Carl Nassib Comes Out
Well, that was a really surprising piece of news to hit suddenly late Monday afternoon. Carl Nassib, the defensive lineman for the Raiders, has come out publicly as gay. He becomes the first active gay player in the NFL (since Michael Sam never actually made a roster or played a game).
It’s been really surreal to watch what has happened since his Instagram video. Namely, that not much has happened. It feels like a reminder of how far we’ve come that Nassib basically being the second ever publicly gay current football player has mostly just been accepted with general congrats and thumbs up. When you actually look at the situation, it should still be a huge deal, and it is, but it doesn’t feel like the major moment that it did years ago with Sam.
Nassib has never been a household name and I’m sure a huge amount of fans said “who” when they first heard the news, but he’s not a nobody. He’s an acceptable defensive end, formerly of the Browns, and probably best known overall (before this at least) for giving his teammates financial advice on Hard Knocks. Now he’s come out and even though it shouldn’t be huge news, it also should kinda be huge news. We aren’t at a point where sports are widely accepting yet. He’s the second-ever player to come out, the first active player. Nobody else has done so except some former players well after their playing days. It took years from the first player coming out and a large shift in national sentiment for this to come to pass. I can only hope it leads to more players coming out to broaden the acceptance. I don’t want to wait for another half-decade for someone else to feel confident enough to risk coming out. The original Michael Sam comic that I repurposed for this one was #171, almost exactly 1k comics ago. That’s a long time to wait for a second player to feel safe enough to do it and a depressing indictment on the culture of football.
My thoughts turned to Sam a lot after the news broke. Sam took a huge bullet and it took a while for us to see the effects. Sam walked so Nassib could run. Sam is kind of a sad story looking back. It’s been so long since the news he felt forgotten for years until this week. His timing could have been better but the point remains that someone had to take that bullet and he did it. Nassib played his cards better. It’s pride month, the month that every corporation has now decided is gay branding time because putting a rainbow on your logo tricks some people into thinking you care. But by coming out in June and making a big public donation, Nassib basically played right into the machine and gave everyone an easy rally point. There is zero chance everyone in the league is okay with Nassib’s truth, but they can’t criticize him or be publicly skeptical right now, it would be a PR disaster. Hard to disparage a gay guy when your team’s logo is a rainbow.
Sam came out before the draft, a draft he was not highly rated in due to various factors, and thus became a distraction and whether or not he deserved a better chance could never truly be gleamed thanks to the circus around his status. Nassib doesn’t have to worry about that. He’s already on a solid contract and has proven himself. But Sam deserves credit forever for falling on that sword. The most cynical critic of Sam’s move might say he was too performative about it, that he did it to boost his stock when he was a fringe candidate. I remember seeing this take a lot back during Sam mania. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if it was a calculated move on Sam’s part. He did something no player before had the balls to do. Somebody had to be first, and by golly good for him for doing it.
How this gets received going forward will be worth watching. People who don’t like it aren’t going to be as public with it these days, but make no mistake there is absolutely going to be some resentment, from some teammates, from other people in the league, from fans. Gruden and Mark Davis have already given words of support and honestly, they both seem like the kinda guys who would be fine with it. But he’s teammates with Richie Incognito, a noted piece of shit who is on record as casually throwing around the bundle of sticks slur and plays the position opposite him. Part of his bullying of Jon Martin was homophobic in nature. Richie’s been quiet since he’s been a Raider but at this point trusting him to not be a shithead is asking for trouble. Outside a couple of his fellow linemen, and as of writing Derek Carr just gave his support, there hasn’t been too much public support from other Raiders as of yet. That’s not a big worry, but it’s something to keep an eye on because those are his immediate co-workers.
But looking at the world now…I think Nassib will be okay. For everything that has gone so wrong in the past decade it feels really heartwarming to see a guy come out, it be a huge deal, but simultaneously not be as big of a deal as it used to be. I wish him the best. Live your truth Carl.
I agree with most of what you said, Dave, but I’m iffy on Michael Sam “taking the first punch.” If he waited, played for a team, THEN announced it and was immediately cut and shunned, I would wholeheartedly agree.
As you acknowledged, Sam’s timing was poor. He wasn’t highly rated. It made drafting him 100% about his sexuality. Not to undermine the massive courage Sam showed, but you could replace “gay” with anything that teams would deem to create a dreaded “media circus,” and they’d pack up the wagons and leave town. A perceived media circus is their devil.
If Michael Sam was a projected Top 3 pick, nobody would blink, since teams are all about talent talent talent. This laser-focus makes them simultaneously appear ridiculously liberal, or heavily conservative. Would Colin Kaepernick have been shunned if he played like Aaron Rodgers? I suspect the NFL would have stood by him if his on-field talent made blackballing him impossible. Every day nobodies like Kyle Lauletta have one traffic incident, then find themselves cut and sent to practice squads for their entire career. (Lauletta was a total moron, and I’m not defending him AT ALL, but others with talent have done FAR worse and suffered nothing for it, because talent is all they care about.)
Had Nassib timed it the same and come out before showing what he could do on the field, I think it would have been the same result. I fully agree this doesn’t mean all of the players are on board, but the teams themselves DGAF what you do in your free time if you help them win on the field. It shouldn’t be a big deal. AT ALL. Our reactions – ultimately – should be exactly the same if these guys stood up there and said, “I need to announce that I like ice cream.” Ok…. and? Is that it?
On the one hand the average age of an NFL player is 26 years old. Zoomers, for the most part, are comfortable with non-normative sexual preferences.
On the other hand, football coaching is a bastion of hidebound cowardice, and football is the pinnacle of the cult of coach. I’m sure there are players who are much more narrow minded than they would be naturally because their growth as a young man has been guided by a cohort of 50-60 year old football coaches.
