Gay NFL player in sports, especially football, is still a rather sensitive topic. This has led to many gay players not daring to publicize their sexual orientation and stand up against prejudices. Let’s find out which players are Gay Football Players In National Football League.
Top 10 gay NFL football players
Below is a list of 10 publicised gay soccer players in the NFL. To us, these are people who bravely confront the barriers and prejudices that you should know.
David Kopay
David Marquette Kopay was born on June 28, 1942, and played Running back for the National Football League. In 1975, he was one of the first professional athletes to say that he was gay.
Known as the first gay NFL player, Kopay went to high school in Sherman Oaks, California, at Notre Dame. He attended the University of Washington in 1961. He was a halfback for the West team at the All-America East vs. West Football Game in 1964.
Kopay played professional football with the San Francisco 49ers from 1964 to 1972. After he left the NFL, he was thought to be a top candidate for coaching jobs, but he thinks that professional and college teams passed on him because he is gay.
Kopay is said to have given these football players the courage to talk more openly about their sexuality. Kopay became a Gay Games Ambassador for the Federation of Gay Games.
Jerry Smith
The next gay NFL player to come out is Jerry Smith. Gerald Thomas Smith was a professional American football tight end for the Washington Redskins in the National Football League from 1965 to 1977. He was born on July 19, 1943, and died on October 15, 1986. By the time he retired, he had scored the most touchdowns in a career by a tight end in the NFL. Smith was the first professional athlete to tell the public he had AIDS.
Smith went to school at Arizona State, but he didn’t play football there until he was a junior.
Smith grew as a runner and receiver at tight end for the Redskins under Bill McPeak, Otto Graham, and, most notably, Vince Lombardi, who liked gay players and was open to them.
Smith was named an All-Pro twice and held several NFL records that stood for a long time.
Smith told a few family members that he was gay after he retired for good at the end of the 1978 season.
Smith moved back to Silver Spring, Maryland, to be near his family in 1986. At the Holy Cross Hospital, he was diagnosed with HIV because he was getting thinner and coughing. He passed away in 1986.
Jeff Rohrer
Jeffrey Charles Rohrer was born on December 25, 1958. He used to play position is a football linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys in the National Football League. He went to college at Yale and played football there. In 1982, he was picked in the second round of the NFL Draft.
He went to school at Yale. He was a back-up defensive end in 1978. He did not go to school in 1979.. In 1980, he moved to inside linebacker and helped his team win the Ivy League championship.
In 1982, the Dallas Cowboys picked Rohrer in the second round of the NFL Draft. At the time, the pick was seen as a stretch by the media.
Rohrer came out to the public in 2018 when he told Joshua Ross, his partner of two years, that they were getting married. He got married to Ross on November 18, 2018. He was the first NFL player, past or present, to get married to someone of the same gender. Rohrer used to be married to Heather Rohrer. They had two children together.
Kwame Harris
Kwame Harris is an NFL player comes out with his family. Kwame Harris was born on March 15, 1982, in Jamaica. He played offensive tackle for the National Football League for six seasons (NFL). In 2002, he won the Morris Trophy as the best offensive lineman in the Pac-10 Conference while playing college football for the Stanford Cardinal. In the 2003 NFL Draft, the San Francisco 49ers took him with the 26th overall pick in the first round.
Harris knew when he was young that he liked men. When his mom asked him about it in high school, he told his family that he was gay. At first, not all of them were helpful, which made Harris decide to go to Stanford University on the other coast.
Harris was found guilty on November 4, 2013, of misdemeanor counts of domestic violence, assault, and battery against his ex-boyfriend Dimitri Geier. The charges stemmed from an incident that happened on August 21, 2012.
During an interview with CNN on March 29, 2013, Harris said he was gay.
Carl Nassib
Carl Paul Nassib is an outside linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League. He was born on April 12, 1993. He played college football for the Penn State Nittany Lions, and as a senior in 2015, he was named an All-American by all the coaches. In the 2016 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns picked Nassib in the third round. He also played for the Raiders in Las Vegas. Nassib was the first active NFL player to come out as gay and play in a game.
In 2021, Carl posted a video on his personal Instagram to announce this: “I am at my house in West Chester, Pennsylvania, I just want to take a moment to say that I am gay. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time and I’m finally comfortable enough to open my heart…”
The video was posted during Pride month, and Nassib also claims to have contributed $100,000 to Project Trevor, which aims to prevent suicides among LGBTQ+ youth in the US.
