At the NFL Draft combine this month, teams will time Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam in the 40-yard dash, measure his vertical leap, assess his agility and check his blood pressure.

But make no mistake, it will be the NFL that will really be tested.

The NFL has never had an active openly gay player, and Sam, who courageously came out publicly over the weekend, would be the first. That is if the league deigns to open its guarded gates to the Associated Press Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year.

The innovative $10 billion enterprise that is the NFL has been in the forefront in many areas, but, unfortunately, tolerance hasn’t always been one of them.

It wasn’t all that long ago when having an African-American quarterback was a concept teams were reluctant to embrace. Russell Wilson is but the latest example of how flawed that thinking had been.

Thirty-nine years ago, former running back Dave Kopay was among the first ex-NFL players to disclose their orientation. There was so little change in NFL attitudes that defensive tackle Esera Tuaolo of Waimanalo, a nine-year NFL veteran, felt compelled to keep his secret until after retiring in 2002.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has an openly gay brother, has advocated a more progressive attitude. But it has been slow in coming. Before last year’s Super Bowl, San Francisco cornerback Chris Culliver said a gay player would not be welcome on the 49ers. Earlier this month New Orleans’ linebacker Jonathan Vilma said he didn’t want a gay teammate.

Never mind that there are more than 1,600 players on NFL rosters and Vilma and Culliver probably haven’t been as isolated as they’d imagine.

Lest we think it is just a couple of players with the exclusionary attitude, it was at last year’s combine that players reported being none-to-subtly screened by team officials about their sexual preference. " ‘Do you have a girlfriend? Are you married? Do you like girls?’ " Colorado tight end Nick Kasa said he was asked. "Those kinds of things."

The NFL, it seems, has a lot to learn from Missouri, where Sam’s orientation was not a secret among players or coaches this season after he made a bold announcement to teammates in August. Some had already known for a while.

Was Sam universally welcomed and befriended by his Tigers teammates? Subsequent Twitter postings suggest not. But, then few on any 105-man roster are, for any number of reasons.

The important thing was that there was enough respect for Sam as a player and an individual that the situation wasn’t the divide some would like to believe that it has to be. It did not automatically doom the sacrosanct locker room to polarization and cause a debilitating "distraction" as the Tigers’ 12-2 record and No. 5 ranking will attest.

Time was when military units were segregated by race. Then, as in the NFL now, the logic was often much the same: change would weaken team cohesion. It was a tired concept then and remains so today.

This time, when the annual NFL Draft rolls around in May, it will be the league that will be tested — on joining the 21st century.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.