Outsports Radio

Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports, joins Same Team for its inaugural episode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chicago-area schoolteacher Andres Bauhs has a goal — to attend a game at all 130 FBS (Division I-A) college football stadiums across the country. At 65 stadiums and counting, he's halfway there. His husband of five years, Olin, travels with him on most weekends, filling the role of dutiful videographer. Bauhs talks about the great traditions of college football but also what being gay means to his travels. "Being gay and tackling this quest has been an awkward experience for me at times," he says. "Certain locations we descend upon make it challenging to perform a simple action like holding hands." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

San Francisco 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers is a pro football pioneer. This season, she will become the NFL’s second full-time assistant female coach. She will also become the league’s first openly LGBT coach, male or female. “No matter what you do in life, one of the most important things is to be true to who you are,” Sowers, openly lesbian, told Outsports when asked why she is discussing her sexual orientation publicly for the first time. “There are so many people who identify as LGBT in the NFL, as in any business, that do not feel comfortable being public about their sexual orientation. We talk with Rebecca Fernandez, a friend of Sowers and herself a pro football player. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For years people have tried to offer answers about why there aren't more publicly out gay professional athletes in the big men's sports. One of the reasons given by people in sports and in the media is that they will suddenly be subjected to horrible treatment by fans and opposing players. Yet this week English soccer referee Ryan Atkin came out publicly as gay saying, "People don't shout at you any louder because of your sexuality." That completely contradicts the fearmongering that so many people are engaged in surrounding coming out in sports. We dive into the realities of this. Also, Major League Baseball wasted no time suspending Oakland A's player Matt Joyce for directing a gay slur at a game last week. Joyce has offered an apology and he accepted responsibility. Are suspensions an important part of tackling homophobic language in sports, or are they an arcane idea best substituted by "education"?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Outsports has been credentialed to cover Super Bowls and NFL games, Final Fours, the MLS Cup, MLB games, USOC events and even the ESPYs. But we were denied a credential by the St. Louis Cardinals to cover Christian Day, where the featured speaker was former player Lance Berkman, who campaigned against an LGBT rights bill in Houston. It turns out that the Cardinals hid behind a nonexistent Major League Baseball policy on credentialing websites. We discuss what happened and why. We also look at the NHL's curious decision to hold its draft next year in Texas, even as the state deabtes an anti-transgender bill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Canadian Olympic pole vaulter Shawn Barber came out as gay on Facebook in a brief post and then basically said nothing about it for weeks. Recently, when asked about coming out, he said: “It’s something that shouldn’t be a big deal,” Barber said, right after winning the Canadian championships. It’s a personal choice, it shouldn’t be so heavily debated." A recent column ignited a debate that we will weigh into. We discuss whether being an openly gay athlete should mean anything and what responsibilties, if any, such athletes have. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the news that Scott Frantz of the Kansas State University football team is openly gay, there will be five openly gay players in college football this season. All five players have come out publicly this year, itself very notable. Stories about openly gay football players — high school, college or pros — used to be very rare and to have five come out in the span of six months (all of them accepted on their teams) shows a momentum not seen before. We discuss what this all means, and just how real Frantz's chances are right now of making it to the NFL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Doyle has been writing about MMA Fighting for major publications as long as just about anybody. Now a staff writer for SB Nation's MMAFighting.com and a columnist for Yahoo! Sports, Doyle wants to talk about being gay in an MMA fighting world that seems to take pride in being very, very straight. We delve into Doyle's personal life as well as his professional life as a once-closeted MMA writer. Plus we tackle his writing about transgender fighter Fallon Fox and how he feels about not being public about his sexual orientation as a member of the LGBT community got hammered by many in the MMA world for daring to dip her toe in their world. Doyle opens up about his life experiences in both personal and professional ways. Coming out publicly is just about the most powerful thing an LGBT person can do to advance acceptance of the entire community, and we're proud of Doyle for reaching out to Outsports to share his personal experiences on a very personal, yet very professional, journey. Learn more about you

Ryan O'Callaghan this week became only the 11th NFL player in history to come out as gay as he told his story to Outsports about how he planned on killing himself as soon as his career ended. Fortunately, his life was saved by the intervention of some very special people. We also will talk with Austin Hodges, a 19-year-old college student who played high school football in rural Texas and also danced with the drill team at halftime of games. Austin found refuge and a subsitutute family through high school sports.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was a shocking move when the World OutGames canceled their event in Miami the day of the opening ceremony just two weeks ago. It left thousands of athletes looking for answers and the worldwide LGBT community wondering what the future is for these large-scale LGBT sporting events. With the Gay Games set for Paris in 2018, we talk about what happened with the OutGames and the future of these kinds of events.  Tennis legend Margaret Court recently weighed in again on LGBT rights, sparking angry and upset responses from people in the tennis world and the LGBT community. What does it mean for Court's standing in the tennis world? And what happens to any athlete's reputation when they publicly share homophobic and other anti-LGBT personal opinions? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In an NHL playoff game last week, Ryan Getzlaf got made at a referee and called him a "." Getzlaf was fined $10,000 for language the NHL called "demeaning and disrespectful." But he was not suspended a game as was the case a year earlier when Andrew Shaw of the Chicago Blackhawks called a referee a "faggott." To us, both terms are homophobic, so why the discrepancy in penalties? We discuss this with Chris Hine, Blackhawks beat writer for the Chicago Tribune and himself gay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week saw two stars of their respective sports tie the knot in same-sex weddings. Diana Taurasi of the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury married Penny Taylor, her former teammate with whom she won multiple WNBA titles. "I would hope people would be happy for two people that love each other,” Taylor said. “At the end of the day, it's pretty simple." Also this weekend, Abby Wambach, the U.S. women's soccer legend, announced she has gotten married to a woman. And last week, Olympic diver Tom Daley married his longtime boyfriend. We look at how the legalization of same-sex marriage has empowered LGBT athletes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When ESPN announced a series of layoffs last week, there was no shortage of speculation as to why the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" was suddenly short on cash. One theory said that the network had become too politically "liberal," and that ESPN's embrace of gay athletes and LGBT issues was a major reason people were suddenly tuning out the network. Specifically, some critics pointed to the network showing Michael Sam's "Draft kiss" over and over and over again. Do they have a point? We discuss. A really neat story has come out of Spokane, Wash., this week of a top NHL prospect who has two moms and isn't afraid to show it. Jaret Anderson-Dolan will be selected in this June's NHL Draft; He's currently projected to go in rounds 1-3, and with seven rounds, he will be drafted. He opened up about his two lesbian moms, and also about putting Pride Tape on his hockey stick to support his moms and other LGBT people. His team followed suit. That's leadership.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com

