ST. LOUIS (AP) – Michael Sam said in a TV documentary that aired Saturday night that coming out as gay was the right thing to do. He’d have preferred the news come out after he informed the team that drafted him.
“It didn’t need to be public,” Sam said. “Why do gay people have to do it?”
The Oprah Winfrey Network said in a release that the 90-minute program, followed by a one-on-one with Winfrey and Sam, was the player’s first TV appearance since being cut by the Dallas Cowboys in mid-October. After one day of filming last spring, the St. Louis Rams pulled the plug on the network’s plans for a Sam documentary during training camp.
The documentary details countless anxious hours during the NFL draft, which Sam called “the longest three days of my life.” The New York Jets telephoned his agents to say they weren’t interested, and the Cowboys texted to say they were out, too.
Sam, who rose to stardom after a difficult childhood in tiny Hitchcock, Texas, asked that the sound on the TV be turned down before the Rams drafted him late in the seventh round.