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

Abstract

Contributing to a growing yet underresearched area of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues in sport, this study interrogates news discourses of the most prominent American athletes coming-out stories to date: the National Basketball Association’s Jason Collins and the National Football League’s Michael Sam. Mainstream media narratives invoked an overall congratulatory tone, hailing these announcements as watershed moments while at the same time emphasizing athletes’ physicality and athleticism in ways that reinforced the hypermasculine. Journalists and opinion leaders celebrated these announcements while simultaneously relying on coded and overt homophobic labels and language. Media storytellers subsequently relied upon dualistic, self-contradictory binaries, highlighting the paradoxes implicit in celebrating increased gay visibility within the confines of a commercialized sports/media complex with heterosexuality and hypermasculinity at its core.

Keywords

framing news coverage sports and media critical communication studies coming-out narratives gay athletes

The coming out of the professional athlete in an American team sport, until recently, only existed in the imaginary world of fiction. As one example, Richard Greenberg’s (2003) Tony-award winning play Take Me Out dramatized a fictional baseball hero who comes out to his team as gay (Butterworth, 2006); at the time, no player in any of the U.S. professional leagues had come out publically while still in active play. It was not until April 2013 when the once-imagined gay professional athlete experience was catapulted into the mainstream. In the opening line of a Sports Illustrated piece, the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s Jason Collins wrote, “I’m a 34-year old center. I’m black. And I’m gay” (Collins, 2013, para. 1). Collins made history the next season when he became the first openly gay athlete to ever play in a major American league (Neyer, 2016).

A few months later, during a February 2014 interview on Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN)’s Outside the Lines, another announcement, this one from a 22-year-old All-American defensive lineman from the University of Missouri: “I am an openly, proud gay man …. No one has done this before… .I want to be a football player in the NFL” (Connelly, 2014, para. 2-4). With these words, Michael Sam—a soon-to-be National Football League (NFL) draftee—told the world he was gay (Connelly, 2014).

These stories about the first openly gay players in any of the major American leagues speak to complexities of coming out in the sports arena as largely a mediated act—for our purposes here, defined as the process by which media forms “[enter] into and [shape] the mundane but ubiquitous relations among individuals and between individuals and society” (Livingston, 2009, p. 7). Collins’s and Sam’s announcements led broadcast news and captured magazine covers, headlining the front pages of prominent newspapers and trending on social media. Woven into these mainstream journalistic narratives was the promise of the boundary-breaking, history-making gay athlete. The larger media response to these gay athlete stories was, at least initially, overwhelmingly congratulatory, heralded as milestones, clearing what many media figures argued to be the “last hurdle” in American team sports. However, as this project reveals, journalists, sports reporters, and media commentators simultaneously framed these coming-out narratives along oppositional—and often self-contradictory—binaries, highlighting the paradoxes implicit in increased visibility within the systematic confines of the sports/media complex.

This essay carefully considers the significance of media as a conduit—albeit an imperfect one—for sharing these stories, and with it, an implicit call for others to do the same. “I’m not the only one,” Sam announced in a widely reported interview with Oprah Winfrey, “I’m just the only one who’s open” (Brooks, 2014, para. 2), echoing Collins’s insistence that, “In the brotherhood of the NBA, I just happen to be the one who’s out” (Collins, 2013, para. 37). These players spoke of homosexuality in sport as a sort of “open secret,” a dam about to break, lifting the floodgates for the emergence of gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and queer athletes in American team sports. For hopeful activists and media pundits, the momentum seemed certain. Outsports’ Cyd Zeigler (2014) claimed 2014 the year of the gay athlete, assuring readers that “more are coming … more are coming” (para. 11). John Affleck (2017), director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, wrote that from 2013 to 2014, “gay and lesbian athletes welcomed breakthrough after breakthrough in the historically closeted world of sports” (para. 1).

