Outside the Sports Closet: News Discourses of Professional Gay Male Athletes in the Mainstream

Intersections and Disjunctions: Sport, Media, and Sexuality

Many areas of overlap exist between sport and sexual identity, yet one core aspect of both is that each is, to some extent, performed—and in large part, they are performed in and through the media industries, which shape the normative boundaries of these performances. Sport and the body, for instance, have been argued as a “site of cultural inscription, self-regulation, and resistance” (Patterson & Corning, 1997, p. 7). With little exception, all sporting competitions bifurcate along the lines of biological, essentialized binary conceptions of sex (Pronger, 1990). As Birrell and Cole (1990) contend, there are “two apparently natural, mutually exclusive, ‘opposite’ sexes” (p. 2).

The dominant culture of professional men’s sports has been heterosexual and hypermasculine (Baxter, 2012; Cashmore & Cleland, 2011; Kian & Anderson, 2009; Zirin, 2007), serving as a mainstay of hegemonic masculinity, heterosexism, and homophobia (Ward, 2015). The emergence of gay and lesbian athletes challenges these hegemonic traditions (Anderson, 2005; Hardin, Kuehn, Jones, Genovese, & Balaji, 2009). The experiences of lesbian athletes are often overlooked in professional sports, however, as their sexual orientation is problematically presumed because of their athleticism (Kane & Lenskyj, 1998). Thus, sport both reinscribes biological sex and socially constructed gender binaries; athletes failing to conform to notions of what it means to be a male or female athlete—compulsory heterosexuality for male athletes while, paradoxically, ascribing presumed homosexuality for many female athletes.

This Study’s Approach

Rooted in interpretive approaches to knowledge, this study utilizes qualitative textual analysis to critically investigate media coverage and commentary of the most prominent gay sports stories in men’s professional sports and the ensuing media treatment of LGBTQ issues in sport. Textual analysis was employed to more deeply investigate how language and framing devices (McKee, 2003) were used to construct meaning for mainstream audiences (Hardin et al., 2009; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).

Programs and publications were selected which are prominent, high impact, and appeal to large, national news and sports audiences. Lexus Nexis was used to determine stories for analysis using the terms Michael Sam and gay from the time of his announcement on February 10, 2014, through September 1, 2015 (to capture coverage of his retirement from football in August 2015), yielding 739 television and radio news transcripts. Likewise, search terms Jason Collins and gay yielded 371 television and radio transcripts from his announcement on April 29, 2013 through his retirement in November 2014. Duplicates of wire stories were excluded as were duplicate transcripts, Letters to the Editor, or articles shorter than 75 words (considered briefs). Therefore, 37 broadcast/cable/radio transcripts remained about Michael Sam and 31 about Jason Collins, with each article serving as the unit of analysis. Likewise, a Lexis Nexis revealed 181 articles published in The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and Newsweek about Jason Collins and 307 about Michael Sam during these same time periods; once duplicate stories and shorter briefs less were eliminated, 14 stories remained of Collins and 48 of Sam. Qualitative textual analysis was used to determine dominant framing devices emerging consistently across the population of stories and articles. First cycle coding (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2013) engaged in open coding without detailed or previously conceptualized frames to identify dominant narrative devices. Two researchers then collaborated to determine the most prevalent themes, then engaged in second cycle coding to group themes “into a smaller number of categories, themes or constructs” (Miles et al., 2013, p. 86).

