NFL Player Comes Out to Help Gay Athletes
Follow
By DERON SNYDER
Add Wade Davis to the list. He’s the latest man to reveal his homosexualityafter playing major team sports.
Unlike John Amaechi, who in 2007 became the first former NBA player to come out, Davis isn’t a pioneer. In 2002 Esera Tuaolo announced on HBO’s Real Sports that he’s gay, making him the third former NFL player to come out after David Kopay (1975) and Roy Simmons (1992).
Former Major League Baseball player Glen Burke shared his secret with coaches and teammates but didn’t come out fully until 1982 — three years after his retirement. The same amount of time passed between former MLB player Billy Bean’s retirement and revelation.
Davis has been out of the league since 2003 and didn’t accomplish much the four seasons he was there. A cornerback, he attended training camps and played preseason games with the Tennessee Titans, Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins, but he never made a regular-season roster. He did, however, enjoy stints in NFL Europe with Berlin Thunder and the Barcelona Dragons.
So he’s as anonymous as an ex-NFL player can be. Yet a star player’s admission wouldn’t resonate much louder. Davis was in the fraternity and in the closet; he surely wasn’t alone and certainly stands as an example to those in that position today. He knows why they choose to remain silent, as he did.
