Ahman Green was about 10 feet away, kneeling as he changed out of his cleats. He had just made some former NFL players look silly as he juked his way toward the end zone in the NFLPA’s Premiere League flag football game last Friday at UCLA. His team lost that day, but he looked like he hadn’t lost a step since he led the NFL in rushing almost 10 years ago.
I went to the event on a mission: Talk to NFL players about gay athletes and homophobia. I’d been credentialed to attend the event by the players union. But the players didn’t know I was coming. They didn’t know a gay guy would be roaming the field looking to talk about gay issues.
As I watched Jesse Palmer, Eddie George and “The Freak” Jevon Kearse ready for their game, I was intimidated. My head spun reason after reason to not talk to them. This wasn’t the place. These questions were too out-of-left-field. And most loudly: These guys didn’t want to talk about this shit.
As Green finished lacing his street shoes and rose back to his feet, I was overwhelmed with my own words: I’ve said for years that reporters should ask these questions. There was no reason not to. What were they afraid of? In that moment I knew what they were afraid of. That’s exactly why I approached the four-time Pro Bowler.
“I’m from Outsports. We cover mostly gay issues in sports, and homophobia in sports,” I told Green. “Have you ever had a gay teammate?”
There. Phew. I threw it out there. Now I just had to watch for his hands swinging at my head. Surely he’d try to slug me. Maybe I was hinting that he was gay. Maybe I was coming onto him. Whatever was going through his head, I was ready to duck.
“In our sport, to be honest, I think it would be hard for any guy to come out while he’s playing,” Green said. “And that’s not a happy thing to say. The gay community is just like everybody else, but they’re treated differently. It’s a double standard. If a guy was gay, he wouldn’t come out while he was playing. He knows the possibility of the scrutiny he might face from the locker room, which would be unfair. I am very open-minded. It is what it is. People are born that way. You can’t control it. Just like you’re white, I’m black. But a lot of people don’t think my way. I wish they did, because then there wouldn’t be guys who wanted to stay hidden.”
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