Important for our analysis here, we did not eliminate nor intentionally differentiate editorials, commentary, or sports columns from more traditional news in this census of stories and transcripts. This study was interested in interrogating the framing discourses woven throughout these varied media products, as these stories and articles about the first players coming out in their respective leagues generated widespread traditional news coverage along with commentary and discussion from opinion leaders, sports commentators, journalists, and activists—all of which we consider to contribute to the larger “journalistic discourses” surrounding gay athletes in the sports/media complex. In a converged media landscape in which more traditional “breaking news” stories circulate alongside commentary and opinion about these contemporary social issues in sport and society, this study sought to examine the dominant discourses across platforms while acknowledging that these stories reach different audiences and serve different aims. The goal was not to amalgamate disparate news sources but to examine the common narrative framing devices within them. For example, The New York Times published a “breaking news” style feature story the day Michael Sam came out, which was anchored to more standardized professional norms of objectivity, sourcing, and structure, under the headline, “N.F.L. Prospect Michael Sam Proudly Says What Teammates Knew: He’s Gay” (Branch, 2014). That article appeared on page A1 of the February 10, 2014 print edition as well as on the nytimes.com news site. That front-page story was followed up by analysis, commentary, and opinion pieces in that same publication, for example, “In N.F.L., It’s Now Question of Ability, Not Orientation” (Shpigel, 2014), a piece on whether Sam’s decision to come out will impact his position in the draft, and later, “Michael Sam Has a Spot in History, if Not With the Rams” (Rhoden, 2014), providing commentary on Sam being cut from the team. Likewise, CNN’s 360 with Anderson Cooper led with a traditionally style broadcast package about Jason Collins’s announcement (news), which was followed by a lengthy discussion about its impact on his career and the sport at large with former and current athletes, coaches, journalists, and sports commentators (commentary). For the purposes of this study, then, we did not attempt to differentiate the narratives of reporters/journalists from columnists/commentators, as many writers and broadcast personalities toggle between these roles. We were instead centrally concerned with how “mainstream ideologies about sports, gender and sexuality are being contested or maintained” (Hardin et al., 2009, p. 190; see also Trujillo, 1991) collectively within the sports/media complex by journalists, reporters, columnists, and opinion leaders. We do acknowledge, however, that some writers and commentators may intentionally frame an argument for specific aims and audiences, while others may be unwittingly influenced by news production values, professional norms of detachment and objectivity, sourcing conventions, and the like. As a textual analysis of mainstream discourses, our study was not designed to examine intentionality of story frames. As we discuss in the following findings, these narrative framing devices, all produced within and for mainstream U.S. news organizations, emerged irrespectively across the range of news, opinion, and commentary that appeared in our sample.

As our analysis highlights, media stories invoked an overall celebratory tone that initially hailed coming-out announcements as historic watershed moments, signaling a new era of inclusivity. However, as we explore in detail later, our analysis yielded frames rife with contradiction as journalists and pundits alike worked to detach themselves from the coded and sometimes more overt homophobic sources they cited. The following discussion unpacks these often self-contradictory framing devices in depth, interrogating how hegemonic power structures are negotiated and reproduced in media narratives of gay athletes.

“Stereotypical” Gay Identity Confronts Hypermasculinity

Reports of both Collins’s and Sam’s announcements continuously emphasized the athletes’ masculine form, bodies, and physical power, safely containing gayness within traditional notions of orthodox masculinity. Both Collins’s and Sam’s hypermasculinity and athleticism were used to emphasize their novelty in contrast to their sexual identities. In doing so, the figure of the gay athlete as one that threatens to transgress the normative boundaries of gender and sexuality is absorbed into traditional notions of orthodox masculinity. In effect, gay athletes are asked to distance themselves from their sexualities in ways that heterosexual athletes are not, reproducing compulsory heterosexuality as “natural” (see also Brody, 2016).

For example, the Sports Illustrated announcement cover story coauthored with Sports Illustrated reporter Franz Lidz emphasized Collins’s physical size, power, and aggressiveness: “I once fouled a player so hard that he had to leave the arena on a stretcher” (Collins, 2013, para. 22). The morning after his story broke, in a rare on-camera appearance on Good Morning America, Collins’s aggressiveness and toughness were positioned as the antithesis of gay identity:

I bring that physical toughness, that physical attitude and, you know, it’s part of the game… .I think that people like me are trying to rewrite … that stereotype and trying to let people know that you can’t just put people in a box. (Schieffer, 2013, para. 38-40)

Similarly, Michael Sam’s toughness and physicality were repeatedly emphasized in his coming-out story, an All-American, MVP in “the toughest conference in college football,” “a quarter-back-sacking force” (Harris, 2014), a player who “rumbled with confidence, fast and powerful” (Hill & Melvin, 2015): “At 6′2″, two hundred and sixty pounds, University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam used skill and strength to lead the SEC in sacks last year” (Connelly, 2014, para. 27).