However, despite the intoxicating allure and hopeful impact these coming-out stories promised, a stark reality remains: There are currently no active gay male players in any of the four major American sports leagues, including the NBA, NFL, National Hockey League (NHL), or Major League Baseball (MLB; Neyer, 2016). Collins has since retired, and Sam failed to make an NFL roster, retiring from football while citing mental health reasons. Meanwhile, a handful of important stories emerged on the international sports scene, such as British rugby player Keegan Hirst, who in 2015 became the first British professional player to come out as gay; Great Britain diver Tom Daley; German soccer player Thomas Hitzlsperger; and England’s international footballer Sol Campbell—all players who out came after European rugby player Gareth Thomas did in 2009, describing his hypermasculinized environment created such conflict that he was close to committing suicide (Thomas, 2015). Furthermore, several players have come out in sports beyond the ones dubbed “major” in the United States, including solo sports (such as soccer’s Robbie Rogers, diving’s Olympic gold medalists Greg Louganis, swimming’s Ian Thorpe) or in team sports after retirement (such as Kansas City Chiefs’ Ryan O’Callaghan and the NBA’s John Amaechi). In addition, significant narratives of out lesbian and trans athletes are intertwined with stories of gay male athletes. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)’s Sheryl Swoopes and U.S. tennis players Martina Navatilova and Billie Jean King remain forbearers in the broader story of LBGTQ athletes. Likewise, the WNBA’s Brittney Griner and Elena Delle Donne came out during this same time frame of our analysis, as well as the pervasive sports/entertainment story of Olympic decathlete Caitlin Jenner and transgender mixed-marital artist Fallon Fox.

Nevertheless, in an sports scene in which over three quarters of the media coverage is dominated by American sports leagues for football, basketball, and baseball (Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013), these announcements from Collins and Sam constitute unique and pivotal moments. And despite the significant impact of the athletes listed here, the reality remains: There are currently no out athletes playing in the major American men’s leagues. Moreover, due in part to the relative absence of gay male athletes on the U.S. professional sports scene, little scholarship has investigated how their narratives are shaped and disseminated by mainstream media. This study thus contributes to a growing yet underresearched area of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues in sport by examining the journalistic discourses surrounding professional gay male athletes and highlighting the complexities of coming out through commercial media forms.

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.

Making the News: Hegemonic Framing of Social Issues

Communication scholars have long recognized that newsmakers do more than report events; through the process of framing, they also organize, assign meaning, and establish the salience of those issues and events (Entman, 1993; Gamson, 1989; Gitlin, 1980; Goffman, 1974; Tuchman, 1978). Like other cultural storytellers, journalists rely on standard, familiar stories and symbolic representations that media audiences use to make sense of news events. Despite the long tradition of framing theory in communication scholarship, the notion of power is often absent or underdeveloped in framing research (Holstein, 2003; Vliegenthart & van Zoonen, 2011). Thus, this project examines media framing as complex processes within larger hegemonic ideological structures defining our natural, common sense notions of the world and, by default, limiting the perceived range of possible definitions (Gramsci, 1971; Williams, 1977). Indeed, as Gitlin (1980) argues, “What makes the world beyond direct experience look natural is a media frame” (p. 6).

Heeding the call of critical scholars to bring concepts of power and hegemony “back in” to framing discourse, this project thus relies on a critical-constructionist approach (D’Angelo, 2002) to the cyclical role of news in the social construction of meaning. Drawing from a critical paradigm informed by hegemonic theory and political-economic approaches, this project views the process of framing as “the outcome of newsgathering routines by which journalists convey information about issues and events from the perspective of values held by political and economic elites” (D’Angelo, 2002, p. 876). Media storytellers are governed by routinized occupational, cultural, and organizational values dictating that the most extraordinary, dramatic, or novel elements of stories will be emphasized. While newsmakers are certainly not the only meaning-makers in the culture, they “make available suggested meanings and are the most accessible in a media-saturated society” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p. 2).

Mainstream news media thus become a central site in which social actors and groups struggle to promote their preferred meanings, definitions, and images in news discourse. What becomes “news” out of this “struggle” depends on an ideological—and therefore necessarily powerful—“selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters” (Gitlin, 1980, p. 6).

