Michael Sams has been drafted by the St. Louis Rams, making him the first openly gay player in NFL history.
Sam, who was named a first-team all American and crowned AP defensive player of the year while a senior at Missouri, came out publicly back in February, declaring "I am an openly, proud gay man."
"I understand how big this is," he later said to ESPN. "It's a big deal. No one has done this before. And it's kind of a nervous process, but I know what I want to be ... I want to be a football player in the NFL."
This is such a game-changer, to extend the sports talk, a watershed moment both in American sports and LGBT history. If Sams is as successful in his pro career as he was in college, millions of kids, gay, straight, bi or trans, are going to see him out on the field and look up to him, imitate him, hang posters of him up on their walls, play with him in Madden (well if you're into that sort of thing). Hopefully he's the first of many.
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