draft in May, ordinarily a path to a prosperous pro career. Sam, 24, is projected to be chosen in the early rounds of the N.F.L. Sam could become a symbol for the country’s gay rights movement or a flash point in a football culture war - or both. And he is doing so as he prepares to enter a league with an overtly macho culture, where controversies over homophobia have attracted recent attention.Īs the pace of the gay rights movement has accelerated in recent years, the sports industry has changed relatively little for men, with no publicly gay athletes in the N.F.L., the N.B.A., the N.H.L. He is making his public declaration before he is drafted, to the potential detriment to his professional career. Sam enters an uncharted area of the sports landscape.