One of the core tenets of how hegemony functions and endures is its flexibility—the ability “to accommodate and incorporate opposing views and absorb changes – but only in ways that minimally rock the dominant boat” (Holstein, 2003, p. 12). Particularly significant to this project, then, is the recognition that frames are often like hegemonic ideologies themselves: paradoxical and oppositional (Vliegenthart & van Zoonen, 2011)—or even what Gitlin (1980) refers to as “self-contradictory,” explaining “how enduring ideology find its way into the news, absorbing and ironing out contradictions with relative consistency” (p. 11).

Gaining Representational Currency: Coming Out In/Through Commercial Media Forms

Narratives surrounding gay athletes have unfolded across a backdrop of what cultural studies scholars have dubbed “the era of the visible” (Walters, 2001b, p. 338), the unprecedented media coverage of LGBTQ communities, and the advancement of gay civil rights issues in U.S. culture (Dow, 2001; Gross, 2001). Once considered “unfit to print” (Alwood, 1998), LGBTQ issues now routinely headline mainstream news, and coverage of coming-out stories has increasingly become more positive (Lavoi, 2013). While the 2000s witnessed a rise in the entertainment appeal, the advancement of inclusionary civil rights such as marriage and military service, and the recognition of gays and lesbians as a budding consumer market, these changes have not necessarily challenged homophobia or worked to combat heterosexual privilege.

A line of critical cultural work has demonstrated how media representations are always a part of larger hegemonic power structures, serving as powerful and instrumental sites for regulating the boundaries of gendered and sexual identities (Becker, 2006; Gross, 2001; Sender, 2004; Walters, 2001). This scholarship points to the potentially dangerous downside of increased media attention: That visibility comes at a price, a substitution for inclusive citizenship, with media as an inherently problematic conduit for coming-out narratives.

Moreover, the concept of the “closet” and the act of “coming out” of it depends on culturally constructed logics whereby heteronormativity, similar to Whiteness, works as an “invisible norm” (King, 2009, p. 274). The closet presumes a fixed and essentialized notion of sexuality, with problematically narrow definitions of normalcy centered around heterosexuality (Sedgwick, 1990). Coming-out discourses in mainstream media thus often position one’s “self-disclosure” of sexual identity in confessional-therapeutic terms targeting straight audiences (it is rare, e.g., that one “comes out” as straight; Bailey, 2011; Dow, 2001). Celebrity outings are presented as a “confession, apology, and rehabilitation rather than a challenge or restructure of power inequalities” (Bailey, 2011, p. 16) and through the lens of “fitting in” (Dow, 2001; Richardson-Self, 2012). The decision to come out is framed as an individual choice, situated squarely on the shoulders of the closeted athlete, while the sports world is portrayed as largely receptive to gay athletes and reflective of a greater societal acceptance (Butterworth, 2006). These responses, of course, run counter to what much work has shown as a culture of toxic masculinity and rampant homophobia in the sports/media complex (Anderson et al., 2016; Hardin et al., 2009; Kian & Anderson, 2009; Ward, 2015; Wilson, 2014).

Part of the contradiction is that while media coverage is often critical of overt homophobia in sports (Hardin et al., 2009; Wright & Clarke, 2009), news reporters, sports journalists, and opinion leaders “are complicit in preserving hegemonic masculinity while failing to acknowledge their own role in doing so” (Hardin et al., 2009, p. 187). Athletes are often judged on the basis of their masculine traits and their athleticism, with an insistence that all that matters is how players perform on the court or field. Hardin (2009) refers to this phenomenon as “neo-homophobia,” that by downplaying the notion that sexual identity has any relevance in sports, perceived threats to masculinity are carefully contained.

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)

Sports writers, reporters, and commentators continued to emphasize his physicality in ways that anchored Collins to dominant notions of masculinity, referring to Collins’s physical size and aggressive play: “He’s always been tall, he’s always been intimidating … ” (Kornacki, 2014). Christine Brennan’s (2013) column from USA Today notes that the image of the gay athlete might be expected in women’s sports or even in “artistic” men’s sports like gymnastics and diving. “But big, bruising Jason Collins,” she asks, “Really?”: “He stands 7 feet tall, weighs 255 pounds, has started almost 500 NBA games and is known as a durable, strong, physical, team-oriented big man. So much for stereotypes.”