Journalists’ physical descriptions and labels positioned both Collins and Sam as decidedly masculine—and, therefore, not “stereotypically” gay—reinforcing binary notions of gender performance. These tensions arose in part from the insistence that these sports figures wanted to be known as athletes first, not as gay athletes. Stories repeatedly sidelined sexual identity to focus on athleticism, emphasizing, for example, that Collins “ … doesn’t want to be known as the gay athlete. He just wants to be known as an athlete” (Costello, 2013 para. 20). Similarly, Sam at the NFL Scouting Combine, “I just wish you guys would see me as Michael Sam, the football player, instead of Michael Sam, the gay football player” (Babb, 2014, para. 12). As a way to highlight how “being gay” and “looking gay” ran counter to cultural stereotypes, news discourses unwittingly reinforced normative boundaries, both in self-described athlete narratives as well as in the editorial decisions on the part of reporters, editors, and commentators.

Watershed Moment and a Simultaneous “Nonevent”

Qualitative analysis revealed another binary in how coming-out stories were framed thematically, as historic, groundbreaking moments advancing the larger LGBTQ rights movement—and yet simultaneously dismissed as nonevents. These stories were discussed in the context of LGBTQ equality measures in the United States, including hate crimes legislation, the battle for same-sex marriage rights, equal service in the military, and greater visibility of gay celebrities and politicians. Paradoxically, however, many of these same stories questioned why these coming-out announcements were considered “news” in the first place, at times even diminishing their significance.

For example, in contrast to the words of Collins in the Sports Illustrated article that seemingly wished to make the announcement and get back to sport (“I’ll be waiting for someone to make the first joke, we’ll all laugh, and then we’ll get out there and play”), Collins’s coming out was framed as much more than just a sports story. CNN emphatically offered: “This is a big deal. We are all reporting it like major news, not just sports news” (Cuomo, Bolduan, Pereira, Berman, & Valencia, 2014). The Collins story was “the sports story that is much bigger than the basketball court, bigger than the league” (Bash, Toobin, Tapper, Amanpour, & Cooper, 2013). Several prominent commentators compared Collins’s coming out to other historic moments in sport leading to social change and inclusion (Brennan, 2013), arguing, “the sense of history was inevitable” (Keh, 2014). Descriptors such as “groundbreaker,” “trailblazer,” and “historic” were frequently used to describe Collins, “another example of the progress that has been made” (Cooper, 2013). “Today, Jason Collins tore open the last remaining closet in America,” claimed Brian Ellner of Athlete Ally, a nonprofit focused on homophobia in sports (Welsh, 2014, para. 2). CNN’s Anderson Cooper (2013) invited American audiences to “talk about the history-making night for pro sports in American society.”

Media narratives also symbolically connected Collins’s decision to other symbols within the larger LGBTQ movement. For example, news narratives emphasized that Collins “wore No. 98 for the Celtics and the Wizards, in honor of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was killed in 1998” (Beck & Branch, 2013, para. 22). Collins’s announcement was also contextualized within “the 1969 Stonewall riots that launched the gay rights movement” (Wagner & Sharpton, 2013). ABC News headlined Collins’s coming out as part of its media-dubbed “Historic Year for the Gay Right’s Movement,” situating the world of sport unproblematically within the context of the broader equality momentum:

2013 was a game changer. From the church and its new more accepting pope and state after state after state legalizing gay marriage, 2013 broke the rainbow ceiling. The biggest year for gay and lesbian rights since the Stonewall Riots 30 years ago … capped by the Supreme Court’s historic sanctioning of gay marriage … to the most competitive court in the land [basketball]. (Stephanopoulos & Roberts, 2013)

Paradoxically, reporters simultaneously issued the equivalent of a journalistic shoulder shrug that ran counter to the historic, a tone of “much ado about nothing,” questioning why these stories are—or should be—newsworthy in the first place. As Steve Kornacki (2014) told MSNBC audiences, “This shouldn’t be an issue. This shouldn’t be something that anybody has to talk about.” The WNBA’s Elena Delle Donne told USA Today, “That’s where I hope our society moves to, where it’s not a story. It’s normal” (Amick, 2016, para. 5). Sports radio personality Mike Greenberg said, “Hopefully, and quickly, we will move to this is no big deal” (Sambolin et al., 2013), while Anderson Cooper (2013), who had ironically cited Collins’s coming out as a historic milestone, later asked, “Why are we even talking about this? This is nobody’s business.”

Similarly, media reports emphasized Michael Sam’s announcement as a nonissue: “It’s nothing,” Sam told reporters, “It’s not a big deal to me” (Harris, 2014). Burwell (2014) noted that “Sam’s ‘secret’ was not really a secret” at all. Author and columnist Dan Savage (2013) stressed that stories of athletes coming out is “ … another big nonissue, because the culture is ready for this.”

