{"id":2433,"date":"2014-03-07T22:51:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T03:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2014-03-07T22:54:44","modified_gmt":"2014-03-08T03:54:44","slug":"michael-sam-passes-on-white-house-invite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/2014\/03\/07\/michael-sam-passes-on-white-house-invite\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sam passes on White House invite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/files\/2014\/02\/michaelsam.jpg\" alt=\"michaelsam\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2407\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/files\/2014\/02\/michaelsam.jpg 640w, http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/files\/2014\/02\/michaelsam-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><br \/>\nNFL hopeful Michael Sam has turned down an invitation to attend the White House according to USA Today&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/ftw.usatoday.com\/2014\/03\/michael-sam-howard-bragman\/?utm_source=dlvr.it&#038;utm_medium=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">For The Win.<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe respectfully declined,\u201d said Howard Bragman, one of Sam&#8217;s advisers. \u201cAs much fun as I would have had and he would have had going, it sends the wrong message. If he gets on a team and plays well, he\u2019ll probably be invited next year. I don\u2019t want people to think that he\u2019s interested in anything other than getting ready for the [NFL] draft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sam announced in February that he was gay. He is poised to become the first openly gay player to complete in the league. <\/p>\n<p>Sam has been projected as a fourth to seventh round pick by my analysts. Mortensen has him as a third to fifth round selection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NFL hopeful Michael Sam has turned down an invitation to attend the White House according to USA Today&#8217;s &#8220;For The Win.&#8221; \u201cWe respectfully declined,\u201d said Howard Bragman, one of Sam&#8217;s advisers. \u201cAs much fun as I would have had and he would have had going, it sends the wrong message. If he gets on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,131],"tags":[194,134],"coauthors":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-2433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaafb-news","8":"category-ncaafb-topstory","9":"tag-michael-sam","10":"tag-ncaafb"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/ncaafb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}