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)

Similarly, Michael Sam’s coming out was largely a hurdle he wanted to clear to pursue his NFL dream (“I wish you guys would just say, ‘Michael Sam, how’s the football going? How’s training going?”), media framed it as a historic milestone, “an uncharted area of the sports landscape” (Branch, 2014, para. 5). “One of the biggest stars of the NFL perhaps about to make history,” predicted Willie Geist of NBC News; as The Today Show proclaimed, “The twenty-four-year-old is expected to be taken in an early round of the NFL draft come April” (Geist & Morales, 2014). Significantly, however, this celebratory tone was mostly contained to predraft coverage, as we explore in the following section. The impact of his announcement was expected to have far-reaching influence on the league: “Many believe that by publicly coming out he changed the culture of the NFL” (Daly & Melvin, 2014). ABC’s George Stephanopoulos predicted “ … the all-American football star … is certain to shape his career and shake up the league” (Stephanopoulos & Roberts, 2014).

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)

Racial discourses may have existed beneath the surface of the story but were rarely discussed. Such blunting of racial dynamics are part of a history of sport in which “there’s an entire history of blacks stepping outside of the social order—or protesting it—only to be told they can’t” (Williams, 2016, para. 3). Indeed, the elimination of race in the cases of Collins and Sam stands in stark contrast to the contemporary cultural controversies surrounding Colin Kaepernick-inspired anthem protests, in which race has been highlighted to create a “reflexive visceral reaction” toward Black athletes who move outside their socially ascribed boundaries (Williams, 2016, para. 30).

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.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Leigh M. Moscowitz is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media and the coauthor of Snatched: News Coverage of Child Abductions in U.S. Media as well as Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes in American Team Sports. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Children and Media, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Andrew C. Billings is the Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting and executive director of the Alabama Program in Sports Communication at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes in American Team Sports along with many other books pertaining to sport and media. His work has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, Communication & Sport, and Mass Communication & Society.

Khadija Ejaz is doctoral candidate at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her work has been published in the Journal of Gender Studies. Her research interests include critical theory, gender, and religion.

Jane O'Boyle is an assistant professor at the School of Communications at Elon University. A former book publishing executive, she has recently published media research in American Journalism and Journal of Health Communication.

References

Affleck

(2017, June 21). What happened to the openly gay athlete? The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/what-happened-to-the-openly-gay-athlete-78586

Alwood

(1998). Straight news: Gays, lesbians, and the news media. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Amick

(2016, August 15). U.S. women hope gay players can find acceptance in WNBA. USA Today, p. 6D.

Anderson

(2002). Openly gay athletes: Contesting hegemonic masculinity in a homophobic environment. Gender & Society, 16(6), 860–877.

Anderson

(2005). Orthodox and inclusive masculinity: Competing masculinities among heterosexual men in a feminized terrain. Sociological Perspectives, 48(3), 337–355.

Anderson

(2014). 21st Century jocks: Sporting men and contemporary heterosexuality. Basingstoke, England: Hargrave.

Anderson, E., Magrath, R., & Bullingham, R. (2016). Out in sports: The experiences of openly gay and lesbian athletes in competitive sport. London, UK: Routledge.

Babb

(2014, May 6). If Michael Sam goes undrafted, NFL might have a public relations problem on its hands. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/if-michael-sam-goes-undrafted-nfl-might-have-a-public-relations-problem-on-its-hands/2014/05/06/0e7697a0-d547-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html?utm_term=.27d98c815a7c

Bailey

C. W.

(2011). Coming out as homophobic: Isaiah Washington and the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ scandal. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(1), 1–21.

10.

Bash

Toobin

Tapper

Amanpour

Cooper

(2013, April 29). Syrian crisis; Boston investigation. Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. New York, NY: CNN.

11.

Baxter

(2012, December 29). In pro sports, gay athletes still feel unwelcomed. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/29/sports/la-sp-sports-homophobia-20121230

12.

Becker, R. (2006). Gay TV and straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

13.

Beck

Branch

(2013, April 30). With the words ‘I’m gay,’ an NBA center breaks a barrier. The New York Times, p. A1.

14.

Birrell

Cole

C. L.

(1990). Double fault: Renee Richards and the construction and naturalization of difference. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 1–20.

15.