Despite these journalistic claims that a gay athlete coming out really shouldn’t be a story, this analysis has shown the ways these same media outlets consistently headlined these as among the biggest sports/news stories of the year. As this next section highlights, alongside congratulatory accolades of pioneering athletes, stories simultaneously questioned whether the “big four” American team sport leagues were really “ready” for a gay player.

Celebratory Proclamations Tempered by Homophobic Fears

The paradox of both celebratory and cautious assertions was subtle and tenuous, often relying on coded homophobic language of distraction and complication. In the case of Michael Sam, celebratory accolades were mitigated by foreboding statements (typically from “anonymous sources”) about the potential “distraction” in the locker room and doubts about the readiness of the NFL to truly support an out athlete.

In the weeks leading up to the 2014 draft, Josh Elliot (2014) of ABC News tempered his enthusiasm over Sam’s announcement by saying, “I do hope the world that he is entering is ready for him and those 32 front offices as well” (Stephanopoulos & Roberts, 2014). NBC’s Kate Snow (2014) reported on overt expressions of homophobia as the draft approached, indicating that there were “online critics, some using anti-gay slurs, suggesting the NFL will be damaged.” Tony Dungy, former NFL coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said he personally would not have drafted the first openly gay football player Michael Sam because he “wouldn’t want to deal with all of it. It’s not going to be totally smooth … things will happen” (Boren, 2014, para. 2).

Under the protection of anonymity, news stories began to cite NFL executives and coaches predicting Sam’s coming out would drop him lower in the draft. Citing “anonymous sources” NBC’s Geist & Morales (2014) reported that “he could be a distraction in the locker room with this new issue.” “‘I don’t think football is ready’ for an openly gay player ‘just yet,’ one of the unidentified executives told Sports Illustrated” (Mizzou’s Sam tackles intolerance, 2014, para. 3). Originally projected as a third-round pick, “some sources” (unidentified) said he “dropped 70 slots in one projection only a few hours after coming out as gay” (Babb, 2014, para. 2). Phil Harrell (2014) reported on National Public Radio, “Sports Illustrated found eight unnamed coaches and executives who said that Michael Sam’s coming out will negatively affect his draft stock.” Likewise, Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim (2014) noted that while Sam was initially considered a third or fourth round pick, “today executives will say anonymously that his stock has dropped. He may not even be drafted” (Snow, 2014).

Furthermore, Sam’s celebratory kiss with his boyfriend after he was drafted by the Rams in the 7th round was met with controversy and backlash through highly publicized tweets. Miami Dolphins defensive back Don Jones tweeted “OMG,” and “horrible,” although he was later fined by the NFL for his comments (All Things Considered, National Public Radio, May 12, 2014). “I’m sorry but that Michael Sam is no bueno for doing that on national tv,” former Super Bowl champion Derrick Ward tweeted. As David Wright reported for ABC News, “some of Michael Sam’s potential teammates did not exactly welcome the idea of an openly gay player sharing the locker room” (Wright & Stephanopoulos, 2014), transforming Sam from “a highly touted NFL prospect to a potential locker room pariah” (Ruth, 2014, para. 2). While there were positive responses on social media as well, these high-profile examples reified the ways in which the NFL remains a “bastion of male supremacy” (Muir, 2014).

Such “locker room problems” were not as pronounced in the reporting of Jason Collins—perhaps because Collins was not actively dating anyone at the time of his coming out, did not display affection toward a same-sex partner, was coming out in a different league, and was near the end of his career—all factors that affected the tone of the coverage. Still, Collins himself knew the “locker room problem” would be a shadow cast on his story, one he would need to address directly in his original essay. For example, he assured his teammates and by extension media audiences that his showering habits, which had never been a problem before, won’t be one now (Collins, 2013). Regardless, sports commentators were concerned about the NBA locker room, “because we have heard players already tweet about this disagreement with this [Collins’s coming out]… . That’s why I think the player is going to feel some trepidation” (Sambolin et al., 2013). Citing a few widely publicized examples that permeated coverage, Miami Dolphin’s Mike Wallace’s tone-deaf tweet read, “All these beautiful women in the world and guys want to mess with other guys. SMH [shaking my head]” (Miller, 2013, para. 11), while ESPN’s Chris Broussard’s equated being gay to “walking in open rebellion to God” (Greenberg, 2013, para. 2).

