So for this blog we are to write in a similar style to Bill Sutton. Bill Sutton does articles for Sport Business Journal called Sutton Impact. In these articles he gives his opinion on a variety of topics. For this blog post I am going to be giving my opinion on Michael Sam receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award last night at the ESPYs.
For those of you who don’t know, the ESPYs stands for
Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards.
This is an awards show solely for athletes. They give out a variety of awards for a variety
of accomplishments.
Last night (07/16/14) Michael Sam received the Arthur Ashe
Courage Award for being the first openly gay football player to be drafted by
an NFL team. After this happened Twitter
exploded with comments both positive and negative. Many people are still not willing to except a
gay football player, or gay people in general.
For me personally I have mixed feelings about him receiving this
award. First off I do think he was courageous
for coming out. It has to be difficult
for him being the only openly gay athlete in the NFL. There are a lot of people in the NFL who are
not excepting of gay people (just look at the article that Chris Kluwe, formerpunter for the Vikings, wrote for Deadspin).
He came out at a time where it could really affect his future earning
potential. He was rated as a 3rd
or 4th round prospect but fell to the 7th round. I’m not sure why he feel so far but I feel
that he being an openly gay athlete had something to do with it. I know some teams didn't want extra media
attention because of him. He is a great inspiration
to gay athletes everywhere. In his
acceptance speech he mentioned a little girl that was contemplating killing
herself instead of telling her family that she was gay. Michael Sam talked with her and because of
his experience he was able to ultimately save her life.
So he is definitely courageous for coming out but does he
deserve an award for it? As I mentioned
I have mixed feelings. I want a world
where telling everyone what your sexual orientation is, isn't considered courageous. By Michael Sam winning this award for being
openly gay in the NFL that shows that our country still isn’t there yet. It will take a long time to get there but one
day being a gay athlete won’t be news worthy and won’t win anyone any
awards. This is what I want to see.
To end his speech Michael Sam said “Great things can happen,
when you have the courage to be yourself”.
He won the award for just being himself.
It’s sad when you can win an award for courage for just being who you
are. But as I mentioned earlier that is
the society we live in now. People like
Michael Sam and Jason Collins are trying to change society for the better but
it will be a slow change. One day people
won’t have to be courageous to just be their selves, but until then we need
courageous people like Michael Sam.
So in the end I have mixed feelings about him receiving the
Arthur Ashe Courage Award but I think he deserves it.
