joined me to watch the game and passersby alike thought that I was some sort of raving lunatic and not the buttoned down scribe you know so well here at the Hip. And what I want to impart about all of this, about this amazing feeling, is what that feeling means, and why I think it's important.

You can’t tell me that sports don’t matter. I spent my whole life living out the proof that that’s not true. And you can’t tell me that that’s wrong, because I’ve spent my whole time writing this blog with points to the contrary. Sports are a part of my life, and they’re a part of all of our lives, whether we choose to be active fans that sometimes embarrass themselves like no other, casual fans who tune in for the big game, or people that don’t give one iota of a shit what athletes do with balls on fields and courts and rinks and pitches the world over. There isn’t a purer joy that I’ve come across than one of my favorite teams getting to the top of the mountain in their particular sporting metier. Nothing. Not the love of family or a beautiful woman, not in personal accomplishment or a good deed. And certainly not in the birth of a child, because I don’t have that one under my belt. I’m far too careful when my belt comes off for that. But anyways.

Yeah, there’s just a joy in this type of victory that cannot be duplicated. Not because it's any more important than the feelings associated with those other things I just threw out, but because it is entirely different. As a sports fan, you are at the absolute mercy of things completely out of your control. And while all of our lives certainly take on that feeling from time to time, we are always behind the wheel, through our sorrow and our jubilation. We’ve always got a varying level of control over the outcomes that produce a happy ending or a sad one in our day-to-day lives. With sports, you simply “root for the laundry” as they say, the jersey on an athlete’s back, at the end of it all. You have your favorite players and coaches and teams for a reason, you tell yourself, but that doesn’t mean that carries any weight whatsoever in what those coaches, athletes, and teams accomplish. You are along for the ride, whether it crests for long periods or reaches dizzying heights of success more often than you can believe. Either way, you’re gambling with your emotions, and the high you get when the big payoff comes through is a feeling unlike any other. Except, maybe, gambling itself. Let’s table that for another time though, because while I certainly have my opinions on that endeavor, today I endeavor to talk about that night and that game a couple weeks back.

After the game wrapped up and my friends left me to my own devices, I did what I always do after a big Buckeye win. I called my dad, the one who feigns an eroded attention to the game, even though I know better, I called my homies who were gathered around a screen back home, where I wish I could have joined them, and then I pumped my fist and exalted and smiled and almost broke into a boyish skip on my way to the neighborhood bar closer to my house. The liquor was beginning to speak to me, and I wanted to be a little nearer to my bed if my Columbus, OH bred victory high wasn’t through in peaking. I got to the bar, where there wasn’t a Buckeye fan in sight, and seemingly, anyone in sight that even knew that a football game had been played that night. I was asked what the hell I was so happy about. Then I opened my jacket to reveal my scarlet and gray beneath and wouldn’t you know it? I yelled and screamed and smiled and demanded champagne. 

Like the sports fans the bar was so lacking in, it was also bereft of a sparkling white, but that did nothing to slow me down. I enjoyed myself a little bit more on bourbon at $3.50 a glass, looked in a mirror just to see my smile and tell myself that this feeling was real, and walked my drunk ass home, completely content. It wasn’t until the following evening though, that I really felt at home with my excitement. I ran into a friend of mine that next evening at the very same bar, and we started talking about the game and more specifically how happy I was. He, the Louisville Cardinal basketball die-hard, knew this very same feeling just two years ago when his squad trumped Michigan for a basketball national championship, so we decided to compare notes. 

I told him that night two years back, when Louisville beat––yes, indeed, Ohio State’s hated rival––Michigan for the championship, I looked around the bar after the win. Everyone in Louisville was over the moon sure, but this guy, my man, he was fucking losing it. He was out of his mind happy. The kind of happy I vaguely recalled from back in 2002. When our crew came to the decision to find another bar where even more friends were hanging out following U of L’s big win, there was only one guy I wanted to ride with. I settled into shotgun in his Subaru, he made me download “One Shining Moment” onto his iPhone, we blared it with the windows down, and he honked, hollered, and high-fived total strangers on our way to the next watering hole. I was living vicariously, but it was still a small amount of glorious. So we talked about that night in his car and that game against Michigan, then we talked about my game, and then he took me back to a different championship in Louisville basketball history that made it all come together for the both of us.