Still other stories expressed growing concerns not about teammates’ responses but about those in the front offices of the NBA giving Collins a fair shot. As Steven Kornacki (2014) noted: “This year … Collins is not playing anymore. Collins is not retired. It’s simply that no one has offered him a contract.” If homophobia in sports is really a nonissue, he asks, “Why is it that Jason Collins can’t find a job in the NBA and how is it that football players still make allegations that an NFL locker room is still an acceptable place to slur someone’s sexuality?” (Kornacki, 2014).

Highlighting a possible chilling effect, sportscasters noted how, despite these prominent stories, there were no active players out in any major American men’s league. Applying a highly conservative Gallup poll estimate of 3.5% of the Americans who self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, that would translate to “60 gay NFL players, 42 Major League Baseball, 34 in the NHL, 16 in the NBA and 26 in Major League Soccer” (Kornacki, 2014). Where was the influx of openly gay athletes, commentators asked, if the leagues are truly welcoming in this new era of inclusivity? Or, as Affleck (2017) put it, “what happened to the openly gay athlete?” (para. 1).

“Others Like Me”: The Legacy of Coming-Out Stories in the Mainstream

This project has sought to explore the discourses surrounding one of the starkest juxtaposition in athletics: No active male athlete is out in the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL, yet the number of athletes coming out at virtually every other conceivable level is at an all-time high (Outsports, 2017). Journalistic discourses of the first professional athletes coming out of the sports closet and into the mainstream—thus becoming “floodlit” (Gitlin, 1980, p. 5)—have the potential to threaten the long-standing hierarchies of heterosexuality and orthodox masculinity. However, this analysis has shown the ways in which stories may have served instead as cautionary tales, offering us the opportunity to explore the paradoxical media narratives driving public understandings of homosexuality in sport.

In an era in which the sports closet is positioned as the last remaining stronghold of orthodox masculinity and heterosexuality, the terrain for the gay athlete remains contradictory at best. As this project has recounted, the discourses surrounding homosexuality and sport are even more complex: Optimistic claims hailing “the gay athlete as sportsman of the year” (Zeigler, 2014) are juxtaposed with more cynical predictions that it will be another 20 years before men’s sports see gay players equal to that of lesbian representation in women’s sports (Strudwick, 2017).

Underlying these contradictions is the presumed agency, or lack thereof, of the closeted/out athlete. Whether more athletes coming out (in/through media) can effect broader changes speaks to the challenges of advancing equality through enhanced visibility. After all, much of the contemporary gay rights movement’s gains have relied on strategies of increased visibility to gain access to state-sanctioned institutions that have historically outcast and criminalized LGBTQ citizens (Brody, 2016; King, 2009).

Constructions of the closet and coming out are culturally specific and, like visibility itself, are always a part of power relations tied to race, gender, class, and other political-economic forces. As Sedgwick (1990) argues, the closet as a social construct provides a convenient shortcut to understanding homosexuality as “a coherent definitional field rather than a space of overlapping, contradictory, and conflictual definitional forces” (p. 45). Brody’s (2016) work, for example, while celebrating enhanced visibility for gay and lesbian athletes, critiques coming out as a “panacea to change” in that it relies on “neoliberal ideologies of personal responsibility, individual action, and market transactions” (p. 10), placing the responsibility for social progress on the shoulders of athletes who ultimately serve as commodities in the sports/media marketplace. While many athletes and activists passionately argue that the way to change the culture is by telling their stories, we must give pause when the “media have become the main resource for authorizing stories of sports culture and gay identity” (Brody, 2016, p. 8). The role of media and the visibility it affords emerges as a double-edged sword: providing a platform for potential change while also actively reinforcing power relations undergirding the coming-out narrative.

The contradictory framing devices employed by mainstream media outlets inevitably derive from the struggle to negotiate, accommodate, and absorb the gay male athlete within an institution that has historically served as the epicenter of heterosexual masculinity. The rigidity of the sex-gender system entrenched in the sports media complex serves a common purpose: It has operated to eradicate not only gay men from sport but also women as a way of ensuring the institution remains a primary vehicle for Western cultures to indoctrinate boys into heteromasculinity (Anderson, 2014; Griffin, 1998; Pronger, 1990).

