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NFL's first openly gay player shares hilarious moment he realized it was 'safe' to come out

Nassib himself made a gay joke, and the reaction from other players told him everything.

Erik Drost - CC BY 2.0 & Canva Photos

It took years and a lot of courage for Carl Nassib to come out. Now he's sharing the surprisingly funny story.

When Carl Nassib told the world he was gay, it was a huge moment for the NFL, sports, and the queer community. At the time, Nassib was a key defensive player for the Las Vegas Raiders, and his announcement made him the first openly gay active NFL player.

Before him, a few other players had come out after retiring. And there had also been the news and hype around Michael Sam a few years earlier, who was also openly gay. But unlike Nassib, Sam never saw NFL action in a regular-season game and was released before he could make a name for himself in the league. However, there was plenty of debate and rumors that Sam's open sexuality had contributed to his falling in the 2014 draft and ultimately washing out of the league. Though Sam was a good first step forward for the sports world, his experience didn't exactly leave the door wide open for the next person.

Nassib didn't let that stop him. He made his announcement in June of 2021, during the offseason, and on the opening Monday Night Football game of the next season, he made the key defensive play in front of an audience of millions to essentially win the game for his team.


@abcnews

#CarlNassib makes history by coming out as first openly gay active NFL player: “I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now.” #news #sports

Nassib was recently interviewed on The Pivot podcast and gave new insight into his decision to come out. One funny story, in particular, stuck out in his memory.

Former players Ryan Clark and Channing Crowder, hosts of the podcast, asked Nassib if he had any stories about his time in the league worth sharing. "I don't want a bad story because everybody thinks football players are these big meatheads who don't understand anything," Crowder said. "I got funny stories," Nassib replied.

Nassib said that during a game against Cleveland in 2020, he was annoyed that the Browns kept running a play called a "bootleg" away from him, which meant he had to expend a lot of energy sprinting full speed across the field to catch up. "I was so mad," he says.

"Stop with these gay ass bootlegs!" he yelled at the opposing team, admitting later in the interview that his own use of the word was pretty ignorant at the time. And that's when the entire opposing offensive line turned around and told him "You can't say that!"

"Oh man, the league is ready for this," Nassib recalls thinking. "They are ready for me. We got some allies here. ...I was like, 'This is so funny. The guy about to come out, saying the word gay, getting shut down by five massive dudes."

Watch the whole podcast exchange here:


Of course, there was more to it than that one funny moment. Later in the interview, Nassib went on to explain that the death of his uncle, who was also gay, had a huge impact on his decision.

Nassib grew up in a huge family, and his uncle was the only one of the whole bunch of 44 cousins who was open about being gay. On his Uncle Bill's deathbed in 2019, Nassib came out to him privately, and his uncle was so relieved not to be the only one. It inspired Nassib that he could do that for even more people around the world.

"When I came out to him, he was like, 'This is the biggest weight off my chest. I'm not the only one." Nassib remembers thinking, "Man, there's probably so many people out there that are going to feel that same way." Nassib had been wanting to come out publicly for years, but that moment with his uncle was one of the main catalysts that gave him the courage to finally go through with it.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Though Nassib is now retired from pro football, he leaves behind a powerful legacy. There have been no new players to follow in his footsteps per se, but young people all over the world have been quietly following his example ever since.

Nassib and his family still regularly hear from teenagers and their parents that his video gave them the courage to come out, or to participate in sports despite their fears of rejection. He continues to work closely with the Trevor Project and other organizations that aim to make the world safer for LGBTQ youth. And to think, it all may not have happened if those beefy Browns players hadn't called him out on the field!

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Health

Former college football player retires early to take charge of his mental health

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Ohio State football spring game, April 4, 2015.

Mental health has been in the news a lot lately, especially as it pertains to high-performing athletes. We’ve seen several athletic stars share their struggles with anxiety and depression and their need to take breaks for their mental health. Ohio State offensive lineman Harry Miller has taken this one step further and announced he’s retiring from football altogether after revealing his mental health struggles.

Miller is a junior studying engineering at Ohio State. He reported to his coach last year that he had been having suicidal thoughts. Throughout his struggles with mental health, he felt supported by his teammates and coach, who got him set up with counseling at the university. He wrote about his experiences on March 10, when he announced he would be medically retiring from football. The lineman said that he “would not normally share such information." And continued, "However, because I have played football, I am no longer afforded the privilege of privacy.”

Miller wrote in his letter announcing his retirement that he returned to football weeks after informing his coach of his mental health struggles. But he returned with scars on his wrists and neck. Miller said, “Maybe the scars were hard to see with my wrists taped up,” and went on to say that “there was a dead man on the television set, but nobody knew it.”

The athlete reported while being interviewed on the Today Show that he has struggled with anxiety and depression from an early age, but that the pressure of playing college football for Ohio State exacerbated his anxiety and stress. Miller described some of the messages he would receive after a hard game, including some saying “transfer, you suck.” He said, “Some people get death threats that I know on the team, and I’m trying to text my mom, that’s the first thing I see, and then you can’t worry about it too much because you have an exam the next day. And then you have that for weeks and then months and by the end of the semester and you’re like ‘What is happening right now?’”

