Michael Sam has been in the spotlight for weeks as sports fans have been watching the St. Louis Rams star both on and off the field to see if he’ll survive the training cut camps to make the teams’75-man roster. But while most fans are talking about Sam’s stats, ESPN recently decided to give a trivial report on Sam’s reported showering habits.
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the day of initial training cuts, ESPN’s camp reporter Josina Anderson reported that insiders say Sam has been avoiding showering with the rest of his team.
“Another Rams defensive player told me that ‘Sam is respecting our space’ and that, from his perspective, he seems to think that Michael Sam is waiting to kind of take a shower, as not to make his teammates feel uncomfortable,” said Anderson.
It became even more painfully obvious that the news segment was inconsequential when Anderson described asking the Rams’ Kendall Langford and Alec Ogletree about Sam’s shower habits and they remarked that they hadn’t noticed, while Langord said there could be a million reasons, including wanting to spend more time practicing, as to why he’d shower at a different time than other players.
Not surprisingly, after the segment aired, fans and sports sites alike bashed ESPN for the report.
“Now we’ve got the inside scoop on how things are going for Michael Sam and his teammates in the shower,” Deadspin wrote. “Thanks, SportsCenter.”
According to SportsGrid, Sam’s teammates fired back at ESPN as well.
On Tuesday, ESPN released a statement, via Yahoo!, defending their reporting on Sams shower habits.
“In response to recent questions about Sam fitting in with the team, multiple Rams brought up the shower topic and we relayed that information as part of our reporting,” the statement read.
However, this morning, they released another statement apologizing for the report.
“ESPN regrets the manner in which we presented our report. Clearly yesterday we collectively failed to meet the standards we have set in reporting on LGBT-related topics in sports,” read the statement.
If anything, we’d assume that if anyone would refuse to shower, it would be a homophobic teammate wanting to avoid Sam. But the bigger point in this matter is that, unless there’s evidence that Sam is being unfairly treated by his teammates, what he does in the locker room should never be enough to garner headline news. However, what should be reported is that Sam did indeed survive Tuesday’s cuts. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if he survives the rest of the week’s cuts to make the final 53-man team. Hopefully, we won’t hear anymore irrelevant stories about his time in the showers, though. – nicholas robinson