Borden

(2013, April 18). Female star comes out as gay, and sports world shrugs. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/sports/ncaabasketball/brittney-griner-comes-out-and-sports-world-shrugs.html

16.

Boren

(2014, July 22). Why Tony Dungy’s comments about Michael Sam aren’t really a surprise. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2014/07/22/why-tony-dungys-comments-about-michael-sam-arent-really-a-surprise/?utm_term=.4d951241d47e

17.

Branch

(2014, February 10). NFL prospect proudly says what teammates knew: He’s gay. The New York Times, p. A1.

18.

Brennan

(2013, April 29). Just call Jason Collins a team player. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2013/04/29/column-on-wizards-center-jason-collins-publicly-saying-hes-gay/2121155/

19.

Brody

(2016). The out field: Professional sports and the mediation of gay sexualities (Unpublished dissertations). University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

20.

Brooks

(2014, December 28). Michael Sam tells Oprah there are other NFL players who are gay. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-michaelsam-interview/michael-sam-tells-oprah-there-are-other-nfl-players-who-are-gay-idUSKBN0K60FQ20141228

21.

Burwell

(2014, February 10). Burwell: Sam’s ‘secret’ was not a secret at all. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved from http://www.stltoday.com/sports/college/mizzou/burwell-sam-s-secret-was-not-a-secret-at-all/article_e95c2df0-173c-5394-bb97-2e449b5b229e.html

22.

Butterworth

M. L.

(2006). Pitchers and catchers: Mike Piazza and the discourse of gay identity in the national pastime. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 30(2), 138–157.

23.

Cashmore

Cleland

(2011). Glasswing butterflies: Gay professional football players and their culture. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 35(4), 420–436.

24.

Collins

(2013, May 6). Why NBA Center Jason Collins is coming out now. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from https://www.si.com/more-sports/2013/04/29/jason-collins-gay-nba-player

25.

Connelly

(2014, February 10). Mizzou’s Michael Sam says he’s gay. Outside the Lines. New York, NY: ESPN. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10429030/michael-sam-missouri-tigers-says-gay

26.

Cooky

Messner

Hextrum

(2013). Women play sport but not on: A longitudinal study of televised news media. Communication & Sport, 1, 203–230.

27.

Cooper

(2013, April 29). NBA player Jason Collins says he is gay. Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. New York, NY: CNN.

28.

Costello

(2013, May 1). Gay NBA player’s ex-fiancée speaks out. CNN Newsroom. New York, NY: CNN.

29.

Cuomo

Bolduan

Pereira

Berman

Valencia

(2014, February 10). Missouri DE Michael Sam says he’s gay. New Day. New York, NY: CNN.

30.

Daly

Melvin

(2014, December 26). It has been a challenging six months for Michael Sam’s career after he was cut by the St. Louis Rams. The Today Show. New York, NY: NBC News.

31.

D’Angelo

(2002). News framing as a multi-paradigmatic program: A response to Entman. Journal of Communication, 52(4), 870–889.

32.

Dow

(2001). Ellen, television, and the politics of gay and lesbian visibility. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18(2), 123–140.

33.

Elliot, J. (2014, February 10). Football reacts to Michael Sam coming out. Good Morning America. New York, NY: ABC News.

34.

Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.

35.

Entman

R. M.

(2004). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

36.

Fowler

E. F.

Ridout

T. N.

(2009). Local television and newspaper coverage of political advertising. Political Communication, 26(2), 119–136.

37.

Gamson

W. A.

(1989). News as framing: Comments on Graber. The American Behavioral Scientist (1986–1994), 33(2), 157.

38.

Gamson

W. A.

Modigliani

(1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95(1), 1–37.

39.

Geist

Morales

(2014, February 10). Michael Sam has now revealed that he is gay. The Today Show. New York, NY: NBC News.

40.

Gitlin

(1980). The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making & unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

41.

Goffman

(1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

42.

Gramsci

(1971). “Introduction”. In Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith (Eds.), Selections from the prison notebooks (pp. xvii–xcvi). New York, NY: International Publishers.

43.

Greenberg, R. (2003). Take Me Out: A Play. New York, NY: Faber and Faber.

44.

