For the purposes of this discussion, I’m using “Big 4” in the American way: MLB Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, and NHL Hockey.
Anyway, I don’t why the question recently popped into my head, but it did, and I wanted to see what other people thought. So have at it.
For me, I think we’re right on the cusp of a professional baseball player coming out during his playing days. I think football and basketball are still too “macho” for a player to feel comfortable coming out and (I admit my bias here), I just don’t care about hockey enough to feel like it’ll lead the way. But as same-sex marriage becomes more accepted at the state level, I can see an athlete finally saying “fuck it” and marrying his boyfriend in a big lavish ceremony. Especially if he just signs a massive contract as one of the biggest players in the game.
I think baseball would be the least likely sport, actually. Baseball players are in general more conservative and less educated. At the risk of getting into a political debate, these qualities make baseball players less open to homosexuality than the players in other sports.
Maybe, but but it’s more in an individual team sport in the sense that even if your teammates dislike you, you can still play if you can hit and field. In football, and to a lesser extent in basketball, your peers can really freeze you out, or get you hurt if they don’t like you for some reason.
Football’s the same way, though for different reasons; football players are disproportionately Southern, and indoctrinated through a small number of university programs where, let’s be honest, the “education” received by many football players is a joke. Football is also overwhelmingly black, and I think it fair to say that acceptance of gays lags in the black community.
I would guess hockey will be first, simply because so many of its players are from more liberal upbringings than the southern upbringings of so many football and baseball players. All hockey players are from Canada, northern Europe, or the northern, more liberal states. As macho a game as it is, people do tend to separate job-macho from life-macho.
Hockey seems like the least likely sport to me, just due to the fights. I feel like any player coming out is going to be eating his own teeth every time he gets onto the ice. I’d like to be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.
Talking about hockey fights in the context of gay acceptance misses the mark on both ends. Fights in hockey aren’t (or aren’t just) about machismo spilling out, they’re usually tactical decisions. They are just as much as part of the team’s playbook as a line change and they are called on at certain times to achieve goals. Of course, there are also a lot of fights that start because one player tripped another or something, but there a fight is part of the players’ self-regulation system.
On the other end, hockey has some very powerful and prominent advocated for gay acceptance. If you look at the link that Muffin posted, you’ll see that hockey is probably the most likely of the sports to have an open, active gay player. Take this quotefrom The Advocate as an example:
Sean Avery is a notorious horndog (he actually got suspended by the NHL for referring to other hockey players picking up his “sloppy seconds”) and pest/tough guy. In other words, he is a walking (or, perhaps, skating) stereotype of the the least likely athlete to be a gay advocate/supporter, yet there he is offering to fly to any dinky rural high school that a kid would ask him to to just to help that kid come out to his teammates.
All in all, I think the signs point to hockey being the leader here.
I think the most likely scenario is a High School player coming out then winding up being better than anyone expected in college and ending up a professional athlete.
I think the first will have to be an athlete who’s already become one of the sport’s greats, and who could not be conveniently gotten rid of without it appearing to be blatant homophobia.
He also made a PSA for gay marriage legalization in New York. Of course, Sean’s been known to throw racial slurs at opposing players, so he’s probably not the best representative. But if even some asshole like Avery’s going to oppose homophobia, you can probably guess that it’s pretty unpopular in the hockey world.
Brent Sopel took the Cup to a Pride parade. Georges Laraque, who was known as a big brawler, is also a big supporter of gay rights.
It’s more the FANS that are the problem. You hear all the assholes with comments like “Cindy Crosby” (Even someone who commented over at The Advocate, praising Avery for his support, made a remark about “Cindy”)
So count me as another one who predicts it’ll be in the NHL. (And hell, if anything, the fight might break out to PROTECT a fellow player who happens to be gay, if someone tries to insult him!)
(Although I do think it’s funny to see Chris Pronger in a dress. Just because it’s funny to see a guy in drag. The “Chrissy” part, though – not cool.)
On the other hand, you can’t learn and execute an NFL system (offensive or defensive) if you’re a drooling moron. Wheras a drooling moron with incredible skills could still make an NBA team somewhere (depending on their commitment to defense), probably do fine in the NHL, and a certain kind of stupidity is often an asset in baseball. So, IMO, NFL players are on average more intelligent than other sports. Plus, anyone who plays pro football doesn’t really have anything to prove about their toughness.
So I don’t think football is at the bottom of the list for likelihood of having an openly gay player. Though after seeing the evidence in this thread for lack of homophobia in the NHL, it does seem that’s more likely.
