Collectively, this is a sad prophecy. But if it comes true, it’ll be a self-fulfilling one set in motion by the homophobia of the NFL’s front office.

Sam’s sexuality doesn’t appear to have “imbalanced” just about anyone or anything in college football. Not the University of Missouri teammates he finally came out to at a practice this past August. (“I looked in their eyes, and they just started shaking their heads—like, finally, he came out,” Sam told the New York Times.) Not the Tigers’ head coach, Gary Pinkel, who tweeted, “So proud of Michael Sam & his courage. Proud of his teammates. ‪#Mizzou has such a great family atmosphere.”

The NFL may never be, per Ta-Nehisi Coates’s assessment, “ready” for an openly gay player. There may always be players like Jonathan Vilma freaking out over the thought that a gay teammate might check them out in the shower. But as a videotape of Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper using the n-word during a conflict at a concert this past summer demonstrates, some NFL players aren’t even ready for black players to have a place in the league. Ready or not, gay men and black men are taking the field alongside them.

Hopefully, the NFL will get over its gay panic long enough to look at the facts. Because there’s no evidence that Sam’s sexuality changed the way that even players on opposing teams treated him, and it’s certainly not because no one knew. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirms, "There were subtle touches that didn’t go unnoticed among a lot of us, like the rainbow-colored wrist bands he wore on game days. There were the knowing whispers—and almost universal acceptance—among many students on Missouri’s sprawling Columbia campus that for perhaps nearly a year or so, the star of the nationally ranked football team was comfortably living a fairly open gay lifestyle.”

And Sam’s decision to come out of the closet certainly doesn’t appear to have jeopardized his performance or his team’s. Missouri finished 12-2 and won the Cotton Bowl. Sam was a first-team all-American and was named the defensive player of the year in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference. His teammates voted him the Tigers’ MVP.

So what’s up with the tut-tutting from the NFL’s front office? It may be that the big difference between their panic and the NCAA College Football’s maturity is money—particularly the big money that corporate sponsors and advertisers bring to the NFL and don’t bring to the NCAA. When an anonymous official in Sports Illustrated says, “the league isn’t ready for this,” it’s likely code for “We’re afraid that having an openly gay player on board means that ticket sales will drop, or male viewers will be turned off, or that Bud Light and Marriott and Pepsi and GMC won’t want to pay top dollar to advertise with us.” In short, members of the NFL’s front office may be afraid that Sam will compromise their brand.