My man laid out the following story:

The Cards were at the very front part of the Pitino era, and there was a new-found aura of urgency and hope surrounding the program. He and a friend were watching a game in the lead up to that year’s NCAA Tournament and the vibes were good at the bar in question. The scene at the bar was entirely positive, because the good folks of Louisville knew their team was on the upswing, if not contenders at the given moment. My man and his buddy fell into conversation with another fan at the bar, some 15 to 20 years their senior, who recalled vividly the last time Louisville won the basketball national championship, back in 1986. The guy was an aeronautical engineer or something of the like in my man’s memory, but he’s not exactly sure. He’s an airplane enthusiast at very least. Our Enthusiast told a tale of the night of that game in ’86, when my man and his buddy were only grade-schoolers, when Milt Wagner drained two free throws to seal the victory and a championship for the Cards. The Enthusiast was at this very same kind of bar he says, and he decided to step outside to have a look at the reaction. What he saw was a neighborhood and a city treading through a flood of good feeling…

It’s a main drag in Louisville, but there’s a fire engine driving up and down the street, horn at full blast, elated firemen whooping their way through the night. Strangers are embracing in the streets, smiles are pasted on faces like plastic surgeries gone awry, the sound of people yelling their heads off is damn near deafening. The Enthusiast looks to my man, then to his buddy and shakes his head for a beat. “Everyone was just so happy.” My man, retelling the retelling, drops the emphasis on the word “so”, because the Enthusiast did too. And yes, sports fans, that’s it exactly. So happy. My man goes on to say that he and his buddy, to this day, awash in the good feeling that comes with a big Cards win, still lock eyes, smile, and say it again. Everyone is just so happy. That’s why I watch kiddos, that’s why I root for my guys in Columbus, that’s why I stress and freak out, and let the Bucks take years off of my life and reequip my scalp with a set of new gray hairs. It’s all for that one night, at the end of the year, when everyone is just so happy.

It’s a feeling that when it grips you personally, is great-drugs kind of euphoric, but with none of the manufactured good time you know is lurking behind it. It’s the kind of feeling that when you see it in the eyes of the other fans around, becomes a kind of telepathic good vibe that you don’t want to let go of. It’s the kind of mass hysteria that can grip a city in the opposite way of riot and upheaval, but still lead to the burning of cars and couches and maniacal shouting and embracing and attempting to fly through the roof. It’s that amazing kind of happy that only sports can claim to impart. And man, let me tell you, there ain’t nothing like that feeling. 

HIP CHECK - HARD TO WATCH

Let me tell you why I don’t like James Harden. It’s certainly nothing personal. I am not the type of fan to dismiss a player on a few interviews or how they carry themselves or their unfortunate choices in facial hair. A player’s demeanor and attitude can go a long way towards enhancing an already high opinion of their athletic ability and transform them from someone I admire into one of my favorite players, but it is rare that the opposite is true. I try and judge and if need be dislike someone on the field of play purely on the merits of their performance. There are exceptions, where by the accretion of ill will and the need to prove time and again that they totally suck I have indeed written a player or two off––ahem, Dwight Howard––I try to keep this a rare occasion in both life and sport. You really have to earn a spot on my shit list when it comes to personality, and Mr. Harden is assuredly not in that swath of the sporting population.

I dislike Harden purely on the content of his game. He is a deadly three point shooter, a fantastic slasher, an above-average passer, and one of the league’s best all-around scorers. Nothing not to like there. But it is the manner in which he can over and over, within the span of even a single game, make you forget about all of that that really puts me out. That’s because his true primary focus on offense, and hell, in his game as a whole, since he has never shown much interest in defense whatsoever, is doing whatever it takes to get to the free throw line. The ability to draw fouls is part of becoming a complete offensive superstar, but in Harden’s case it does not merely accentuate his talents, it sublimates them into afterthoughts. His knack for getting to the line does not underscore his game, it is what his game is all about. Quite frankly James, you look soft son.

He flops, he flails, he sends his arms and legs akimbo, crashing through the lane like an unconscious sky diver, embellishing every single point of contact made on his way towards the hoop, or more usually, the floor. Half the time, it doesn’t even appear he has designs on putting up a shot, but is driving into the teeth of a defense with the single goal of hearing a referee’s whistle sound. He acts as if fouled so often in fact, I don’t believe most refs know whether or not he actually earned a legitimate call. It’s a cheap way to make an NBA living, and to go about your business as a star player. I question a man as the cornerstone of a franchise and as a leader if he earns his buckets acting his way to the stripe and not hitting shots from the field. Not only that, but the way he plays damages the league as a whole, since the NBA has recently solidified to the casual fan its reputation as a game with less and less watch-ability. 

The greats have always found a way to get to the line, from Jordan to Shaq (most times unwillingly) to Kobe to LeBron, but it has always been a part of their game, and not its centerpiece.

