Gay redskins

Friend: Gay Redskins TE Jerry Smith coped with 'horrendous existence'

Tight end played for 13 seasons and retired with record number of TD catches %2860%29 at his position
Smith was generally loved by teammates but didn%27t talk about his private life

If you grew up near the Washington Beltway, you're likely familiar with former Redskin Jerry Smith. Your age probably determines whether your first memory of Smith is that of a record-setting tight end or a man who died of AIDS at age 43 in 1986.

But if you've never heard of Smith at all, NFL Films is featuring his story for its Emmy-nominated series, A Football Life, and the documentary premiered Tuesday night on NFL Network and will continue to re-air.

Smith, a two-time Pro Bowler who played from 1965 to 1977, retired with the most touchdown catches in league history for a tight terminate (60). He was competent to achieve notoriety on the field despite the challenges he encountered off it.

Jerry Smith was gay.

"He was living in authentic fear," says Smith's acquaintance, David Mixner, who is also homosexual, "and really alone and terrified that he was gonna misplace everything."

Mixner adds: "It's concrete important not to glance back on this with

If you're a Washington Redskins player and you're homosexual, that wouldn't be a problem, at least according to Washington Redskins defensive end Adam Carriker.

Speaking on his radio show, "4th & Pain," last week, Carriker said that the Redskins' locker room would be accepting if one its players came out as openly gay, according to CBS DC.

"If it were a Washington Redskins player, I don’t believe it would be a big deal," said Carriker, adding, "We have a lot of veteran superb guys, good veteran management on this team."

The Nebraska native's comments came less than a week after a CBS report from Mike Freeman claiming that a gay NFL player is thinking of coming out in the next few months.

Carriker prefaced his response by saying that it is inevitable that somebody in the NFL is gay. "There's...almost 2,000 NFL football players? Maybe just under. Odds are somebody out there in the big wide planet of the NFL is gay," argued Carriker.

However, Carriker noted that some NFL locker rooms may not be as accepting as the Redskins' would be.

"If somebody comes out, I think it’s going to depend on the locker room," Carriker suggested. "There are certain locker rooms that have veteran

By Joanna O’Leary

When Galveston native Michael Sam bravely self-identified as a gay male on the eve of being drafted by the St. Louis Rams, he facilitated the begin of an crucial conversation regarding the acceptance of LGBT athletes in the National Football League. By being the first active player to publicly arrive out as same-sex attracted, Sam set an important precedent for why and how professional sports teams should actively back gay athletes, as well as hopefully encourage other football players who are considering coming out of the closet and into the locker room.

As Houston prepares to host Super Bowl LI, we may glance to Sam as proof that progress has been made in transforming the stereotypically hyper-masculine, and sometimes homophobic tradition of professional football into something more inclusive and reflective of its fan base (many of whom wave the rainbow flag as well as The Terrible Towel). And while Sam no doubt deserves much credit for instigating such positive adjust, it would be remiss to drop to acknowledge other important agents in the evolution of the NFL’s affair to the homosexual community. In many ways, these figures paved the way for this essential moment in sp

Dave Kopay was the first professional team sport competitor to declare his homosexuality. Since that moment in 1975, three years after his retirement from a nine-year career as an NFL running back, scant have followed in his wake.

Kopay played for five teams during his career -- San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay. He later tried to get into coaching, but the NFL and colleges expressed no interest after his homosexuality was made universal.

Kopay now runs his family's linoleum business in Southern California. As part of the Outside the Lines series on gays and homophobia in sports, Kopay chatted about his encounter and those of other gay athletes.

Below is an edited transcript of that chat:

Chris: It has been no secret that a lot of athletes have a history of existence womanizers. Did you see a lot of that happening and did fellow football players wonder why you weren't interested in partaking in their fun?

Dave Kopay:

As for being a womanizer, at a young age you're full of excitement and energy. And I did meet women at the time. A lot of guys were married and they'd go home to their wives. So the fact that I didn't dine a whole lot of women wasn't

Growing up as a youngster of the 1980s, watching the Redskins lay the foundation of a dynasty, the sexual orientation of various football players was one of the furthest things from my consciousness - except perhaps on the rare occasions that they started romances with bombshell actresses whose appearance stirred something in me that I hardly understood, yet enjoyed.

But it was also the era of AIDS, and the outsized effect that horrible disease was having on the gay community. So while, generally speaking, discussions of homosexuality weren’t had among “polite company” - at least in the (admittedly small) circles I traveled in at that point - the sensational arrival of AIDS did have the impact of forcing society to acknowledge gay people existed, and that they were all around us.

I don’t recall exactly what precipitated the conversation - at the time my father certainly wasn't a leading luminary of gay advocacy (he was, and remains more of a “live and let live” type) - but in 1983 or 1984, in talking about the Redskins of yore, among stories of George Allen and Charlie Taylor, my dad mentioned a legendary tight end for the Redskins, who probably didn’t get the recognition he deserved because