When Olympian and World Champion Shawn Barber decided to come out publicly, he took to his Facebook page in the early hours of the morning and wrote a brief post saying he's "gay and proud" and thanking his family for support. Then... silence. No media interviews about his announcement. No statement to the press from his agent. No more social-media messages about, well, anything. It was so eerily silent that we at Outsports felt compelled to verify that he wrote the message before we wrote about it. We did... and he did. While so many people talk about big announcements and press conferences, this is just yet another way for an athlete to come out publicly, sharing the news of his sexual orientation before he's comfortable sharing his complete story. As we approach Pride Month, we listed 11 MLB teams that are hosting LGBT Pride events in June and several more that are doing so over the spring and summer. It's great to see these events, but what does it say about teams that aren't hosting events like this? 

Josh Velasquez and Axel Reed are two swimmers in college who each had a secret -- they were gay. Through their close bond, the two friends came out to each other and have become each other's rock. They write about the importance of friendship when coming out. "Swimmers have a special connection, and that was the reason we clicked," they write in a co-bylined essay on Outsports. We talk with Josh and Axel about their journies and what it means to have a best friend with whom who can share your most intimate thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's widely accepted in society that people aren't supposed to "out" gay people against their will. Being "different" is a secret that only the gay, lesbian or bisexual person can decide to share in their own time and in their own way. Yet there are various examples of people outing transgender people, as though trans people don't deserve the same opportunity to choose for themselves when they share their most intimate and personal secrets about their identity. We saw it with Grantland's infamous article about 'Dr. V's magical putter,' and it was again front-and-center on this week's episode of 'Survivor.' While the latter has little connectdion to sports, what transpired on the show -- with a gay man outing a transgender man -- taught a lesson with repercussions far beyond a far-off island with a bunch of contestants. We talk about the misunderstandings many people have about being transgender, and the idea that trans people must automatically be out or they are, as we have heard far too often, "deceiving"

Now that the NCAA is allowing North Carolina to once again bid on hosting championship events, we look at what this says about the organization's views of LGBT people. Was the HB2 repeal bill in North Carolina just a scam and has the NCAA ever been an ally of the LGBT community. Regardless of what happens with North Carolina, visibility is the key to helping LGBT people achieve equality. It's something we deal with daily at Outsports with coming out stories. We share some of our favorite coming out stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is impossible to separate sports frim LGBT rights. The biggest news was the passing of HB2 in North Carolina, the so-called "bathroom bill" that would discriminate against transgender people. After passage of the bill, the NCAA stripped North Carolina of several championship events, while the NBA moved the All-Star Game out of Charlotte. Now comes word that the Democratic governor and Republican legislaure have reached a deal on HB2 to win the NCAA's favor. But is the compromise good for LGBT people? We also look at Texas, which is considering a similar bill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Nico Hines of The Daily Beast issued a statement earlier this week about outing gay Olympians last summer in Rio, it was met largely with a pretty loud collective rolling of the eyes. The statement, which was apparentely supposed to take the place of an apology, was seven months in the making and reflected an academic assessment of Hines' failings as a journalist in pretending to be a gay man on the dating app Grindr, then entrapping gay and bisexual male Olympians to reveal themselves to a journalist. While there's no sense in debating whether Hines' apology was appropriate or not -- it wasn't -- we talk about just how bad it was and how it stacks up against other bad apologies in sports history. With David Denson's retirement, the Big Four sports leagues in North America are again left without any publicly out gay athletes for the first time since 2013. Denson was a player in the Milwaukee Brewers system but never made it to the Majors. Robbie Rogers is still in Major League Soccer but has not played

Pro wrestler Anthony Bowens was nervous about revealing that he was bisexual given possible recriminations from other wrestlers.  "My job description is to entertain fans through body language, story lines featuring over-the-top characters and, well, grappling other men dressed in a similar way," Bowens wrote on Outsports. Bowens' boyfriend, Michael Pavavno then posted a video of the two, one seen by a fellow wrestler. Bowens was blown away by the acceptance he received and he decided to come out publicly, a decision that has been met with positive attention. We talk with Bowens and Pavano about their relationship and Bowens' journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices