Dale Hansen on Michael Sam
The non-stop talk on sports radio about Michael Sam’s announcement that he was gay has long since become boring. Despite his being the SEC defensive player of the year, I’d never heard his name before his came out of the proverbial closet (Missou has only been in the SEC two years and, because they’re in the Eastern Division, they haven’t yet played Alabama) and I’m just not all that interested in what a projected mid-round draft pick likes to do in the bedroom.
But longtime Dallas sports commenter Dale Hansen puts it all in to perspective:
WFAA (“Hansen Unplugged: Celebrating our differences“):
Several NFL officials are telling Sports Illustrated it will hurt him on draft day because a gay player wouldn’t be welcome in an NFL locker room. It would be uncomfortable, because that’s a man’s world.
You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You’re the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft.
You kill people while driving drunk? That guy’s welcome.
Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes? We knowthey’re welcome.
Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away?
You lie to police trying to cover up a murder?
We’re comfortable with that.
You love another man? Well, now you’ve gone too far!
Indeed.
via HuffPo
The above is why I always laugh when I hear sports announcers and broadcasters refer to some athlete as a “class act.” The cases listed above are the known transgressions of some NFL athletes. The reality is that we have no idea what athletes are like in their private lives.
Like….more boring than sports talk in general?
(Don’t get me wrong. I love me some sports. I love me some sports talk. But it seems to me that our culture is congealing to the point where we’re all talking about the same stuff and saying the same things. Gets pretty boring, it’s true.)
@James Pearce: Yeah there is that. Some, like Colin Cowherd, manage to consistently find different angles. But there’s so much of it now that it does become repetitious.
Wow…Hansen has gotten older since I lived in Dallas in ’90.
I guess we all have…sigh.
@C. Clavin: The difference between 51 and 65 is rather stark, alas.
ironically, hansen is one of the guys who he’s talking about- good tv guy but a horrible person off camera.