Daniel Johnson
   Sports Editor

On February 23, 2014, openly gay basketball player Jason Collins of the Brooklyn Nets played eleven minutes in a win against the Los Angeles Lakers, becoming the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major North American sport leagues (NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL). A year later, Missouri linebacker Michael Sam became the first openly gay NFL player to be drafted. Though these event may seem like landmarks in integrating gay athletes in male professional sports, both stories still showed examples of how far gay male athletes have to travel in their fields.

Collins at this point in his career was a respected NBA journeyman veteran around the league. He announced his sexuality in late April of 2013. It was not until February of the next NBA season did he get picked up by the Nets, coached by Collins’ former teammate for seven seasons and friend Jason Kidd, who lobbied to have him on the team. After his twenty-two game stint with the Nets, Collins retired. It could be argued that because he was an older veteran big man, his skills were not up to par for the league. That being said, Michael Sam’s career in the NFL is further evidence of the harsh reality of being an openly gay athlete.

In his final season at the University of Missouri, Sam was named a Co-Defensive Player of the Year in the Southeast Conference (SEC) along with Alabama linebacker CJ Mosley. Sam was drafted in the final round by the St. Louis Rams. Every other SEC player to have won this award (14 players) were drafted no later than the fifth round, with eleven being drafted in the first round. And despite impressive numbers in the pre-season, Sam was cut before the season began. Today, he plays in the Canadian Football League, hoping to get another shot at the NFL.

Now there are openly homosexual athletes that played or are playing today. However, they tend to be exclusively female. Brittney Griner and Sheryl Swoopes of the WNBA. Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe are some of the faces of US Women Soccer and are openly gay. And of course, tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova both came out the closet in the early 1980s. Every gay male athletes, such as Jerry Smith, David Kopay, and Glenn Burke, didn’t come out the closet until after they were retired.

Now anytime we talk about the second professional gay athlete in one of the four major North American sport leagues, we have to go back to Jackie Robinson and breaking the color barrier in baseball. Not just because it is the most well known example of breaking the glass ceiling in sports, but also he gave a model of what the athlete has to be. The athlete needs to be both, one of the top players in the world and be able to handle criticism or open opposition over your presence. Without both, the athlete will not be given the chance to fail or succeed. If Robinson had taken a leave of absence from the Dodgers like how Sam did with the Montreal Alouettes, he would not been able to come back.

All this leads to the simple question, will there be a gay male athlete in any of the four professional sports? Though it would be impossible to know, I would bet on no for at least the next couple of years. The Michael Sam episode probably has scared any collegiate athlete with real aspirations for going pro from coming out the closet. This made even worse with the report that the NFL front office made a deal with the Rams to draft Sam so they wouldn’t have to be on the HBO series “Hard Knocks”. Though we progressed as a society and now celebrate openly lesbian athletes, the gay athlete in a clubhouse would still be a place where the athlete would have to deal with the double identity of being gay and a pro athlete.

Now on the day a gay athlete does take the field, court, or ice, there won’t be acts of violence committed on him the same way they were committed on Jackie Robinson or Marion Motley when they broke the NFL and MLB color barrier. But the microscope that athlete would be under would be hot enough to burn him out. Hopefully that day will come sooner than later, but I lean more towards the latter because of the relentless scrutiny he would under.