With contributions from Sean Wagner-McGough.
Michael Sam is going to be the first openly gay NFL rookie. However if Tony Dungy was still a coach in the NFL, he would not have drafted Michael Sam for fear of Sam being a “distraction.”
Shockingly, Dungy also has a long track record of homophobia and generally not understanding the very concept of “gay” itself! It’s almost as if all these stances are interconnected!
For instance, there was the time where he was asked to give his opinion on Jason Collins becoming the first active openly gay professional athlete in the NBA:
@StampedeBlue I don’t agree with Jason Collins’ lifestyle but think he deserves respect and should have opportunities like anyone else!
— Tony Dungy (@TonyDungy) May 3, 2013
News flash: Being gay isn’t a lifestyle choice.
At least Tony Dungy was magnanimous enough to hope that Jason Collins would get opportunities like everyone else. Opportunities like marriage equality, right? Oh, wait:
The Super Bowl-winning coach “embraced” the stance of an Indiana organization supporting an amendment to the state constitution that would ban gay marriages, and he added Tuesday night at a gathering of the Indiana Family Institute that he’s “on the Lord’s side.”
“We’re not trying to downgrade anyone else,” said Dungy, coach of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts. “But we’re trying to promote the family — family values the Lord’s way,” Dungy said. “IFI is saying what the Lord says. You can take that and make your decision on which way you want to be.”
So, it was not surprising to see some patented Dungy double-talk when someone finally got around to asking him about whether he would have drafted Michael Sam. In short, no. And it would have had nothing to do with Sam’s level of play either:
“I wouldn’t have taken him,” said former Bucs and Colts coach Tony Dungy, now an analyst for NBC. “Not because I don’t believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it.
“It’s not going to be totally smooth … things will happen.”
Because if something hasn’t been done before and the transition may not be “totally smooth”, it’s not worth attempting at all, right? I mean, Michael Vick would have been a huge “distraction” coming out of prison, so there’s no way that Dungy would have been in favor of his return to the NFL due to the media circus that would inevitably follow him. Surely Tony Dungy wouldn’t have wanted Michael Vick to distract the fragile ecosystems of NFL locker rooms:
“I think Michael deserves the chance to show people he has changed and learned from past mistakes, but my true hope is that he will make sound decisions about his future and, at the same time, let people know more about the person that I’ve come to know recently. I know the public will be skeptical, but I think, over time, people will find there’s a different side to him than what they’ve seen so far.”
Oh.
So, Tony Dungy is just really uncomfortable about the very idea of gay people.
Honestly, the “distraction” excuse has got to be the most bland and unoriginal homophobic rationale when it comes to the topic of Michael Sam that it is absolutely fitting that Tony Dungy would fall back on it to justify his worldview.