Wade Davis
Wade Alan Davis II is an activist, writer, teacher, and former American football player from the United States. He was born on July 28, 1977.
Davis was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and spent most of his childhood in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Aurora, Colorado. He went to Mesa State and Weber State for college and played football there. Davis joined the NFL’s Tennessee Titans as an undrafted free agent in 2000, but he was released after the preseason. In 2001, he made his professional debut with the NFL Europe team, the Berlin Thunder.
Davis came out in 2012 and talked about what it was like to be gay and hide it in the NFL.
Davis and Darnell L. Moore started the YOU Belong Initiative, a group that gives LGBTQ and straight youth who are allied a three-day camp.
In 2014, Davis was hired by the NFL as its first Diversity and Inclusion Consultant. He works with the NFL and its corporate sponsors to break down barriers between the NFL and the LGBT community by leading inclusion training sessions and national engagement initiatives.
Ryan O’Callaghan
Ryan Thomas O’Callaghan was born on July 19, 1983. He used to play offensive tackle for an American football team. He went to college at California and played football there. In the fifth round of the NFL Draft in 2006, the New England Patriots picked him up. He was also on the Kansas City Chiefs football team.
O’Callaghan played right tackle in his first NFL game, which was against the Buffalo Bills in 2006.
O’Callaghan grew up in the California city of Redding. In an interview with Outsports in June 2017, he said he was gay. He talked about how hard it was for him to accept himself and how he thought no one would accept him as a gay man. The turning point was when he told the Chiefs’ clinical psychologist that he was gay. He then told his teammates and family, who all supported him.
His autobiography, My Life on the Line: How the NFL Almost Killed Me and Saved My Life, came out in 2019. He started the Ryan O’Callaghan Foundation, which helps LGBT youth by giving them scholarships.
Dorien Bryant
Dorien Lamar Bryant was born on March 19, 1985. In American football, he used to play wide receiver. He didn’t get picked in the 2008 NFL Draft, but he later became a free agent and signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Before the 2008 NFL Draft, NFLDraftScout.com thought Bryant would be picked as early as the seventh round and as late as the second round. He was ranked as the draft’s 31st-best wide receiver.
Dorien Bryant is now out as gay and has talked about what it was like to try to hide his sexuality as an athlete.
After their relationship ended, a male cheerleader at Purdue told everyone that Bryant was gay. Bryant denied that he was gay, but the way he was treated during a game against Indiana State made him realize that he didn’t want to have to hide his sexuality for the rest of his professional career.
Michael Sam
One of the gay NFL players you should know is Michael Sam. Michael Alan Sam Jr. was born in the United States on January 7, 1990. He is a defensive lineman for the Barcelona Dragons in the European League of Football. Sam was a defensive end for the Missouri Tigers in college football. The St. Louis Rams of the National Football League (NFL) picked him up in the seventh round of the 2014 NFL draft.
As a senior at Missouri, Sam was named an All-American by most people and the SEC Defensive Player of the Year. Sam told everyone he was gay after his college football career was over. He was the first openly gay person to be picked up by the NFL. During the last preseason roster cuts, the Rams let him go. He was also on the Dallas Cowboys practice squad for a while before he was let go. Before the 2015 season, he signed with Montreal and became the first openly gay player to play in a regular-season CFL game.
Michael Sam has added to the list of recent openly gay athletes like Jason Collins, Robbie Rogers, Brittney Griner, Orlando Cruz, Megan Rapinoe, Lori Lindsey, and Tom Daley.
Colton Underwood
Another gay football player NFL, American reality TV star and former NFL player Colton Scott Underwood was born on January 26, 1992. In 2014, he played defensive end as an undrafted free agent for the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles.
Underwood, the first male star in the Bachelor series to come out as gay, did so in an interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America on April 14, 2021.
Underwood and Democratic strategist Jordan C. Brown were reportedly seen on vacation together in Hawaii on September 1, 2021, sparking rumours of a romance between the two. Soon after Underwood turned 30 the previous month in January 2022, he stated in February of that year that he and Brown were engaged.
Conclusion
Finally, you can better understand gay football player NFL come out in the world. Gender can’t be chosen, so enjoy life with your true gender. To follow more articles, visit https://lgbt-football.net/ for more information.
