Close-Minded Pro Athletes

I just saw this poll posted on SI.com. Frankly, I thought more athletes would be open-minded in today's day and age. Hockey wins once again for the most personable athletes. Note the part I highlighted at the bottom about players who would rather play for the Red Sox than the Yankees. I think that is pretty interesting.

[Based on a survey of 450 MLB players, 248 NBA players, 357 NFL players and 346 NHL players]

Would you welcome an openly gay teammate?

MLB
Yes .....61.5%
No .....34.8%
Don't Know ....3.7%

NBA
Yes .....59.6%
No .....38.6%
Don't Know ....1.8%

NFL
Yes .....56.9%
No .....39.6%
Don't Know ....3.5%

NHL
Yes .....79.9%
No .....18%
Don't Know ....2.1%

FAST FACTS: Polls conducted within the last 10 months.... Brokeback Mountain, about gay cowboys, is up for Best Picture at Sunday's Academy Awards.... Former NFL defensive tackle Esera Tuaolo, who came out three years after retiring in 1999, released a memoir, Alone in the Trenches, last month.... Fewer than half of NFL rookies (41%) and of NBA rookies (48%) responded "yes." ... Among baseball players, 67.8% of those who said they would rather play for the Red Sox than for the Yankees also said they would welcome a gay teammate. Of those who picked the Yankees, only 54.2% said "yes."

The NHL has more outside-the-Americas players than the other teams. (I was going to say non-American, but the Caribbean is part of Americas.) Maybe the international flavor makes the NHL more open as a group.

Re would-be-Sox players being more open than would-be-Yankees players. There's probably a punchline about the irony of the situation and it involves the words "George Steinbrenner."

cth95
Frankly, I thought more athletes would be open-minded in today's day and age.

I had the exact opposite reaction to the numbers. I assumed the figures would run about 70/30 homophobe, up to about 90/10 in grunt and growl (football) or where there is a significant machismo culture (baseball).

Society as a whole is still very homophobic. Truly virulent racism has been banished to a few backwater shitholes, but homophobia is so alive and well in the mainstream that you can run a national political platform on it. Something for the next generation to grow up and out of, I guess.

I am not surprised that that many might be uncomfortable, but I figured they would be a lot better in today's day and age of at least accepting a gay teammate.

cth95
I am not surprised that that many might be uncomfortable, but I figured they would be a lot better in today's day and age of at least accepting a gay teammate.

Warning! Most of the following is based completely on feelings and not on facts! Bill O'Reilly gave me the thumbs up on the following statements:

The NFL number is particularly disappointing because those guys are supposed to have done a certain amount of college work. One would think that NFL players are the most educated athletes of the listed leagues and that the correlation between education and acceptance would translate. I think that if one looked at the social and cultural breakdowns of the leagues, one would extract why the percentages are the way they are. It seems that certain cultural groups within the US are still severely lacking in acceptance even after they themselves fought to be accepted.

It is a sad, sad day when South Africa is more progressive than the US: [www.washingtonpost.com]

On that note, I imagine that Americans have become much more educated about AIDS and I would have to think that the percentages were much worse when AIDS was thought of as only a gay disease that could be transmitted by sweat (Magic Johnson and his experience comes to mind).

Either way, acceptance and rights are only a matter of time. Although told to expect otherwise, those that grew up during the 80's into the early 90's saw clear examples of bigotry and hatred towards many different groups. I know that fighting bigotry was seared into my impressionable mind early and often. Unfortunately, many of those that spearheaded and milked the bigotry and hatred are still in power. Luckily, they are in their twilight years and a new generation is starting to replace them.