Harden’s position as the poster boy for the NBA’s flop-first shortcomings is often brought into severe focus by active defenses, as was the case on Saturday night, when the Rockets hosted the dazzling Golden State Warriors. Golden State players were in foul trouble early and often, and visibly showed their frustration with near the same frequency as whistles were blown. Phantom contact and questionable calls haunted their defensive efforts, and though they held the Rockets under 40% from the field and Houston seemingly could not buy a bucket, the Warriors still found themselves in an eight point first half hole.

They were outperforming Houston when the clock was running, but got killed at the line time and again, with baffling foul calls that sent Klay Thompson to the bench with two fouls in the blink of an eye, left Stef Curry laughing in disgust, and let Harden continue to score without any ability in the early going to hit a shot. It made me shudder to think what a playoff series between these teams would look like, and brought up memories of the 2006 NBA Finals, which were competitively dismantled by Dwyane Wade’s knack for failing down on every drive into the lane. The Mavericks watched in awe as their series lead evaporated and Wade’s free throw shooting eventually turned the tide of the championship series in Miami’s favor. 

That’s why Harden really burns my toast. He doesn’t just offer up an aesthetically, if not morally lacking form of basketball, he hurts the flow of the game as a whole, creates impossible decisions for referees, and hampers the defensive abilities of what as a whole is a supremely talented defensive league. Instead of a wonderful, up and down, back and forth blur of beautiful basketball, I get feigned attrition and finesse-as-function histrionics wrapped in an ugly looking beard. The cynics can claim what Harden does is within the rules and in fact a brilliant manipulation of the NBA’s status quo, but I didn’t develop a love of sports to be a cynic. I want it to be more than that. I want it to not just entertain me, but delight me. Not only to fill my time, but make that time worthwhile. I want the ballet of basketball performed with grace and tact, not reduced to an ugly grind where I watch one player thrash through a defense and shoot free throws. I don’t want to watch James Harden, that’s for damn sure.

HIP CHECK - HEADS-TO-HEADS

Now that the Monday nighter between the Colts and Giants is in the books and your fantasy football scores are final, week nine of the NFL season is officially on record. With it, so is another round of Manning v. Brady, and like most meetings between the two, Touchdown Tom came out on top. Brady is now 11-5 all-time against his only true under-the-center rival, with the Patriots besting the Broncos 43-21 in Foxboro Sunday afternoon. Of course, the most interesting part of this rivalry is that it isn’t really a rivalry at all in the truest sense of the word. Manning has now QB'd two different teams throughout the showdown’s tenure, and as much as we want it to be, it isn’t a classic one-on-one battle between two athletes in the way it is so often billed.

It certainly isn’t Ali/Frazier or McEnroe/Borg or Palmer/Nicklaus. It’s two football teams playing against each other, not two men squaring off mano a mano. And it’s also why Brady is the clear cut owner of the rivalry. There’s simply too many other variables in the equation when football teams play each other, and the Patriots have been better than the Colts and Broncos near unanimously. The Pats have most always had a better defense, definitely a better coach, and usually more talent spread across both sides of the ball as a whole (this year is probably an exception to that last rule, but I digress). It doesn’t mean that Brady is better than Manning any more than it means that the other Manning brother is better than Brady because he owns two Super Bowl wins against Gisele’s better half. It probably isn’t either of the following, but is definitely more “any given Sunday” than “Tom is better than Peyton.” More “heads-to-heads” than “head-to-head”.

The debate rages about which is better while both keep hurling touchdown passes and will continue until long after they’re both gone from the gridiron, and that’s fine. I just don’t think it’s fair to base their merits on head-to-head showdowns. In reality, the nearest comparison to a sporting rivalry that Manning/Brady brings to mind is Magic Johnson's Lakers and Larry Bird's Celtics in the heyday of the NBA’s resurgence in the 1980’s. But even here, the analogy falls apart. One player in five in your starting lineup goes a lot further towards a distinct comparative advantage than the one in eleven ratio that manifests on a football team. That said, we are in all ways lucky as fans to have witnessed these two go at it each of the sixteen times their teams have met. I often drift into this we-had-it-so-good-in-my-day sort of reverie because it becomes part of what you get to talk about with younger fans as the years roll on. 

