The Last Closet: Reflecting On My Experience Inside of the Football Locker Room

When I was about 11 years old, my parents suspected I might be gay, and they decided to do something about it. 

This was the mid-1970s, way before the era of inclusion and participation trophies. To Mom and Dad — who were born during the Great Depression under Jim Crow — my impending queerness was obvious. As the youngest of four children and the only boy, I was bookish and sensitive, a chubby Black kid in horn-rimmed glasses who sometimes combed Mom’s hair, was too eager to please and too quick to cry when my sisters teased me. 

“You need toughening up,” my dad, a career enlisted airman, told me in the car one summer afternoon. We were heading to the Vandenberg Air Force Base Sports and Recreation center, a short drive from our house on the sprawling California facility. 

“Your mother and I talked it over,” he said. “We think playing a sport would help you develop.” He didn’t elaborate, but we both knew what he meant: Playing a sport would help you quit being such a sissy. 

“My mother and my late father wanted to protect me from a country that was unkind to Black boys, and cruel to Black boys who acted gay.”

That day, with Dad looking over my shoulder, I signed up for Vandenberg’s 12-and-under football program. Neither of us could have known it, but my parents had ushered me into what noted sports sociologist Dr. Pat Griffin has called “the last closet” — team sports. 

Over the decade or so I played, from rec league through high school and college, I learned that metaphorical closet includes a funhouse mirror of masculinity. From one angle, football is a hyper-macho sport where men are strong, women are cheerleaders and the weak are probably homosexual and must be shunned.

From another angle, it’s all kinds of homoerotic: tight pants, broad shoulder pads under clingy jerseys; muscle-bound bodies, bottom-patting, communal dressing and undressing. In very specific circumstances, it’s acceptible and even encouraged to joke about raping a teammate while standing around with a bunch of half-naked dudes, waiting your turn in the shower. 

Checking out a teammate’s body is fine. But it better be admiration, not attraction. 

Sociologists and researchers have written about hegemonic masculinity, defined as the presumption of heterosexuality among athletes who play football and other “high-status” team sports, coupled with the expectation they have unfettered access to desirable women. Sexual attraction to another man is taboo.

Throw in some Black masculinity stereotypes — brute strength, natural machismo, hypersexual — and the picture is more complicated, especially for a shy, chubby bookish kid with glasses who sometimes played with girls. A kid like me. 

I quickly took to playing football, though, and managed to fit in by going along with the culture, even if parts of it were contradictory, confusing and sometimes disturbing. If, as Alfred Kinsey famously declared, one in 10 men are gay, odds are there are more than a few gays among the 1,600 men who play in the National Football League, the 8,100 students on college teams and the 1.2 million boys who suit up in high school. If I felt that way as a straight guy, then it’s hard to imagine what it’s like for a young man who loves the sport but isn’t sexually attracted to women. 

To be sure, there has been progress. 

The Limitations of Progress

Ten years ago, Michael Sam, who is Black, became the first out gay college football player drafted into the NFL. Two years ago, Carl Nassib, a standout pro, became the first openly gay active player in NFL history. Last season, Byron Perkins, who played at Hampton University, became the first out gay player in HBCU football history. 

Honestly, though, that progress has been limited at best. 

Sam, a college star, was cut from 2 NFL teams and never played in the league. Perkins’ coming-out story made a splash, but his modest college career didn’t translate into a place on a pro roster. Nassib, who is white, was a top-tier NFL player when he came out in 2022, but retired two seasons later; no active player has come out since. 

“From one angle, football is a hyper-macho sport where men are strong, women are cheerleaders and the weak are probably homosexual and must be shunned. From another angle, it’s all kinds of homoerotic.”

What’s more, just a handful of Black NFL players have come out after hanging up their uniforms — even though the league is 53 percent Black.  

Given what’s at stake, from fan admiration to product endorsements, it shouldn’t be surprising that Sam, Nassib and Perkins haven’t led a Pride parade out of the football closet.

All of which hints that, while much has changed about football culture since I played in the 1980s — Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Wiliams, a top draft pick, is fond of pink lip gloss and fingernail polish, and Jacksonville Jaguars strength coach Kevin Maxen is out and proud — a lot seems to have stayed the same. That includes the powerful, anti-gay norms and celebrated, hyper-macho ethos I learned back in the day.

My socialization in football culture started early.