Harry Miller is choosing his mental health.


The pressure placed on elite athletes starts well before college. There have been reports of high school kids struggling with the pressure placed on them to perform at an exceptional level. Adults hurling insults at teens and young adults who are only trying to do a sport they love, while trying to balance academics, family and friends, doesn't help. These are things that need to be looked at more closely. As a society, the weight we place on athletes to just suck up whatever is thrown at them and perform at a level that most of the country could not perform at is breaking their spirits and causing irreparable harm to them as human beings.

What weight are we asking elite athletes to carry?

Harry Miller made a decision to choose himself, his life and his mental health over continuing to play a sport at a level that demands nothing short of perfection. Here’s to hoping other athletes follow his lead, and choose their mental health, and society takes note of how we treat them to evoke societal change.

If you are having thoughts about taking your own life, or know of anyone who is in need of help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (273-8255) or text "HOME" to the Crisis Text Line: 741741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

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Identity

Seahawks QB Russell Wilson made a simple but powerful gender equality statement after a big win

ESPNW/Twitter, Seattle Storm/Twitter,  gertshair/Twitter

This article originally appeared on 10.13.20


It's not every day that you see an NFL player sporting a jersey of a professional female athlete. In fact, if most of us wrack our brains, we probably can't think of any day that we've seen that.

So when Russell Wilson, longtime quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks (recently traded to the Denver Broncos), walked out of the locker room after last night's last-minute win against the Minnesota Vikings, people took notice of his shirt—a yellow and green jersey with the name and number of Sue Bird, the Seattle Storm WNBA superstar player. The Storm just took home their fourth WNBA National Championship title.

But that wasn't all he did.

In the post-game press conference, a reporter asked him how he felt on the last drive in which he led the team on a 94-yard drive in the final two minutes of the game, ultimately completing a pass to the end zone on 4th and 10 to win the game. "What's going through your head?" the reporter asked.

Wilson smiled, chuckled, and said, "I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch, you know?"

It was a simple sentence, but a meaningful one.

Paola Boivin, who was a sports writer for the Arizona Republic for 20 years and the first female journalist ever inducted into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame, shared what the moment meant to her on Twitter.

"Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson just said, 'I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch.' In my era following sports growing up, I never remember a male athlete saying something like this. It seems simplistic, but this is powerful."

In many fields, including professional sports, girls and women had to have male role models prior to doors being opened for women to excel on the public stage. Then, once women went through those doors and made a name for themselves, women had female role models to look up to. But it's been rare to see it go the other way—to see boys or men express personal admiration for a female excelling in her field. And especially in a professional sport like football, which is pretty much entirely male, to have a star like Russell Wilson point to a female athlete as an example of the excellence he aspired to is, indeed, noteworthy at this stage of the game.

Someday, it won't be. Excellence knows no gender, and it's only outdated thinking and outdated ideas of manhood and masculinity that keep people locked in boxes of who our role models can be and how our fandom can be expressed. Russell Wilson is clearly a fan of Sue Bird, as is any Seattle resident who pays any attention to sports whatsoever. But he also clearly sees her as an athletic role model, and it's just awesome to see him express that so openly.

Wilson's sister plays basketball at Stanford, and he has been an outspoken supporter of women's sports in general. Here's a video of him from February sharing his and his wife Ciara's support on National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Love to see it. The more we all support one another, the better the chances that all of us will excel. Thanks for setting the example, Russell Wilson.

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Identity

The next time someone says trans people shouldn't get to play sports, send them this.

No, trans women do not have an advantage in sports.

www.amelia.run

Amelia Gapin

This article originally appeared on 04.16.18


For about a week before the 2018 Boston Marathon, news outlets around the country were busy freaking out about the idea of transgender athletes competing.

Specifically, the worry seemed to be that trans women (people who transitioned from male to female) would have an unfair advantage over cisgender (non-trans) women. Right-wing commentator and anti-trans ideologue Ben Shapiro painted the decision as a type of slippery slope that will eventually lead to the abolition of gender categories as a whole, saying, "Biological women will never win a marathon — ever — in history because men are faster than women on average."

Do Shapiro and others skeptical about the idea of trans women competing with other women in sporting events have a point? Not really.


I finally found a few minutes to write a bit, in my own words, about all this media coverage around trans women running #BostonMarathon. http://www.amelia.run/posts/2018-04-10-boston-marathon-media/ … #runchatpic.twitter.com/wNoc5A0a9p

If trans women have such an advantage, why haven't there been any truly dominant trans athletes? Because they don't.

