NBA Center Jason Collins has publicly announced that he is gay. What could his coming out mean for the sport and for others to follow his lead?
Yesterday’s surprise announcement in a Sports Illustrated article took the sports world by storm. Originally, it was planned that an NFL player was preparing to be the first male in professional team sports to come out. But Jason Collins trumped everyone with his announcement:
I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.
I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.
Those are Jason’s own words where he made the official brave step of being a trailblazer.
As a lover of sports, particularly the NBA, I spent most of yesterday following ESPN on television and a variety of sports blogs online. Surprisingly, there was much more acceptance and support of Jason and his decision than I expected. However, there was the occasional homophobe who just couldn’t contain their ignorance.
“[Let’s say] that this guy is attracted to the other guys on the team and let’s say Jason Collins makes advances on one of the smaller players in the shower. What then?” was the question pondered by one blog commenter I encountered. The comparison that Collins being gay must mean he’s attracted to every man out there — without discretion — and that he must also be some sort of predatory rapist who’s been lurking to “attack” a smaller, more helpless man in the showers, is just amazing!
Jason’s coming out and the huge attention it received was a slim reminder of how far we’ve come. Ignorant statements, such as the one the blog commenter made shows just how much farther we have to go. Still, Jason made a huge step in the right direction and paved the way for other pro athletes to follow.
It may take a big name like (for example) Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder or Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat, to make that leap and announce they’re gay for it to truly be groundbreaking. But the brave move by Jason Collins has now made that a bit more possible and the road a bit easier to travel.
I was looking forward to checking out the site today because I knew you were going to cover this. I'm into sports a lot too and all yesterday this is all everybody talked about at work. I can't believe how ignorant some people can be in the year 2013, but I heard some of the same comments you did DJ. Whoever this man sleeps with is none of my business. I don't care who's gay or straight, and I don't thin a lot of players care either. There's some more who wre gay besides Jason Collins. But if any player has a problem with it, that's his problem to get over. It's time we grow up as a country and stop acting like little seventh grade girls about who is or isn't gay.