We should care about Carl Nassib because he might have saved a life

Carl Nassib

Carl Nassib is gay and many among the rabble say they don’t care.

We know this because they rushed to their keyboards on Monday and used various social media platforms to confirm they don’t care, which would indicate that they do, in fact, care.

I mean, if you truly don’t give a tinker’s damn that the National Football League has its first active openly gay player, you don’t become a keyboard warrior and insert your two cents worth of opinion into a discussion you claim to have no interest in.

Question is: Why should anyone care?

We are, after all, into the third decade of the 21^st century and you’d think by now a gay man coming out would be your basic dog-bites-man story. Which is to say, no story at all.

Except that isn’t the way it shakes down, even in the year 2021.

Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe

In female sports—professional/amateur, team/individual—gay athletes are as commonplace as fresh bread in a bake shop. They have won WNBA championships, they have won tennis Grand Slam tournaments, they have harvested Olympic medals of three different hues. They become power couples (see hoops legend Sue Bird and soccer star Megan Rapinoe). They get married (see U.S. national footy team members Ali Kreiger and Ashly Harris). They have kids (see hockey stars Meghan Duggan and Gillian Apps/Julie Chu and Caroline Ouellette).

A female athlete coming out is generally met with a shrug of the shoulders, in part due to the antiquated and misguided assumption that any girl/women who chooses to participate in “manly” sports like hoops and hockey must be lesbian.

Male jocks, on the other hand, operate in a different world. No, check that. They roam a different galaxy.

There have been 15 gay or bisexual players in the NFL, all coming out post-career until Nassib dropped his bombshell via Instagram. Glenn Burke was out to everyone in Major League Baseball in the 1970s, but it was hush-hush beyond the ballpark. The National Basketball Association has featured one active openly gay player, Jason Collins, while others came out post-career. Major League Soccer has had two out players, while the National Hockey League has never known an openly gay player, past or present.

That’s it. Approximately two dozen gays in North America’s top five men’s pro sports leagues. All-time.

But, again, why should anyone care?

Well, try this: It’s quite possible (probable?) that Carl Nassib saved a life when he came out on Monday.

There’s an LGBT(etc.) kid out there who was feeling abandoned and alone, a kid on the edge, a kid convinced he/she couldn’t take another dose of the bullying and mental torment that so many gay youth experience and endure. He/she wasn’t simply prepared to quit sports, suicide seemed like an option with merit.

Then along comes Nassib, a stud of a man—6-feet-7, 275 pounds—and a defensive lineman with the Las Vegas Raiders, after previous tours of duty with the Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Suddenly the light of hope radiates.

Too dramatic for you? Not really. I was that kid in the 1950s and ’60s.

That kid today has a name, we just don’t know it yet. But we might hear from him/her one day when he/she becomes a doctor, a lawyer, a political leader, a college prof or a sports writer and they point to Nassib’s bold decision as the reason they didn’t surrender to those who hate.

And, be sure, Nassib’s coming out wasn’t as simple a task as folding laundry. It never is.

The Raiders DE said he “agonized” over this decision for 15 years, and anyone in the LGBT(etc.) collective will nod knowingly, because it tends to be a lengthy struggle, one that can gnaw at you for years, like a dog on a chew toy. It plants the seeds of alienation, abandonment, rejection and self-loathing, all filed under ‘F’ for fear.

Thus, for Nassib to come out while active in the Goliath of macho men’s team sports, that’s ballsy.

Make no mistake, Nassib isn’t anyone’s idea of an NFL Pro Bowler. He’s listed third on the Raiders depth chart at right DE. But he can still serve as a Pied Piper to those who remain in the closet, even if he isn’t interested in becoming the feature attraction in a media circus.

Unlike Michael Sam after he’d been drafted by the St. Louis Rams, Nassib doesn’t seem inclined toward an appearance on Dancing with the Stars or being dogged by Oprah’s cameras.

“I’m a pretty private person so I hope you guys know that I’m really not doing this for attention,” he said. “I just think that representation and visibility are so important. I actually hope that one day, videos like this and the whole coming out process are not necessary, but until then I am gonna do my best and do my part to cultivate a culture that’s accepting that’s compassionate.”

