When College Football Coaches Advance Gay Rights

Generally when a college football coach makes headlines in LGBT circles, it's because they said something stupid from the sidelines or at a press conference. Hawaii Warriors coach Greg McMackin hurled a gay slur at the entire campus of Notre Dame last year, for example, and he was soon joined by Stanford's head football coach, Jim Harbaugh, who was accused of dropping a homophobic f-bomb during a game with ... Notre Dame.

(Common denominator, anyone?)

Thankfully, Notre Dame was nowhere around Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel last week. Tressel gave what many are thinking might be the first ever college football coach interview with an exclusively gay publication -- Outlook Columbus. That interview, republished by Outsports.com, shows Tressel placing real value on creating a sports culture free from homophobia.

"The greatest achievement we can have as coaches is that a young man leaves us with a concept of who he is, what he wants from life, and what he can share with others -– someone who is ‘comfortable in his own skin,’ and that identity can go in a number of directions," Tressel said.

So what if a player on the Ohio State University football team came out of the closet -- would Tressel and his teammates welcome him?

“We strive to teach and model appreciation for everyone,” Tressel says. “One, we are a family. If you haven’t learned from your family at home that people have differences and those strengthen the whole, then you are hopefully going to learn it as part of the Ohio State football family.”

The whole interview is worth checking out. Ohio State is college football royalty in this country, and the importance of their coach giving an interview to an exclusively LGBT publication certainly deserves props.

Homophobia in sports certainly has a long way to go still. Heck, even in the sport of figure skating, where openly queer athletes have been a dime a dozen, industry honchos are hoping to bolster the manliness of the sport by appealing to straight men.

Now turn to college football, where the testosterone level is turned up by ten. Could an openly gay athlete in the sport be celebrated?

It might be the burden of all burdens to carry. But one thing is certain: it'll take a climate like the one Coach Tressel is setting at OSU in order for openly gay athletes to feel comfortable being themselves around their teammates. But Coach Tressel is right, and he's taking a page from Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and quite possibly the most important military official supportive of repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

We're all better off when our teammates -- or our coworkers, our fellow troops, our classmates -- feel like they can be honest about who they are and not have to worry about suffering violence, persecution, teasing, or shunning because of their sexual orientation. It's a question of integrity. Sports may be about competition to a large degree, but that can't be separate from integrity. The military might be about defending national security first, but that's not removed from the principle of integrity either.

It gets to a point made the other day in a post right here -- how gay rights benefit straight people. "Acceptance of queer people promotes honesty." That should be something we strive for across the board, including on the college football field.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons