Isn't the bigger concern if somebody else accidentally drops the soap while Sam is around?
If I were in the same locker room, I'd make sure to avoid using any of the facilities while Sam was around.
so the players were cool with him but since that didn’t make any headlines, they manufactured a story pretty much out of whole cloth and tried to pass it off as a distraction.
Sam will be hearing, “Oops! Gotta run!” quite often in the facilities.
Nobody has said this out loud that I know of. But a gay man in the locker room with other naked men puts him in a place with naked people to whom he is sexually attracted.
It would be as if a man on a sports team with females goes and showers with nude females after the game.
And that is why these locker room issues are something people are concerned about.