Joseph Williams (Image courtesy of subject)

Surviving the Homophobic/Homoerotic Matrix of Locker Room Culture  

On the Vandenberg 12-and-under team, our tough-guy coaches had an easy way to make sure we hustled, paid attention and kept the whining to a minimum. If they caught a boy screwing around, he’d get pulled aside as a coach whipped out a cheap 70s label-maker. He’d click out a word in blue-and-white plastic — PUSSY — and slap it to the back of the kid’s helmet. 

Later, at my Tennessee high school, the locker room was home to what I’ll call the homophobic/homoerotic matrix: alpha-male jocks loudly displaying their machismo, but also playing with homosexuality, albeit in a whistling-past-the-disco kind of way. 

I was sexually attracted to girls, but I was kind of a nerd, so I tried to avoid the matrix whenever possible; it made me uncomfortable. Still, I loved playing football. I was good at it, and, like most teenage boys, I wanted to fit in. So I built my own closet of sorts and played along with the Southern-fried, anti-gay homoeroticism. 

I kept to myself when, during summer training camp at a military academy, the redneck, grab-ass roughhousing started up in the dorms in the evening. I kept my mouth shut when my teammates started throwing around gay slurs. I laughed along with everyone else when two players, one Black and one white, pretended to make out in the middle of the locker room. 

By the time I got to college, I was more comfortable with the homophobic/homoerotic matrix, mostly because there was no choice. That included dealing with communal showers (back in high school, the showers were always broken so we cleaned up at home.)

“Life in the college football matrix included “meat peeping:” checking out your teammate’s junk on the sly to see who’s packing (our white-boy kicker killed that stereotype). We held hands in the huddle. I had a secret crush on one of the defensive lineman; a receiver and I still call each other ‘Betty,’ for some reason. After an offseason workout, a teammate looked me up and down and told me I’d gotten buff. I’m pretty sure I blushed.”

I had to accept standing in line, waiting a turn with 60 other big, smelly guys, naked save for a half-sized towel wrapped around the waist. It was an everyday thing, after practice and after games. But I always shrank a little when one receiver, a loud, street-smart brother with blazing speed and an attitude, would yell out the same rape joke in the shower line on the rare, joyous occasion of a win on Saturday. 

“Don’t drop the soap!” he’d shout. “‘Cause if you do, I gotcha!”

Life in the college football matrix included “meat peeping:” checking out your teammate’s junk on the sly to see who’s packing (our white-boy kicker killed that stereotype). We held hands in the huddle. I had a secret crush on one of the defensive lineman; a receiver and I still call each other “Betty,” for some reason. After an offseason workout, a teammate looked me up and down and told me I’d gotten buff. I’m pretty sure I blushed.

At the same time, textbook toxic masculinity was in full effect. 

Hazing, Gender Roles, and the Dark Side of Male Dominance

Guys took advantage of groupies, girls who exclusively slept with players. Five of my freshman teammates were arrested or kicked out of school for gang-raping a teenage girl. An offensive lineman shot and killed his girlfriend and her mother — and himself — when she broke up with him over his abuse. 

Then there was rookie initiation. 

Each year at the end of training camp, upperclassmen hazed the freshmen. My first year we were blindfolded and force-fed onion gum. My senior year, the freshmen were verbally humiliated, including lots of gay slurs, then put in thrift-store dresses and dumped downtown.

Just some good old-fashioned hijinks by some fun-loving, totally straight and not-at-all- queer-curious football players. No subtext here.

“I wish I could say I’ve rid myself of all I learned in the homophobic/homoerotic football matrix; some of the crusty, outdated lessons I learned die hard. I’m still working on it.”

Age, acquired wisdom, and evolving definitions of masculinity have weathered away the more toxic elements of the matrix that I’d absorbed during my football career. Masculinity, we know, is a spectrum and not binary, as I’d been taught. I wouldn't trade the experience because I loved the sport and graduated college with zero student-loan debt. 

But it took me years, and a lot of therapy, to come to grips with the fact that my parents introduced me to football as preparation for life in America. My mother and my late father wanted to protect me from a country that was unkind to Black boys, and cruel to Black boys who acted gay. It was a key moment in our loving but complicated relationship. 

Sometimes, though, I wonder what my life would look like if I weren’t “toughened up,” like they wanted: if I learned it was OK to be sensitive, enjoy styling someone’s hair and play with girls — or boys — if I wanted. 

I wish I could say I’ve rid myself of all I learned in the homophobic/homoerotic football matrix; some of the crusty, outdated lessons I learned die hard. I’m still working on it — still developing.

I just hope there are players, coaches, teams and parents out there that are doing the same.