That’s right kiddos––I will someday get to say––I got to watch Jordan and LeBron in their prime, dominate two completely different eras of NBA hoops. I got to watch Tiger Woods rule over the game of golf in a way that no one else ever will. I got to watch both Pete Sampras and Roger Federer play tennis, and I still can’t say who’s better. Oh yeah, and I got to watch Tom Brady and Peyton Manning throw the football in the same, amazing era of NFL offensive firepower. When all’s said and done, they might be the two greatest quarterbacks that ever lived, and I was around to watch them both go. Even as they age, their talents remain prodigious, their statistics are still both gaudy and in near all cases record-setting, their mutual respect is unflappable, and their auras perpetually inescapable.

So, who else is ready for meeting number seventeen?

SAM WE ARE

The last post I wrote here at Bo Jackson’s Hip was about Richie Incognito, Jonathan Martin, and what their beef down in Miami told us about the state of pro football. I talked about how they represent two ends of the NFL’s magnet, and that the neutral portion that should be at the center of this gridiron polarity doesn’t really exist in my mind. The NFL is exactly what it has lately tried so hard to tell us it is not: brutal, unforgiving, poignantly meritocratic, and obviously chauvinistic. And while I pilloried NFL brass and meat-headed racists like Richie Incognito for permeating the league’s consciousness, I ended with a glimmer of hope from Brandon Marshall about the humanity that the NFL has never really had, and what it might take to make it manifest.

You might go back and read all of that if you want (or the vivid, ugly report that was just released on the whole matter), or just wonder why I followed a path from one football controversy to the next, without even sniffing the Super Bowl, and you might be justified in your criticism. But if you watched that game, come on. What can I say? The Seahawks thumped the Broncos with stellar defense, Peyton Manning shrunk in a big game, and it doesn’t do anything to take away from his legacy as one of the greatest football players of all time. Well, I guess I could have said that, but with a lot more words and links, and videos and what not. But I’m not going to. I’m going to skip the big game and pick up where I left off: with a controversy that calls into question exactly what football is, what it tells us about ourselves as fans, and how it might mirror the American culture at large. I’m headed straight from knuckle-headed bullies and a big guy who had enough of them in Miami to an even pricklier question that arose last week from the heartland.

Missouri defensive end and co-SEC Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam announced publicly to the New York Times and ESPN that he is a gay man. He told us all what he told his teammates and coaches earlier last summer, before the college football season even started: that he is out, and proud, and gay. The small miracle is that his teammates had enough discretion, loyalty, and respect for Sam’s decision to come out that they went all the way up until last week without saying a word publicly about it. They let Sam do that for himself. The larger miracle is that the NFL, already pushing away the clouds of doubt about concussions and brain injury and human carnage, already trying to wash away the stains of Bounty Gate and Richie Incognito, and still swiping at the less-important dusting of Richard Sherman’s unsportsmanlike exuberance, finds itself thrown into an all new imbroglio that most of us thought was still several years down the line.

Michael Sam is too talented not to be taken in this coming April’s 2014 NFL Draft, and will thus become the first openly gay athlete in the four major American sports. While Jason Collins was indeed courageous and paved the way for Sam’s reveal when he told Sports Illustrated that he was gay, it was while he was an unemployed, and as is the case now, former NBA player. For whatever reason, be it age, a lack of productivity, or perhaps, his sexuality, Collins has not landed on an NBA roster this season. And he probably won’t. And he probably won’t next year. So he is a former player coming out for all intents and purposes, joining others in this honorable line, though his landmark decision to tell the world about his sexual preference stands out as the ladder upon which Michael Sam found the courage to climb up and do just the same. 

Like Collins, Sam isn’t a current professional athlete. While Collins essentially was, Sam most certainly will be. And here, for this writer, is where this young man’s story becomes not only historic and important and brave, but utterly fascinating. Sam, whether you think his intentions were to do so or not, has become the ultimate test case for the gay American athlete, and even more intriguingly, the gay American football player. Sam is poised to become the sporting version of that ideal that Dr. King gave us so many years ago: a man judged not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. In this case, not the orientation of his sexuality, but his prowess on a football field. If it seems too heavy-handed to invoke the civil rights movement and one of the most transcendent activists the world has ever seen, it speaks both to Dr. King’s very transcendence and brings us to a small but important hurdle that must be cleared before moving on to the real dilemma that Sam creates. To put it simply: Michael Sam is not Jackie Robinson.

