After playing for the Las Vegas Raiders for the last two football seasons, out NFL player and West Chester native Carl Nassib recently entered a one-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ESPN reported. The Raiders cut ties with Nassib, who played outside linebacker, last March due to salary cap reasons.
“It’s a new year and I’m excited to be a football player again,” Nassib said in a press meeting covering a Buccaneers practice earlier this month, which Outsports reported on. “I’m excited to go out there and show what I can do.”
For the Buccaneers, Nassib will play on the defensive line, Outsports reported. He did well in last weekend’s pre-seasons game against Tennessee, despite not having received the playbook yet.
When Nassib came out as gay in an Instagram video in 2021, he was largely met with positive reactions, both publicly and from his teammates at the time, despite the NFL’s history of anti-LGBTQ bias. His announcement made him the first openly gay active player in the league.
“It’s momentous,” Jim Buzinski, co-founder of Outsports.com, told PGN last year. “It helps destroy the myth that gay men are not macho enough to play sports like football, or that a sport like football would not be accepting. He’s been accepted by everybody. It’s just fantastic news.”
While Nassib’s sexual orientation does not bear any weight on his athletic ability, representation in professional sports matters. In his instagram video, Nassib said, “I just think that representation and visibility are so important. I actually hope that one day videos like this and the whole coming out process are not necessary.”
Most of the questions Nassib received from the press that covered the Buccaneers training camp centered on football, but one reporter asked him about his thoughts on people approaching him to thank him for coming out.
“That’s been the most rewarding thing about the last year, people coming up to me, telling me the positive impact that I’ve had,” Nassib told the reporter. “It’s just really so rewarding and the reason why I did it. I think that everybody can continue to help be that positive person in anyone’s life to make the day a little bit better. I hope that I can be a little push in the positive direction.”
Chris Scott Jr., Commissioner of the Greater Philadelphia Flag Football League, told PGN in a past interview, “I think it’s really important that it’s an active player [who came out]. When Jason Collins came out, he was close to retiring. This is right on time. I think the biggest thing is, as Nassib said in his video, this idea of representation. How often are we looking for someone to do the thing that we want to do? [Being] gay is becoming more and more acceptable, especially with people like Michael Sam, or the way Dwyane Wade embraced his [trans] daughter. More conversations are being held, and more people are comfortable because they see the community is gaining support.”
The NFL’s history of homophobia had some people wondering whether Nassib would land another contract when he was between teams. In 2019, Outsports reported that when NFL players outwardly supported a range of charitable organizations through My Cause My Cleats, six players across five teams wore cleats that supported Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which opposes same-sex marriage and same-sex intimacy.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that Raiders coach Jon Gruden resigned after homophobic, racist and misogynistic emails he had written over the years became public. In one email, Gruden called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a “faggot,” and critizied him for pressuring Jeff Fisher, coach of the St. Louis Rams at the time, to draft “queers,” alluding to Michael Sam, who came out in 2014 and later took a hiatus from football.
Despite homophobia having permeated some areas of the league, Nassib appears to be receiving support and respect all around.
“Every locker room culture is different,” tweeted Jenna Laine, Bucs reporter for ESPN’s NFL Nation. “But the thing that was most telling for me about the one in Tampa was that there were Bucs players who told me after Carl Nassib came out, that they suspected/knew he was gay, and they not only honored that secret but supported him fully.”