Greenberg

(2013, April 29). Chris Broussard, ESPN reporter, calls being gay an ‘open rebellion to God.’ Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/chris-broussard-espn-nba-gay-reaction_n_3180080.html

45.

Griffin

(1998). Strong women, deep closets. Leeds, England: Human Kinetics.

46.

Gross

L. P.

(2001). Up from invisibility: Lesbians, gay men and the media in America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

47.

Hardin

Kuehn

K. M.

Jones

Genovese

Balaji

(2009). ‘Have you got game?’ Hegemonic masculinity and neo-homophobia in U.S. newspaper sports columns. Communication, Culture & Critique, 2(2), 182–200.

48.

Harrell

(2014, May 4). Why Michael Sam might not be drafted. Weekend All Things Considered. New York, NY: National Public Radio.

49.

Harris

(2014, February 10). Game time decision; Coming out strong. Nightline. New York, NY: ABC News.

50.

Hill

Melvin

(2015, August 15). Now to a major announcement in the world of sports this morning. The Today Show. New York, NY: NBC News.

51.

Holstein

(2003, May). In defense of framing theory: Bringing hegemony back. Paper presented at the International Communication Association conference, San Diego, CA.

52.

Kane

M. J.

Lenskyj

H. J.

(1998). Media treatment of female athletes: Issues of gender and sexualities. In Wenner

L. A.

(Ed.), MediaSport (pp. 186–201). New York, NY: Routledge.

53.

Keh

(2014, February 24). Collins, first openly gay NBA player, signs with Nets and appears in game. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/sports/basketball/after-signing-with-nets-jason-collins-becomes-first-openly-gay-nba-player.html

54.

Kian

E. M.

Anderson

(2009). John Amaechi: Changing the way sport reporters examine gay athletes. Journal of Homosexuality, 56, 1–20.

55.

King

(2009). Homonormativity and the politics of race: Reading Sheryl Swoopes. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 13(3), 272–290.

56.

Kornacki

(2014, January 11). Up with Steve Kornacki. New York, NY: MSNBC News.

57.

Lavoi

N. M.

(2013). Gender and sport media. In E Roper

(Ed.), Gender relations in sport (pp. 39–52). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

58.

Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2011). Qualitative Communication Research Methods, Third Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

59.

Livingstone, S. (2009). On the Mediation of Everything: ICA Presidential Address 2008. Journal of Communication, 59(1), 1–18.

60.

McKee, A. (2003). Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

61.

Miles

M. B.

Huberman

M. A.

Saldaña

(2013). Qualitative data analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

62.

Miller

(2013, April 30). Collins gives us all a chance to learn. Orange County Register. Retrieved from http://www.ocregister.com/2013/04/30/miller-collins-gives-us-all-a-chance-to-learn/

63.

Mizzou’s Sam tackles intolerance. (2014, February 10). USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/10/michael-sam-openly-proud-gay-man-nfl-editorials-debates/5380977/

64.

Muir

(2014, May 11). History made: First openly gay player selected in draft. World News Sunday. New York, NY: ABC News.

65.

National Public Radio. (2014, May 12). All things considered . New York, NY: Author.

66.

Neyer

(2016, November 4). Why aren’t there more gay baseball players? Complex Sports. Retrieved from http://www.complex.com/sports/2016/11/why-arent-there-more-gay-baseball-players

67.

Outsports.com (2017, January 3). 171 LGBT people in sports came out publicly in 2016. Retrieved from http://www.outsports.com/2017/1/3/13679502/lgbt-out-athlete-2016

68.

Patterson

Corning

(1997). Researching the body: An annotated bibliography for rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 27(3), 5–29.

69.

Pronger

(1990). The arena of masculinity: Sports, homosexuality, and the meaning of sex. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

70.

Rhoden

W. C.

(2014, August 30). Michael Sam has a spot in history, if not with the Rams. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/sports/football/michael-sam-still-an-inspiration-after-his-release.html

71.

Richardson-Self

L. V.

(2012). Coming out and fitting in: Same-sex marriage and the politics of difference. M/C Journal, 15(6). Retrieved from http://www.journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/572

72.

