Will The Dallas Cowboys Defense need Michael Sam? He’s a perfect fit for America’s Team! He sure makes football sense for The Cowboys!* But they’d need to open a spot for him. Because of what changed with Sam since draft day.

After the Cowboys finally gave in to the Politboro dictats of The Ministry of Love over in Bristol, Connecticut, and added !THE_FIRST_OPENLY_GAY_MAN_EVER_DRAFTED_IN_THE_NFL! to their practice squad, Head Coach Jason Garrett discovered why the St Louis Rams cut the man to begin with. Here’s what the beleaguered back-up QB-turned-Head Coach had to say while in front of the media.

“This is about football,” Garrett said. “We evaluated him as a football player and think he can help us as a football player. We want to see what he can do, but our attention and focus is on football. It’s on getting ready for the 49ers. That’s the culture that we have around here. That’s the culture that we’ll continue to have.” After the fifth question on Sam, Garrett said, “I think we’ve got to be careful about spending too much time on a practice-roster player,”

Now St. Louis had a much better D-Line than this year’s Cowboys are projected to have. It’s considered one of the better units in the league, and Sam was a 7th Round Draft Choice. He wasn’t a shoo-in by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, Sam had a decent pre-season. When he got on the field, he tackled as well or better than his fellow long-shot scrubs and recorded a sack on Johnny Manziel during a pre-season game. So why not a slot on the practice squad in case one of the other D-Linemen in St Louis ruptured an Achilles Tendon? It might have been this piece of “journalism” from ESPN.

Michael Sam, the first openly gay player in the NFL, received support from a teammate after an ESPN report by Josina Anderson on Tuesday morning on how the linebacker was adjusting to his life with his new teammates. Sam’s showering habits were included in the report, which drew criticism on social media. In the report, Anderson quoted an anonymous Rams player, who said Sam might be steering clear of the showers to avoid making his teammates uncomfortable.

It was at this point that Sam’s opportunity for a career with the Rams dissipated. He was cut and made it through waivers. Then he was on the street until Dallas realized they were short of Defensive Linemen and called Sam in. Now, Dallas is very sorry. Sam isn’t the worst citizen in the NFL by a long shot and has probably trying as hard as he can to keep his lifestyle far away from the media. But he publicly came out before the draft, and ESPN is apparently too homophobic to leave the poor guy in peace to work his chosen trade.

I’ll make a pre-season prognostication here. If ESPN can’t shut up about this, NFL will equal “Not For Long” with regards to Michael Sam. He may or may not be good enough to help out somewhere. That he isn’t on a regular roster doesn’t directly correlate to Michael Sam being gay. It more directly correlates to the fact that ESPN wants to own Sam’s homosexuality like a brand and monetize it at the expense of any franchise foolish enough to sign the poor man.

If it makes ESPN more money, you will be made to care about Michael Sam’s showering habits. That glaring media spotlight won’t allow people to reach any sort of accommodation with any disquiet or revulsion they may feel about Sam’s sexual preference. That, even more than any existing resentment of Michael Sam’s preferences, will make Michael Sam a leper as far as the rest of the league is concerned.

*-ESPN needs better proofreaders. They keep leaving the exclamation points off the end of their Michael Sam headlines.