Michael Sam’s college coach at the University of Missouri, Gary Pinkel, has singled out the Miami Dolphins as the kind of situation that would be a bad fit for Sam to begin his NFL career.
Despite both Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito supporting Sam’s announcement that he is gay, Pinkel told ESPN Radio (via ProFootballTalk) that the situation wouldn’t be the best place for the NFL’s first openly gay player:
"“I think the incident that happened down in Miami with the Dolphins — I don’t know the people involved there, and I’m not really judging them, but when you have a locker room atmosphere like that, when people are verbally being destructive to each other and you call it fun, I think there’s a fine line there.I’m not one of the Righteous Brothers here, but we talk to our team all the time about how locker rooms are great in sports, locker rooms are awesome. It’s a great thing about being a member of the team. Guys like to bust each other, go after each other verbally. But there’s a certain point when what you say is hurtful and it doesn’t help the team, it hurts the team.If you have that kind of environment where people say anything they want and say mean, awful berating things to people, it probably will not work very well. But if you have a team that respects one another — I may be naive, that’s what we try to do.”"
While anonymous coaches and front office executives are already justifying not drafting Sam, if he is drafted into the right situation – stable environment, strong, positive leadership – then he will be able to flourish. Stable, positive and strong are not words one would use to describe the Dolphins leadership these days.