While it feels only natural to draw parallels between the Civil Rights Movement in mid-twentieth century America and our most obvious civil rights issue today, gay equality, this is a clear case of apples and oranges. Jackie Robinson was a prime example of an already existent pool of talent that was being kept out of the highest level of competition available. It isn’t that Jackie Robinson came out to the country as a black man, it’s that black men weren’t allowed to play baseball in the Major Leagues until he and Branch Rickey came along. They challenged a gentleman’s [sic] agreement between baseball owners that black players would not find a place on a Major League roster. The stakes were much higher, Jackie faced a level of abuse that Michael Sam will not likely see the edges of, and the cause was of an entirely different variety. Jackie Robinson is the apotheosis of American courage, so we should not so easily throw other men into his company.

This is not said to take something away from Michael Sam, but more to not take anything away from Jackie Robinson. It’s an important point that was discussed on what is probably the smartest podcast in sports, Slate’s Hang Up and Listen, last Monday, and one that I was already making internally before the sharp trio behind HUAL verbalized it in their weekly address to the sporting world. The truth is, there have already been and currently are gay athletes in the four major American sports, which we can assume from innuendo and know from first-hand accounts. Sam’s proclamation and assertion of the value of his lifestyle and character are thrilling and evident, but they are not the same thing as what Jackie Robinson did for baseball, black and white American athletes, and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Not to mention that Jackie is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, not just a trailblazer. So let’s just stop making what Jackie Robinson did during and after his career part of this issue. Let’s let Sam’s announcement exist as its own colossal step forward for football, sports, and a loud defiance of backward beliefs in conservative creations like the sanctity of marriage and the maintenance of the accepted view of what an American family should look like. 

With that all behind us, or at least me, let’s move on to the very present and very telling realities that Sam’s story has and will continue to illuminate. It all goes back to what I said before about Sam as the ultimate test case. My intent is not to strip his announcement of any of its import by looking at it through an overly clinical lens, but simply to peer at him the exact same way the NFL and its 30 general managers are as we speak. From what a couple of GM’s and execs have told reporters (under the safe umbrella of anonymity of course), Sam’s draft stock might take a hit because of his sexuality. Because he’s now a “distraction” for any team he would join, both internally in the locker room and externally to the members of the media that would likely hound Sam and his teammates. Of course, as a couple of members of the media have deftly pointed out, this is a complete load of BS. Please enjoy both clips, and then kindly join me after the jump. And shouts to Deadspin for the heads up on the first vid.

As Mr. Hansen and Mr. Stewart expertly point out, the NFL is full of miscreants and convicted or suspected criminals of varying degrees, and their distractions didn’t seem to stop anyone from signing them up to play football on Sundays. In fact, quite the opposite, as these less-than-rare controversies have and will continue to melt away faster than snowballs in springtime. If these are the very controversies that our aforementioned GM’s and executives are pointing towards, they have already been proven wrong. It’s why Sam’s sexuality is a different kind of litmus test. If he falls in the draft, it won’t be because he’s undersized or lacks the physical traits to be a great pro, or that there are questions about his character, rather it will be because of bald bigotry and clear narrow-mindedness. It will be because no matter how many states continue to legalize gay marriage––and despite politicians on both sides of the aisle in congress supporting equal rights for homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender Americans––football, and the entire country, still can’t get on board. It will be because the NFL and the bulk of the American population are choosing to be on the wrong side of history.

Like the women's movement and the battle against Jim Crow, which once begun would not be denied, the victory for those advocating for gay rights is already written on the walls of the United States of America. The gay rights train is barreling down the tracks, with the NFL and conservative America powerless to stop it. The fact that they might try will be yet another black eye for football, and a lesson in the fact that while progress is inevitable, there will always be those that try and slow its pace. Michael Sam is an at least capable and perhaps dynamic talent on the football field, and anyone that chooses to overlook that is making a mistake. They are making a mistake intellectually, spiritually, and in the case of an NFL team that passes on him, a mistake about doing what it takes to make their football team better. Maybe, like the experts seem to think, Sam is a mid-round pick. Maybe he won’t be watched by a camera on draft day with a million dollars trailing him to the stage, or even on the next day of the 2014 draft, but that really doesn’t matter. He is destined to be the first openly gay athlete to be drafted into the NFL and play professional football, and no one can take that away from him.

But if our beloved game of football is too pig-headed and myopic to accept and celebrate Michael Sam, and he inexplicably slips lower and lower in the draft, it will say a lot about the current state of gay, bisexual, and transgender rights in the United States. Sports have an uncanny way of both projecting upon and reflecting the national opinion, and as such, this young man’s professional fate is tied to our own national character. Let’s hope that not just one, but several NFL teams are lined up to swoop Sam off of the draft board, and that the league and the rest of us can continue to take pride in our differences as people, and as a result advocate for the freedoms that are at the heart of the American identity.