A few years back, I wrote a fairly detailed breakdown of trans athletes' fight to be able to compete in the sports they love for Vice Sports. The article, "Heroes, Martyrs, and Myths: The Battle for the Rights of Transgender Athletes," centered around Minnesota's struggle to determine how to handle trans athletes. But the research remains relevant whenever these sorts of controversies arise — which, sadly, is pretty often.

The argument goes like this: Because cisgender (or those who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth) boys and men are typically stronger and faster than cisgender girls and women, transgender girls and women should have to compete against cisgender boys and men.

But this argument leaves out the important fact that trans girls and women are not the same as cis boys and men, especially trans girls and women who've undergone hormone replacement therapy.

In 1976, a trans tennis player by the name of Reneé Richards wanted to compete in the women's division at the U.S. Open. At the time, a number of people argued that she had an unfair advantage and would dominate the women's circuit.

A quick look at the stats shows that's not the case. Prior to her transition, Richards competed in the men's division, where she was fairly mediocre (two wins, five losses). Post-transition, competing against women, she was ... also fairly mediocre (66 wins, 110 losses).

Since then, a handful of openly trans athletes have surfaced, almost all with the same "unfair advantage" bogeyman attached to them. Trans mixed martial arts fighter Fallon Fox was never as dominant as people warned (to date, she has a career record of four wins and one loss), never making it to the UFC. In fact, in Fox's only fight against a fighter who would eventually compete in the UFC, she was knocked out in the third round.

There are no trans LeBron Jameses dominating the WNBA or trans Cristiano Ronaldos racking up Women's World Cup victories. There's a good reason for that: Despite concerns, trans women really don't have an athletic advantage.

Hormones play a big role in determining what sort of advantage an athlete has — or doesn't have.

"Research suggests that androgen deprivation and cross sex hormone treatment in male-to-female transsexuals reduces muscle mass," said Dr. Eric Vilain, professor and director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology and Chief Medical Genetics Department of Pediatrics at UCLA in a 2010 report. "Accordingly, one year of hormone therapy is an appropriate transitional time before a male-to-female student-athlete competes on a women's team."

In other words, after about a year on hormones, pretty much any advantage a trans woman might have had will be wiped out.

This is why an increasing number of entities are establishing reasonable rules when it comes to determining a trans athlete's eligibility. The NCAA and International Olympic Committee both require that trans women undergo hormone replacement therapy before competing in women's divisions.

Anti-trans policies aimed at trans women often wind up creating situations where actual advantages exist — for trans men.

In both 2017 and 2018, high school wrestler Mack Beggs took home the state championship in the girls division. Many say Beggs had an unfair advantage, and they're absolutely right: Beggs is a trans boy who takes testosterone to treat his gender dysphoria. He wanted to compete against other boys, but a Texas state rule says that athletes must compete against the gender listed on their birth certificate.

Beggs was left with an impossible decision: compete against girls, end medical treatment, or quit the sport he loves. He chose to compete. After all, it's not his fault that ridiculous rules forced him into a division where he doesn't belong, and he really shouldn't have to stop his medical treatment or quit a sport just because of it. Trans athlete Chris Mosier came to Beggs' defense on Twitter.

Mack Beggs is a just kid who wants to compete in the sport he loves. Texas gave him 2 options: wrestle with girls or quit. He wrestles.

Originally, The Federalist, a hard-right anti-trans blog argued that Beggs should compete against other boys — because they thought he was a trans girl (emphasis mine):

"There's also a distinct athletic advantage for men who transition to women and play on high school and collegiate teams. It's so clear one would have to be blind not to see how fraudulent this is, given men's innately greater physical strength compared to women. Transgender male-to-female boy Mack Beggs made waves earlier this year because he won two girls' wrestling championships in Texas. It's easy to see why, as a person born male, complete with the testosterone and build of a biological boy, he might have an advantage over female competitors in wrestling."

Once they realized they'd accidentally made the point advocates for trans rights had been making, the site quickly tried to revamp its argument, saying it wasn't about "innate" characteristics at all, but the advantage or lack thereof that hormone replacement therapy offers:

"There's also a distinct athletic advantage for men who transition to women and play on high school and collegiate teams. It's so clear one would have to be blind not to see how fraudulent this is, given men's innately greater physical strength compared to women. Female-to-male transgender Mack Beggs made waves earlier this year because she won two girls' wrestling championships in Texas while taking testosterone. It's easy to see why testosterone injections might give someone an advantage over female competitors in wrestling."

(Again, emphasis mine up there. Also, a note that the Federalist's style guide appears to call for the intentional misgendering of trans people, which is why Beggs is referred to as "she" here.)

In other words, many of those who make these types of arguments against trans people competing in sports clearly aren't doing so in good faith.

As for the Boston Marathon, those worried about trans women dominating the women's division will be relieved to know that no, a trans woman did not win.

Yet another false alarm in the never-ending quest to "chicken little" the oncoming trans-athlete-apocalypse. In all seriousness, though, huge congrats to Desi Linden, who, while not trans, is an amazing athlete and the winner of the 2018 Boston Marathon.


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