Sometimes it only takes one, and hopefully Carl Nassib is the right one for men’s pro sports.

Meghan Duggan the latest ray of sunlight in the dawning of a new day for the NHL

The New Jersey Devils’ freshly minted manager of player development is gay.

Openly gay.

And married.

And the openly gay married couple have a son.

Gillian Apps, Meghan Dugann and baby George.

This appears to be the new National Hockey League, even if certain of the on-ice activity we’ve witnessed in the current Stanley Cup tournament remains rather primitive, whereby a set of hairy knuckles formed into a fist continues to be thought of, also used, as a tool with merit.

The aforementioned Devils failed to qualify as participants in the post-season runoff, a spring ritual that will drag us into summer this time around, but although looking in with their noses pressed against the window they have provided us with another clear signal that the NHL has advanced beyond the Stone Age and embraces its place in the 21st century, the sometimes barbaric activity on its frozen ponds notwithstanding.

The Devils did this with the appointment of Meghan Duggan as manager of player development on Wednesday.

Meghan Duggan and Gillian Apps.

Meghan certainly brings a glittering array of bona fides to her portfolio: Seven-time world champion, Olympic champion, captain of the U.S. women’s national team, winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the nation’s foremost female collegiate player, Canadian Women’s Hockey League champion, college coach, etc.

But it’s in the area of social progress that the New Jersey franchise struck the most-sonorous note.

Duggan, you see, is married to Gillian Apps, a one-time fierce foe with the Canadian national women’s hockey team, and baby made three in February 2020 when the two women welcomed their son, George Apps-Duggan, into the world.

If we know anything at all about the NHL, it’s that openly gay people are more rare than a full set of teeth.

Manon Rheaume

You can count the number of gay players on the fingers of…oh, wait…no gay NHL skater has ever come out, past or present. There have been more confirmed sightings of Sasquatch. Hell, a woman has participated in a game, and never mind that it was the carnival barker in Phil Esposito that arranged for Manon Rheaume to occupy the blue paint for Tampa Bay Lightning in a 1992 exhibition exercise.

She might have been Espo’s idea of Sideshow Bobbi, but the reality is more women have appeared in an NHL game than openly gay men.

Yet as much as the pungency of homophobia continues to linger at the upper crust of men’s hockey like the inside of bowling shoes, a fresh breeze of diversity is drifting through the front offices of numerous franchises.

Duggan joins an organization that already includes Kate Madigan as executive director of hockey management/operations, and the expansion Seattle Kraken recruited American legend Cammi Granato as a pro scout in September 2019. The Chicago Blackhawks brought Kendall Coyne Schofield on board as a player development coach last November, and the Toronto Maple Leafs bumped Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser up the food chain this week, promoting her to the position of senior director of player development. Her first order of business as boss lady was to bring former teammate Danielle Goyette into the fold. Like Granato, both Doc Wick and Goyette are ring-bearing members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Christine Simpson, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Leah Hextall.

Meanwhile, in the blurt box, female voices are being heard at an increasing volume. ESPN plans to put Leah Hextall behind a play-by-play mic on its NHL coverage next season, and she joins a widening chorus that includes Kate Scott, AJ Mleczko, Jennifer Botterill, Christine Simpson, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Cheryl Pounder.

But it’s perhaps the Duggan hiring that carries the greatest resonance, because her sexual orientation makes it barrier-breaking and serves as a point of progress for those of us in the LGBT(etc.) collective.

“It’s a huge part of my life and who I am, and it’s incredibly important to me to represent a variety of different communities,” Meghan told Matt Larkin of The Hockey News. “It’s certainly a responsibility, but it’s a privilege at the same time. In regards to being a woman, being a working mom, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, representation matters. For a lot of my life, I have been doing inclusion work, trying to make hockey more inclusive and diverse and to bring a variety of different personalities and backgrounds into the fold. For the Devils to welcome me into the fold, it shows that’s important to them as well. That speaks volumes to the culture aspect of the Devils and what they value.”

Yes, a new day has dawned in the NHL, even if some on the ice continue to bare their hairy knuckles and balk at joining the rest of us in the 21st century.