Collins’ coming out shows change in time

FOr 'cac and country: NAS misconstrues Bowdoin’s athletic divide

The NAS report has garnered incredible notoriety beyond our campus. Real Clear Politics compared “What Does Bowdoin Teach?” to William Buckley Jr.’s seminal “God and Man at Yale,” and Rush Limbaugh knocked Bowdoin for our lack of American history courses. Before any public figure comments on the NAS’s arguments about our sports culture, it is only right to clear up a few of its ideas.
Peter Wood and Michael Toscano, authors of the report, analyzed Bowdoin athletics based largely on the paradigm provided in William Bowen and James Shulman’s 2001 publication titled “The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values.” According to the report, it provides “a scrupulous examination” particularly on “selective institutions without big-time programs.”
When it comes to athletes, schools like Bowdoin stray from their mission statements, the authors of the report argue. The report contends that athletes create a divide in and out of the classroom that prevents the College from fulfilling the common good.

FOr 'cac and country: Summer storylines: player movement, parity

Spring final exams are inconvenient. It always coincides with the NBA and NHL playoffs, and frankly, I can’t forgo the post-season for the library.
At the end of the blue books await the Finals and Stanley Cup. Top baseball teams separate themselves from the pack while the NFL’s training camp offers pundits a valuable, and sometimes fateful, preview of the year. If you were somehow unable to keep track of sports this summer, the following recaps—void of SportsCenter’s recurring tabloids—bring you up to speed in 140 words or less.
NBA
The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 4-3 in the NBA Finals in June to earn their second straight championship. LeBron James won the Finals MVP, also for the second year in a row. Comparisons between James and Michael Jordan ensued—most of which unfairly derided James—a topic I will address in a later column.

FOr 'cac and country

Collins’ coming out shows change in time

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

May 3, 2013

Before this week, most people probably hadn’t heard of Jason Collins. The 7’0,” 260-pound NBA center spent his 12-year career in obscurity, playing for six different teams and never averaging more than six points per game.

But on Monday, Jason Collins became a household name. He came out as homosexual in a column in Sports Illustrated, becoming the first athlete in a major professional American sport to come out before retiring.

His story was featured as the halftime special on virtually every game this week. Even President Obama fielded questions about his coming out.

Most importantly, both for Collins as a free agent and for the LGBTQ community, his stock as a player has not dropped since his announcement.

One Western Conference executive told Sports Illustrated that Collins had “1-in-5” odds of being signed this offseason, mainly due to his age.

Another executive told Sports Illustrated, “He was on the pile of old big guys you grab when you need a body. Frankly, now he’s more interesting. I think this could help his career.”

Front office executives are not fazed by the prospect of signing an openly gay player. In fact, they should revel in the opportunity to be the first to do so. As long as he contributes to a winning season, NBA general managers won’t care about his sexual orientation.

But will the players?

Over Twitter, NBA veterans Kobe Bryant, Baron Davis and Steve Nash praised Collins for being true to himself, calling his coming out inspirational.

Rookies Garrett Temple and Bradley Beal also encouraged their former teammate in 140 characters or less. They ended their messages with hashtags that read #real and #liveyourlife, respectively.

Still, Collins has yet to step into a locker room as an openly gay athlete. Unfortunately for him, the five supportive players mentioned are not all on one NBA team. Plus, there are already naysayers who have challenged Collins and his announcement.

Well-respected ESPN Insider Chris Broussard said that Collins’ “openly homosexual lifestyle” is “walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”

Commentators pointed out that Tim Tebow is just as deserving of praise for his devotion to Christianity as Collins is to his own way of life. Tebow too has been ostracized. (The only job offer Tebow has right now is from the Omaha Beef, of the indoor football league. We’ll talk more NFL in a moment).

It’s only a matter of time before Tim Hardaway, former Heat great, releases another bigoted statement like the one he delivered after retired NBA player John Amaechi became the first openly gay former player in 2007.

There will always be critics. It’s part of life.

But the cynics surrounding Collins serve as a reminder that American sports have a long way to go in terms of shedding its stigma of homophobia.

For example, the Baltimore Ravens cut linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo last season, which he suspected was due to his vocal support of same-sex marriage. Entering his ninth year punting for the Minnesoate Vikings, Chris Kluwe publicly shared last week that he could fall victim to the same result as Ayanbadejo.

Kluwe went a step further than Ayanbadejo by criticizing coaches and the media.
“It really is the attention issue,” said Kluwe. “It’s the fact that they would be the first person coming out and there would be so much media and fan attention on that player that it could risk them losing their job.”

“You look at the sample size of gays in the United States, they’re around 10 percent. With 1,800 players in the NFL, that’s about 180 guys you’re talking about,” he said.

Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer responded by saying, “I don’t even want to talk about it. Those distractions are getting old for me...”

Unfortunately for Priefer, this phenomenon is called freedom of the press. And the media has proven that it will dig, dig and dig some more until it finds news. That’s the nature of the beast. So if the media is going to create a distraction by talking about Tebow, Manti Te’o or whatever sensationalist report reaches newsstands next year, it might as well create a productive distraction and advance equality for the LGBTQ community.

Plus, isn’t it up to the marketing people in the front offices of professional sports teams to turn publicity into an opportunity?

Major American sports teams can even learn from Bowdoin. They don’t have our small community of open-minded youngsters who so willingly walk past pro-LGBTQ drawings in chalk as if they are part of the cement. But, they can learn from our willingness to talk. The more notions of LGBTQ equality are discussed, the less of a big deal it becomes. Hopefully, we will soon reach a point where commentators do not feel obliged to tell TV audiences about Jason Collins’ bravery or Coach Priefer’s hostile reaction. Instead, I’ll get to hear only statistics pertaining to the actual sport.

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