Michael Sam - NFL's first openly gay prospect

[Jocephus]

the other thing thats frustrating is that sams "distraction" is not his fault at all but dungy more or less implies it. vick, manziel, peralta, arod, ray rice, ad nauseum kinda brought their distractions thru their own fault(s)/actions. all sam "did" is be gay. yes there will be media attention because he's the first. but vick, manziel, peralta, arod, these aren't firsts. these happen all the time and the media deals with it how they do. sometimes players get more coverage, some don't. but dungy just refused outright to even deal with it. for some reason, the gay distraction is too much for him. it just doesn't add up.

that post is worth 1.4 WAJ

[Socnorb11]

the other thing thats frustrating is that sams "distraction" is not his fault at all but dungy more or less implies it.

No he doesn't........... ever.

Also, Michael Sam signed up for the Oprah thing. That was his fault, and Dungy specifically referred to that.

[Jocephus]

the other thing thats frustrating is that sams "distraction" is not his fault at all but dungy more or less implies it.

No he doesn't........... ever.

Also, Michael Sam signed up for the Oprah thing. That was his fault, and Dungy specifically referred to that.

his actions do.

and it was cancelled after a few days? and i dont think we have a confirmation on when the interview took place, dungy says 9 weeks ago, the writer says 2, so you cant claim he was referring to that. but if he's a fringe guy anyway, according to you, can't he make some money? since he's clearly not going to have an nfl career because of when he was drafted.

[Socnorb11]

the other thing thats frustrating is that sams "distraction" is not his fault at all but dungy more or less implies it.

No he doesn't........... ever.

Also, Michael Sam signed up for the Oprah thing. That was his fault, and Dungy specifically referred to that.

his actions do.

No they don't. Just stop it.

[Jocephus]

the other thing thats frustrating is that sams "distraction" is not his fault at all but dungy more or less implies it.

No he doesn't........... ever.

Also, Michael Sam signed up for the Oprah thing. That was his fault, and Dungy specifically referred to that.

his actions do.

No they don't. Just stop it.

do you know what imply means?

[Jocephus]

You can't allow what happened the day before to distract from your competitive edge. – Tony La Russa

"I'm a great believer in the character of the club. To me, character has a lot to do with how you compete. That creates urgency and toughness. That elevates the talent that you have."
--Tony La Russa

(espn happens to be doing a bit on TLR and i found these interesting from our former tony)

i'll bow out though. this has run its course. though i reserve the right to continue the discussion and you can't say "well you didn't post in the last X amount of pages thus that means you dont care".

[ghostrunner]

Another two pages and I think we can get to the bottom of this.

[JackofDiamonds]

I just want to know if we're going back to serious arguments, because I'll go back to "mark as read."

[docellis]

In this thread, christianity is far more distracting than gayness.

[BW23]

I didn't read through the comments here about the things that Dungy said. I pretty much steered clear of ESPN and others because I thought all of what was being said was a waste of time.

My thoughts? I do think that there will be too much hype, media and, yes, distraction around a 7th round pick. The hype, media and distractions won't be about football. That's what should be judged and talked about now.

I think it's unfair to say that because he wasn't a distraction at MU that he won't be with the Rams. It's not his teammates that will make it a distraction. It's the media. The media didn't know about it then.

The only person I've really talked to about the situation was one of the leaders off of the MU team last year, James Franklin. Franklin was certainly highlighted, for a lack of a better word, as being Christian. He was the preacher's son, the one who didn't cuss or do some of the things you'd expect from a college football player (or just an 18 or 19 year old in general). I think Franklin is the perfect case for someone being against homosexuality and not being a homophobe. He and Sam had numerous discussions on this because Sam wanted his opinion a number of times. Franklin talked about it from a Christian perspective a number of times. As James told me, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." I know those who oppose that Christian point of view here don't believe that's possible, but Franklin did love Sam and considered him a brother. They both approached each other often on the topic. But Franklin could still disapprove of homosexuality while still being a good teammate and friend to Sam.

To me, there's a similarity in the distraction that Sam will be and the one Manziel will be. Only one is just a 7th rounder while the other is the new face of a terrible franchise. At least Sam is going about his business of being a football player more seriously and not bringing it on himself. And if the both don't make it, at least Sam isn't going to be considered a bust. At least Cleveland has LeBron now to turn their focus to come October.

That's all.