TOP 10 PROFILES OF THE FIRST OPENLY GAY ACTIVE NFL PLAYER

by DMtShooter, Five Tool Tool

This post was inspired by the story of Jackie Walker. It's worth a click and NY Times registration. I'll wait here for you while you check that out.

Now, here's a moral puzzler for everyone spending too much time thinking about the NFL Draft. Say that you were an NFL GM, and you received word that the player that you are thinking of selecting is a closeted homosexual.

Would you:

(a) draft him more or less in the same, since it's his life and business, and it doesn't seem to have affected his performance negatively in the past,

(b) downgrade him slightly as a possible media circus later, but still actively consider him, especially if he presents a good value pick, or

(c) take him off your board entirely, so that you don't have any possibility of your team losing focus over his orientation.

My guess is that most blog readers, being younger and a little more open-minded, would be more likely to go for (a) or (b). Older readers and people who would be more afraid of losing their jobs would go for (b) or (c). (And the whole exercise,

of course, supposes that this closet routine hasn't been done before, perhaps even as a factor in a contract. But I digress.)

Independent of the choice, this is inevitable. Not that there will be gay football players -- there already have been. More so, one will want to be out while actually in the league, and be a pioneer / bask in all of the endorsement dollars and attention.

So we are looking for someone who is (a) not afraid of the limelight, but (b) in a role where they are likely to be able to meet most (any?) contact head on. The latter would be so that they could keep an eye out for the very moral cheap shot artist for a vengefully conservative God. Let's get on to it...

10. Place kicker -- think Martin Gramatica. A niche occupation in football with relatively little contact with the rest of the team. I'm pretty sure that if you can hit consistently from 50+ in any weather condition, and if your

kickoffs reach the end zone, you could be a practicing cannibal and an NFL team would hire you. How else can you explain the presence of both Brothers Gramatica?

9. Speed WR (the Todd Pinkston mold). I'm not going for a top-shelf WR -- those folks are way too into their endorsement dollars to risk not being mainstream -- that's not in a slot or major contact position. (I'm not inferring, by the way, that a gay football player wouldn't have the coverage to go over the middle. I'm saying that they might be bright enough not to put a bulls eye on their helmet and be in a prime hittable position.) But a second tier guy, whose role is to stretch a defense? The shoe fits.

8. Rule-breaking OL (Kyle Turley esque). Couldn't you see a cagey / edgy / media savvy offensive lineman, knowing that he's never getting an endorsement dollar in any other way, coming out for profit... even if he really wasn't in the camp? Heck,

it might even make more effective against some defenders. In my mind's eye, our player is a tackle, since they are closest thing the offensive line has to a solo act, and hence, more likely to take the media attention.

7. Performance punter (Todd Sauerbrun). Most punters are faceless nomads (quick, name more than five active) who are only heard from in moments of disaster. Just like place kickers, they are also isolated from all other players, so even a phobic coach would go along with history, provided it had hang time and distance. The slot is a little lower than field goal kickers, just because punters tend to be less comfortable in a spotlight, and are usually converted from some other don't ask, don't tell part of the team at an early age.

6. Safety (Adam Archuleta mold). Here, I'm seeing the athlete playing with a perpetual chip on his shoulder -- always a plus for safetys, who are usually too slow to play corner and too small to play linebacker. Besides, I like the idea of a big hitter who is also out of the closet; it would make the inevitable "That didn't hurt" pop-ups from decked wideouts and running backs even more comical.

5. Battering ram RB (Christian Okoye). Running backs already know they are going to take too many hits and have a short life span. If you've got a guy that runs straight up and tries to power through contact, I'm thinking he's got enough of a sense of invincibility to welcome additional coverage. Besides, people who get into the end zone and score touchdowns frequently like the attention.

4. Special teams gunner (Steve Tasker). Talk about being aware of your own mortality. Here's a job that no one holds for long, where the opponent can do just about anything short of a choke hold. So how much worse could it get, really?

3. Long snapper (Jon Dorenbros). After an injury to the starter (Mike Bartrum), the Philadelphia Eagles hired a magician (Dorenbros) with snapping experience. An out snapper would cash a check at a position where you can only (otherwise) get famous through failure.

2. Fullback (Lorenzo Neal). Long suffering, fame free, sacrificing their own physical well being for the glory of their partner? You don't need me to spell out the rest of this.

1. Quarterback (all of them -- I keed, I keed). The pilot/egotist on the team is in an incredibly vulnerable spot, given how he's always just one blown assignment away from probable concussion.

But QBs are greedy creatures; if there is money to be made from coming out, they'd get the most. They might need to spend it from a wheelchair, of course...