A former NFL player has come out as being gay, joining a small but growing number of former athletes who are publicly acknowledging they are gays or lesbians.
Wade Davis, a cornerback who spent four preseasons with three NFL teams and also played in NFL Europe, said he didn’t tell his teammates he was gay because he feared the impact it would have in the locker room.
“You just want to be one of the guys, and you don’t want to lose that sense of family,” Davis said in an interview with Outsports.com. “Your biggest fear is that you’ll lose that camaraderie and family.”
Wade played in college at Weber State and spent the 2000 and 2002 preseasons with the Titans. Jevon Kearse and Samari Rolle were among his closest friends in Tennessee, and he would later be invited to Rolle’s wedding.
Kearse said he doesn’t think Davis being openly gay would have changed anything.
“I know there have been a lot more than just Wade,” Kearse told Outsports. “It’s just becoming more acceptable, which is a good thing so they can come out and not feel secluded.”
While there has yet to be an openly gay player in any of the four major American professional leagues, several players have come out after retiring, including former NBA forward John Amaechi, NFL lineman Esera Tuaolo and major leaguer Billy Bean. Rick Welts, president and chief operating officer of the Golden State Warriors, is openly gay.
Davis’ football career ended in 2003, after he got hurt in training camp. He is now a staff member at the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York, which serves, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.
In interviews with OutSports and SBNation, Davis, 34, talked about the challenges of being closeted in an NFL locker room.
“I think subconsciously, I understood that being gayâ┚¬â€Âthe way I was raisedâ┚¬â€Âwas wrong, and there was no way that my family, at least in my mind, would accept me,” Davis told SBNation’s Amy Nelson. “And also that my football family would (not) accept me just because of the perception of being gay meant that you’re less masculine.”
That meant holding himself back personally even as he grew close to heterosexual teammates like the Titans’ Jevon Kearse and Samari Rolle.
Davis, who also now does campaign work for President Barack Obama, never felt comfortable treading on what’s essentially been taboo ground in professional team sports, at least for active players. He was even advised to avoid another unidentified player on the Titans who was labeled as “different” with the thought that such an association would jeopardize Davis’ ability to make the team.
“There was a part of me that was a little relieved because, when I knew football was over, my life would begin,” Davis said to OutSports. “I had this football life, but I didn’t have another life away from that. Most of the guys had a family and a wife, but I had football and nothing else.”
He says he first realized he was gay in 11th grade.
“I can remember being in gym class and having the desire to look at a boy in a way that I should look at girls,” he told SBNation.
If that sounds like a red flag to players who might be skittish with him in their inner circle, Davis says it absolutely shouldn’t be the case.
“At never a point (during) my NFL playing career did I take advantage of the privilege that I had to see a man naked. I never even remotely got aroused in the locker room. It’s a place where those guys are your family, and the last thing that you want to do is make anyone in your family feel uncomfortable. It’s not even a thought,” he said. “I think the players have to understand that there’s nothing that’s gonna happen.”
What hasn’t happened so far is a pro player in a major North American pro league to reveal he’s gay during his career. And even Davis admits that might fall to a star player rather than a fringe one like he was even though he hopes someone steps out in the near future.
“I’m gonna be flat-out honest with you, it probably shouldn’t (be a reserve player) if he wants to keep his job,” he said. “If he’s the 53rd man on the roster, if he’s a free agent who’s fighting for a job, maybe he shouldn’t. I would hope that he would.”
Is such a courageous step in the offing?
“I can’t say it’s in the next five or 10 years, but I definitely think it’s on the horizon,” says Davis, who came out himself only recently. “I started to realize that, ‘You know what? There’s an opportunity here for me to really make and affect changeâ┚¬â€Ânot only with myself but with the world.'”