On the gripping hand, as Dave mentioned, NFL teams as organizations gravely fear the dreaded “media circus”. At this point I think the performatively woke national media would pounce on any player who would speak up in opposition to Nassib coming out of the closet. Possibly there are fringe roster guys that don’t want to speak their mind for fear of their homophobia being branded an ‘off-field distraction’, and getting cut for the negative attention they bring.
“Would Colin Kaepernick have been shunned if he played like Aaron Rodgers? I suspect the NFL would have stood by him if his on-field talent made blackballing him impossible”
One of Kaepernick’s most notable performances was him literally outplaying Rodgers on his own field, in the playoffs. I agree with your general point, and he wasn’t playing at that level by the time his protest happened (though it was not far from a Super Bowl appearance and near-win by Kaepernick) but with Kaepernick, the NFL seemed hellbent on satisfying Trump and blackballing Kaepernick no matter what.
This situation reminds me of the Kaep thing in a lot of ways. Kaep took the first punch like Sam did and now here we are, several years later, and the NFL is touting BLM support messages and Pride messages for clout. It may not be exceptional progress and much of it is performative, but it is progress and they helped start it
Corporate support of anything is always performative and always will be even if a majority of stakeholders genuinely support the cause, that’s just kind of how it’s always going to be. But it is a good indication of shifting culture. Corporate support for Pride has steadily increased since the early 2010s and with it has come kind of a normalization of Pride culture. When you can go into Target and see them commodifying Pride the same way they do the 4th, that really does help younger people grow up becoming comfortable with it. It’s the same way with BLM. It may performative, but if it gets the message out and starts to normalize sensitivity to racial inequality, that’s always a win. When corporate interests see your identity as a way to make money, that’s when you know you’ve made it.
Interesting take. It’s kind of disgusting to see things like that get commercialized, but I never really considered the positive side of it.
I did consider those Green Bay games a bit, but those performances were a bit of an anomaly; he didn’t perform like that consistently against other teams, and although he gets a huge caveat for the JimSwap at the end of his career (going from Harbaugh to Tomsula no doubt ruined him), he made it super easy, barely an inconvenience for NFL teams to run from him like the plague. I definitely agree there would have been blowback even if he consistently lit everyone up like he lit up Green Bay, but I think the NFL would have showed some backbone if they felt his talent was more crucial to their brand. It could be a coincidence, but it felt like it wasn’t until he was playing really poorly that the noise started revving up.
By the time Kaep started his bench protest in 2016 he was already in decline due to the Tomsula year and was recovering from surgery so his activism never coincided with his good seasons
That would explain it! This should be a pro tip for all NFL players. If you’re going to do or announce something that the NFL owners or other players would consider to be “controversial,” do it when you’re in your prime.
Never forget that desiccated Christian Corpse Tony Dungy said that Sam would be too much of a distraction while he was trying to get Michael Vick, an actual criminal, back on a roster.
Talent makes all the difference. Vick had done his time but still had a lot in the tank where as Sam was a fringe player. It sucks but Sam wasn’t valuable enough for the shield to fight for.
In hindsight it does seem like Sam did it to boost his stock and so what? He used what he had to leverage the best situation for himself and his future family. No one else will do that for you if you don’t do it for yourself.
On Incognito being a shithead… Eh. He’s smarter than people think and he knows how to play the PR game. His bullying of Martin was also racial in nature and his two partners in crime, John Jerry and Mike Pouncey, were also African-Americans. Part of the whole was that Incognito thought he was legitimately Martin’s friend and was just doing some friendly banter while Martin didn’t view it quite the same way, to put it mildly. I highly doubt that he’ll be pulling anything like he did in Miami. That said, I absolutely expect him to bring just that bit more heat whenever he gets a one-on-one with Nassib. I also expect Nassib will be getting a little more heat from a few linemen he’ll be facing.
Based on the amount of moderated comments over on the athletic on articles about Nassib, there are still plenty of people who are being public about their homophobia. Likewise, there are plenty of people claiming that he’s trying to avoid being cut with this news.
We’ve come a long way, and like Carl said hopefully soon there won’t even be a need for this type of announcement, but we’re still here
I have no doubt major site comment sections are a trash fire like always
Nassib isn’t in any danger. He’s a quality secondary pass rusher. His problem last year was that the Raiders didn’t have a primary pass rusher. With Ngakoue on the team now he’ll probably be back at 6 sacks. He’s also got a relatively cheap contract that’s currently underwater, even as a post-June 1 cut. A team like the Raiders, that’s perpetually cash poor, can’t afford to cut a contributing rotation end if it would cost them money.
O.J. Simpson of all people had an interesting comment after Nassib came out. He was addressing older former players like himself, and he basically said: “If you think you never played with a gay team mate that’s only because you didn’t notice. You totally did.”
There was a gay player for Washington, back in the ’60s and ’70s, Jerry Smith. Vince Lombardi and some of his teammates knew he was gay, but kept it under wraps. Lombardi’s assistant coach there, David Slatterly was also gay. Lombardi was very anti-discriminatory, for both racism and sexual orientation.
I see a Sexy Rexy!
If Derek “Jesus is my co-pilot” Carr is cool with it, we might have some hope after all.
This is kind of a strange comic in the interaction here. Did Michael Sam really take the punch for Nassib? Is it easier for Nassib because of Michael Sam or because it’s a totally different environment now? Did anyone even remember Michael Sam until Nassib came out?
Something about the whole comic feels really wrong. Rare miss.
My dad’s a big Mizzou fan and will bring him up in discussion every once in a while, mostly wondering if he had waited to come out until after he was on a team if things would have went differently for his career, but I absolutely see your point.
It can be both imo.
Whether or not it was for attention, best of luck to the guy.