Michael Sam, Sports Illustrated: The bad journalism that has everyone convinced the NFL isn't ready for a gay player.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/02/michael_sam_sports_illustrated_the_bad_journalism_that_has_everyone_convinced.html

 why this picture making him look like a raging maniac gay guy, shameful the way media presents itself.

In an orchestrated rollout at 8 p.m. on Sunday, the New York Times and ESPNreleased stories in which Sam announced that he is gay. Outsports simultaneously posted a behind-the-scenes narrative about Sam’s decision.

When big news breaks, trailing media have to scramble the jets. This was different. Sam and his team—two agents, a Hollywood publicist, and Outsports co-founder Cyd Zeigler, who wrote the tick-tock story—had planned the multipronged release for Monday.

 But Sam’s sexuality was an open secret, and media outlets were on the trail. On Friday, Zeigler received a call from SI executive editor Jon Wertheim. “Sports Illustrated knew everything and they wanted to break the story,” Zeigler wrote. “Wertheim graciously played ball and agreed to not jump the gun.”

The gun was moved up to Sunday. As soon as it sounded, SI was ready to go. At 8:21, it posted a reaction story by Pete Thamel and Thayer Evans headlined “How will news that Michael Sam is gay affect his NFL draft stock?”

 Thamel and Evans reported that they spoke with “eight NFL executives and coaches.” They granted them anonymity in exchange for “their honesty.”

 One asserted there was “no question” Sam would fall in the draft. Another said “his numbers are inflated.” A third said an openly gay player would “chemically imbalance” a locker room because football is “still a man’s-man game”; the NFL wouldn’t be ready for one until “the coming decade or two.” A fourth—an expert on the personal decision-making process of a gay man whose sexual orientation had been carefully protected in college but who was on the verge of being outed—said Sam’s proclamation was “not a smart move.” Staying in the closet and lying to job interviewers would have been much smarter.

are people so insecure that they feel it necessary to demean and make fun of another human being because they either are hiding secrets themselves or are just bigoted by family morals, principles, values, that sounds awfully familiar.

the real story here is that if there were not an audience for this kinda crap they would not do it, so who's the real offender here?

The most laugh-out-loud quote crammed a closetful of stereotypes, bigotries, and dated locutions into one paragraph. It’s not that NFL front offices are “against gay people,” this source assured Thamel and Evans.

It’s that “some players” will “look you upside down” if you draft Sam. (Don’t blame us football people! Blame the players!) “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the media is going to show up, from Good Housekeeping to The Today Show.” (If Red Smith or the Saturday Evening Post send a telex requesting a press pass, don’t give ’em one!)

But the issue here isn’t the ungrounded and outdated opinions of a few off-the-record soothsayers. It’s about whether they deserved a platform in the first place, and whether the conclusions drawn from their words were a reasonable reflection of a broader reality.

At first glance, the sources are an impressive bunch. “Executives and coaches” implies high-level responsibility. And eight is a lot, right? But take a closer look. The six cited in the piece are identified as “an NFL player personnel assistant,” “a veteran NFL scout,” “one scout,” “a scout,” “one former NFL general manager,” and “an NFL assistant coach.”

That’s a bunch of second-tier personnel and coaching staffers, and one guy who isn’t in the league anymore. Not a single one of those people will make the final call on whether to draft Michael Sam, and they may not have any meaningful influence at all.

But Thamel and Evans drew some very big conclusions from their comments. NFL locker rooms are “not prepared to deal with an openly gay player.” Sam’s path to the league will be “daunting.” Sam faces “long odds” and a “lonely path.” He will trigger a “publicity circus.”

It’s not only possible but likely that, again, not a single one of those assertions will come to pass. But with its first-out-of-the-gate story, SI helped shift, or at least bifurcate, the conversation. The Times and ESPN owned the news. SI owned the instant reality check:

The NFL is institutionally bigoted; Michael Sam isn’t that good; Michael Sam isn’t worth the trouble; Michael Sam is on his own; good friggin’ luck, Michael Sam. The comments in SI rocketed around the Web. The Los Angeles Timespublished a story devoting one paragraph to the announcement and 10 to the SIquotes. The echo chamber was open for business.

we are rapidly becoming a world of intolerance, Russia and the Olympics, republicans and everything and everybody, Middle East and their problems, does the world need a time out?  again if there were no market this would not be a story, but bring up other human rights and the cockroaches of ignorant bigotry run like the lights are out.