Ruth

(2014, February 13). Personal foul, intolerance, on NFL. Tampa Bay Times, p. 9A.

73.

Sambolin

Berman

Brown

Lah

Romans

Harlow

(2013, April 30). Jason Collins makes history. Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin. New York, NY: CNN.

74.

Savage

(2013, April 30). All in with Chris Hayes. New York, NY: CNN.

75.

Schieffer

(2013, May 5). Face the Nation for May 5, 2013. CBS Face the Nation. New York, NY: CBS News.

76.

Schwartz, J. (2011). Whose voices are heard? Gender, sexual orientation, and newspaper sources. Sex Roles, 64, 265–275.

77.

Sedgwick

E. K.

(1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

78.

Sender, K. (2004). Business Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

79.

Shpigel

(2014, February 10). In N.F.L., it’s now question of ability, not orientation. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/sports/football/for-michael-sam-its-now-question-of-ability-not-orientation.html

80.

Snow

(2014, February 10). I’m Michael Sam. I’m a—I’m a football player and I’m gay. NBC Nightly News. New York, NY: NBC News.

81.

Stephanopoulos

Roberts

(2013, April 30). First pro athlete says he’s gay; NBA veteran makes history. Good Morning America. New York, NY: ABC News.

82.

Strudwick, P. (2017, May 15). Greg Clarke: Not a single gay footballer will meet with me to discuss coming out. Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/the-fa-chairman-says-no-gay-footballer-will-even-talk-to?utm_term=.hcvLv2q3w#.cmnRBmkZg

83.

Thomas, G. (2015). Proud: My Autobiography. London, UK: Ebury Press.

84.

Stephanopoulos

Roberts

(2014, February 10). Top college football player comes out; all-American says he’s gay. Good Morning America. New York, NY: ABC News.

85.

Tuchman

(1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York, NY: Free Press.

86.

Trujillo, N. (1991). Hegemonic masculinity on the mound: Media representations of Nolan Ryan and American sports culture. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8, 280–308.

87.

Vliegenthart

van Zoonen

(2011). Power to the frame: Bringing sociology back to frame analysis. European Journal of Communication, 26(2), 101–115.

88.

Wagner

Sharpton

(2013, April 29). The last word for April 29, 2013. The Last Word with Lawrence O`Donnell. New York, NY: MSNBC.

89.

Walters

S. D.

(2001a). All the rage: The story of gay visibility in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

90.

Walters, S. (2001b). Take my domestic partner, please: Gays and marriage in the era of the visible. In M. Bernstein & R. Reimann (Eds.), Queer families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State (pp. 338–357). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

91.

Ward

(2015). Not gay: Sex between straight white men. New York, NY: NYU Press.

92.

Welsh

(2014, February 24). Is Jason Collins being the first openly gay athlete significant? U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/02/24/is-jason-collins-being-the-first-openly-gay-nba-athlete-significant

93.

Wertheim, J. (2014, February 19). Michael Sam, SEC Defensive Player of the Year, says he is gay. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from: https://www.si.com/college-football/2014/02/09/michael-sam-missouri-tigers

94.

Williams

J. C.

(2016, October 7). The oppressive seeds of the Colin Kaepernick backlash. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-oppressive-seeds-of-the-colin-kaepernick-backlash-66358

95.

Williams

(1977). Marxism and literature. London, England and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

96.

Wilson, R. (2014, February 17). Survey: 86 percent of NFL players would accept gay teammate. CBSsports.com. Retrieved from http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24446644/percent-of-nfl-players-have-no-problem-with-gay-teammate

97.

Wright

Stephanopoulos

(2014, February 16). Football stunner: College star comes out before draft. This Week. New York, NY: ABC News.

98.

Wright

Clarke

(2009). Sport, the media and the construction of compulsory heterosexuality: A case study of women’s rugby union. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 34(3), 227–243.

99.

Zeigler

(2014, December 2). Why ‘the gay athlete’ should be Sports Illustrated’s sportsman of the year. Outsports. Retrieved from https://www.outsports.com/2014/12/2/7324077/sports-illustrated-gay-sportsman-year

100.

Zirin

(2007, February 18). The locker room closet. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/18/opinion/op-zirin18