Michael Sam is gay

It's true; the SEC's co-defensive player of the year and NFL prospect bravely came out of the closet on Sunday night before the draft combine and NFL draft. When/if drafted in the 2014 NFL Draft, Sam will become the first active openly gay athlete in one of the four major sports. 

Let's dismiss any effects this might have on a locker room. After a sweaty co-ed game of some sport, men and women have designated showers and if a man wanted to shower with the women, he'd be embarrassingly shooed out and called a perv. But we're told it's homophobic to question the oddity of a gay man in a locker room full of naked men.

Let's instead talk about something else that's interesting — Sam's father and how he's handling this. A NY Times article wrote about how Sam Sr. is taking all of this, and, well, he's not taking it as well as one would hope, if you're wondering. 

Last Tuesday, Michael Sam Sr. was at a Denny’s near his home outside Dallas to celebrate his birthday when his son sent him a text message.

Dad, I’m gay, he wrote.

The party stopped cold. “I couldn’t eat no more, so I went to Applebee’s to have drinks,” Sam Sr. said. “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment.

“I’m old school,” he added. “I’m a man-and-a-woman type of guy.” As evidence, he pointed out that he had taken an older son to Mexico to lose his virginity.

A couple things that are noteworthy here: 1) "Happy birthday, my homophobic father! I'm gay!" Great way to pay back* your Dad if he's always been terrible at being a parent, and judging from what he did with the older son, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case; 2) His Dad got up and left a Denny's to go to Applebee's when he heard the news. Talk about being out of sorts. 

Or he saw the movie 'Hall Pass' and that's where they went to pick up chicks their first night out, so he felt like a real man-and-a-woman man's man there.

_{*For clarification: the pay back isn't that he's gay, because that's not a choice like issuing pay back is; it's that he's deliberately texting his father on his birthday with news that he probably knows he's not going to like}