Jason Collins, the 34-year old free agent basketball centre who has played with the Boston Celtics and currently with the Washington Wizards, recently publicly came out in a cover story in Sports Illustrated, the first American pro athlete to do so while still playing.
We have had other athletes come out, of course, but none during the heyday of their careers and certainly none within the "big four" professional sports franchises of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey.
In the past - and the not-so-distant-past at that - we have read and heard the reactions of pro athletes to the mere idea of a teammate perhaps coming out, and it has been predictable.
Tim Hardaway, a former point guard with the NBA, notoriously commented after retired NBA player John Amaechi came out, that he would distance himself from any player known to be homosexual. When the interviewer asked him if he realized the comment was homophobic, Hardaway kept right on going and dug himself in deeper.
"Well, you know I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States." He also then stated if he ever found out he had one or more gay teammates, he would try and get them fired.
Despite pretty lame and half-hearted attempts at an apology, along the lines of "I shouldn’t have said that", the NBA, to its credit, suspended him from its then-upcoming All Stars Weekend activities in Las Vegas, preferring not to have him around. His employer, Trinity Sports, and owner of the Continental Basketball Association’s Indiana Alley Cats, dismissed him from his position as Chief Basketball Operations Advisor and then issued a press statement distancing themselves from his remarks.
San Francisco 49ers cornerback, Chris Culliver, made rather inarticulate but very obviously anti-gay comments to a radio talk show host during Super Bowl XLVII, stating:
"I don’t do the gay guys, man. I don’t do that. No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. Nah ... can’t be ... in the locker room, man? Nah."
So for an active professional athlete to come out takes some guts. What is encouraging, though, despite the ranting of some perhaps not too bright players, is the reaction of David Stern, the NBA’s commissioner, who stated:
"As Adam Silver [deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the NBA] and I said to Jason, we have known the Collins family since Jason and [his twin] Jarron joined the NBA in 2001 and they have been exemplary members of the NBA family. Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue."
Likewise, high profile players such as Kobe Bryant, Collins’ Washington Wizards teammates Bradley Beal and Garrett Temple, and others, were quick to commend and support Collins. In an official team statement, the Washington Wizards stated the team was "extremely proud of Jason and support his decision to live his life proudly and openly". The Boston Red Sox have offered Collins the honour of throwing out the first pitch. Even former-President Bill Clinton got in on the praise as did the White House.
All this bodes well for his, and one hopes, future NBA stars’, acceptance within the sport, to say nothing of the other three major sports. There are rumours of four NFL players preparing to come out, but Collins has stated he is not aware of any other gay NBA players.
Collins seems to be taking all this in stride, although understandably a bit overwhelmed by all the attention, including a phone call from the President of the United States to congratulate him on going public.
While Collins is the first American pro athlete to come out during his playing years, momentum has been building for some years now.
Gareth Thomas, a Welsh rugby player, came out during the 2009 season. Puerto Rican boxer, Orlando Cruz, went public in October 2012, Robbie Rogers, an American soccer player who played on the US national men’s team as well as for Leeds United, came out in February just before retiring at the age of 25 making him the third professional soccer player to come out after Justin Fashanu did so in 1990.
Fashanu became the first British soccer player to come out and endured considerable abuse from both team players and fans as a result, as well as being publicly disowned by his brother. After moving to the States, Fashanu was accused in 1998 of sexually assaulting a 17-year old male in Maryland (where the age of consent is 16). While the charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence Fashanu, who had by then returned to England, committed suicide.
With Collins’ coming out, and the level of support he is receiving from a variety of quarters, it certainly highlights the progress made in regards to sexual orientation "issues" within professional sports in the last 20-odd years since Fashanu did it and light years from when former NFL player David Kopay came out in 1975.
True, we’ve had former Olympians such as Mark Tewksbury come out and various divers, swimmers, tennis players, and skaters are also openly gay, but -- and this is certainly not meant as a snide dig at their sports -- these sports tend to be viewed as not quite as macho as hockey, football, baseball or basketball in the US or soccer and rugby are in Britain and Europe. But coming out after retirement is different than coming out while still in the game.
Tewksbury has spoken about what the repercussions may have been if he had come out while competing at the Olympic level. Certainly he would have very likely seen -- and has seen -- lucrative endorsements suddenly evaporate. Such does not appear to be the case with Collins; quite the opposite, with companies such as Nike and others beating a path to his door. Suddenly, coming out as gay has marketing cache.
Rick Welt, then an executive with the Phoenix Suns, a team in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the NBA, who came out in 2011 and is now the president of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, predicted major companies such as Nike would jump at the opportunity to have an openly gay spokesperson.
Just before the New York Times article in which he came out was published, he informed Commissioner Stern and executives at Nike Inc. Nike told him they would be interested in having any player contemplating becoming the first openly gay athlete in major U.S. team sports as an endorser.
"They made it clear to me Nike would embrace it," Welts has been quoted saying. "The player who does it, they’re going to be amazed at the additional opportunities that are put on the table, not the ones that are taken off."
According to Bob Witeck, a gay-marketing strategist and corporate consultant, the first openly gay team-sport athlete -- provided he’s a recognizable name -- would earn millions in endorsements and speaking engagements from companies seeking to capture more of a U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender adult population whose annual buying power he pegs at almost $800 billion.
American Airlines, Macy’s, Ikea, Amazon.com and, in Canada, TD Canada Trust and Labatt’s have all successfully used high-profile gay-themed advertising campaigns.
Collins could conceivably reap some tangible benefits from opening that closet door and if it can happen in the rarified macho atmosphere of professional sports, it is going to filter down to we mere mortals on levels other than the emotional release that coming out provides.