With these announcements and the pervasive media coverage that ensued, the “invisibility” of the gay athlete was no longer possible. Rather, as this analysis has argued, the paradoxical framing surrounding gay athlete stories reveals the complexities of relying on outness (as an easily recognizable identity category) and visibility (predicated on an athlete’s presumed agency) as portals to inclusiveness, even as long-standing forces of orthodox masculinity and compulsory heterosexuality remain firmly intact. Collins’s and Sam’s stories were heralded as “firsts” in world of sport while also clearing the “final” hurdle in achieving LGBTQ equality. These paradoxes become endemic as media narratives were simultaneously celebratory yet cynical; the announcements both historic and passé; and in adding the modifier “gay,” audiences were reassured these athletes were no less tough, aggressive, or traditionally masculine than their counterparts. Thus, journalistic discourses and the sources they cited disavowed that sexuality does—or should—make a difference in the locker room or on the field, all the while obfuscating the ways in which it clearly does.

Reporters and pundits problematically engaged in self-congratulatory narratives showcasing progressiveness and tolerance (Hardin et al., 2009; Schwartz, 2011), while systemic homophobia in sport remains prevalent. In the case of Michael Sam, for example, his NFL hopes sealed with a celebratory kiss fueled overt homophobic fears cautioning that gay athletes were “not welcome” in the locker room. While media discourses appeared to celebrate the idea of having an out player in the league, they were reluctant to acknowledge the lived material realities of how that may actually manifest. Indeed, the vitriol over Sam’s kiss implies that athletes can be out only if their sexuality remains invisible, contained to the private sphere, cast away from the media spotlight.

The cases of Collins and Sam are, of course, inextricably linked—both are African-American players considered successful in their relative leagues, both conform to the norms of hegemonic masculinity, both stories emerged across similar news cycles. While examining discourses of race and religiosity was beyond the focus of this essay, it is important to note how striking the erasure of race was, most interesting because of its exclusion from the narrative. Indeed, as John Amaechi, retired NBA player who came out in 2007, noted, the biggest unreported story in sport may be the most significant:

If you look at the people who’ve come out, we are brown. We are the ones who lead. I think it’s amazing that the media … has not yet noticed the color of the people who’ve been the vanguards in this. (Amaechi, personal communication, July 2, 2016)

One of the most important contrasts across these coming-out narratives is the overarching context of the media narratives. While Collins acknowledged he was nearing the end of his career, his story involved less perceived risk, while Sam’s story evolved under much greater scrutiny given his hoped-for career into professional football was just beginning. As such, coded homophobic concerns over locker room “problems” and showering habits were more pronounced in Sam’s coverage, citing potential team friction and distraction. In doing so, journalists and media pundits perpetuated fears surrounding predatory homosexuality, largely relying on anonymous sources and professional norms of detachment, in ways similar to how sports columnists in writing about the NBA’s John Amaechi’s coming out “rhetorically distanced themselves from the explicitly homophobic” comments of fellow players (Hardin et al., 2009, p. 191).

This project was limited to mainstream news coverage of only two—but arguably two of the most prominent—coming-out stories in the history of men’s professional team sports in the United States whose stories were intertwined in complex and compelling ways. Our analysis was limited to 130 stories across prominent television, print, and online U.S. news and sports outlets and, thus, cannot be considered definitive or all-encompassing of the ways these narratives were shaped and communicated. Moreover, our cross-platform analysis (print, television, radio, and online; more traditional “objective” news treatment, sports analysis, and “talking head” commentary) provided a wide lens for media analysis and also creates potential conflicts in the nature of the goals of each platform, which can at times contrast one another (see Fowler & Ridout, 2009). Future work could more closely examine the narratives produced by journalists/reporters in contrast to pundits/columnists who practice different journalistic routines and writing styles to interrogate if, how, and why framing operates differently in these varied contexts. Future research should also explore the issues of how, why, and when such coming-out narratives in men’s sports are treated compared with, for example, the aforementioned WNBA’s Brittney Griner, whose coming out in the context of women’s sports was met with comparatively little media interest (Borden, 2013). Because coverage of lesbian athletes is colored by a different set of inequalities and prejudices, future research should work to untangle the cultural presumptions about female athletes alongside the dimmer media spotlight on women’s sport as a whole. Nevertheless, these narratives of the first openly gay male players in American team sport highlight the ways in which the institutions of sport and commercial news media reproduce already-entrenched hierarchies centered wholly on heterosexuality and hypermasculinity, revealing the limitations of coming-out narratives in advancing the position of LGBTQ athletes.