While at
work yesterday, I caught sight of Sportscenter for just a couple of minutes in
one of the break rooms. It was muted but standing in the center of the screen
was a man tagged as one Mr. Mark Knudson, and the byline running underneath him
was this: ‘Says gay athletes should keep orientation private for the good of
the team’. Intrigued and immediately
thinking this guy was the typical alpha male jerk unwilling to accept gays and
lesbians, I decided what I really needed to do was some digging.
A former MLB pitcher over the course
of eight years, beginning in 1985 and ending in 1993, Mr. Knudson became a
commentator and sideline personality in the wider world of sports after leaving
baseball as a player. Recently, in late
February of this year, in fact, he wrote for Mile High Sports an article
entitled ‘It’s About What’s Best For the Team’.
Here’s a link to the piece by Knudson:
http://milehighsports.com/2013/02/28/knudson-its-about-whats-best-for-the-team/
And here’s a response to Mr.
Knudson. The MLB pitcher-turned-commentator begins his unnecessary snark just a
few paragraphs in. While talking about Esera Tualolo, a former NFL defensive
lineman who came out after retirement and wrote a book about his experience
being gay in the NFL, and who was also a professional singer, Knudson gives us
the first hint that he’s knuckle-dragging.
How? By dismissing Tuaolo’s at-the-time legitimate grievances about
being forced to stay in the closet as complaints that fell on deaf ears. Says Knudsen ‘he had a successful career in
pro sports and music, and then as an author.
He didn’t seem to need much sympathy.’
Mr. Knudsen, it may shock and amaze
you to find this out, but having professional success doesn’t immunize a person
from hardship in life. All the money in
the world can’t buy Mr. Tuaolo back all the minutes, hours, weeks or years
spent living a lie, forcing himself to be something someone, he wasn’t
truly. Nothing will take a away the fact
that he likely had to hear homophobic slurs used all the time, without saying a
word against such things.
A couple of paragraphs later, Mr.
Knudsen asks readers to carefully consider “[differentiating] between actual
discrimination and hurt feelings”. The
defensive tone projected in Knudsen’s choice of words here is plain; he’s going
to reject any claim of
discrimination, and by way of an old machismo move. He’ll try to demean those with claims as ‘bellyachers’
or ‘whiners’.
Mr. Knudsen claims to not have heard
anyone associated with pro sports advocate sexual orientation discrimination,
and that’s probably true. He likely hasn’t. After all, staffers and coaches are
businessmen, and they know better than to do anything overt. For someone who has been a player in pro team
sports, it’s staggering that he would deny that such a thing has happened under
alternative auspices. What do I
mean? Allow me to explain by way of a
hypothetical example.
In the NFL, if a player can’t produce
at his position, he’s going to get cut or left on the bench. And each position
relies upon every other player on the squad pitching in. If a running back comes out as gay, and
suddenly no one will block for him or create running lanes because they’re
uncomfortable with him or refuse to support that teammate’s orientation, he isn’t
going to perform well enough to stay on the squad. Coaching staff can use the
excuse of, ‘well, he isn’t producing’, and cut him. Don’t think it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen,
folks. We’re talking about athletes, not
saints (unless they happen to play in New Orleans, and that doesn’t
count).
This sort of skullduggery happens,
and Mark Knudsen’s omission of that fact should not go unnoted. When playmakers and all-stars and Pro Bowlers
cause trouble in the locker room because of their antics, they get reprimanded
in both the media and by their team for attracting unwanted attention. However, these players are always given a
fair chance to show their worth, to prove their value to the team, before
anybody recommends they quit living their lives the way they’d like. In sports, the focus should be on putting a
game in the W column, not who the players are attracted to. When straight
players refuse to play their best because they’re ‘uncomfortable’, then they are putting the team in harm’s way,
not the gay teammate. While Knudsen rightly points out that these straight
players have every right to feel the way they feel, if they’re true
professionals, they’d be able to focus on the game and put in their best effort
regardless.
The entire second half of Knudsen’s
Mile High article smacks of ‘Madmen’-style sexism mixed with a healthy dose of
facepalm-level willful ignorance. He
kicks this off by mentioning the ‘justifiable foxhole mentality’ in the NFL, offering
an awkward segue for a couple of lines to compare the straight pro athletes to
an attractive woman worker in an office who’s made awkward by being gawped
at. Hot on the heels of the sentence in
which he makes this comparison, he immediately invalidates it by saying that
the two workplaces are far too different to make the same tolerance acceptance
applicable to pro athletes.
In a display of that afore-mentioned
willful ignorance, Knudsen talks about how the 9-5 local ‘more tolerant’ office
worker with a gay coworker isn’t ‘essentially living with them the way athletes
do, their every move scrutinized, traveling cross-country and engaging in sport
together’. He says that the office
worker isn’t expected to perform flawlessly as a unit with their gay coworker
because they have different job titles and duties within the company. He even goes for the knee-jerk reflex most of
his male readers would have by mentioning that pro athletes shower
together. My question to him: so what?
You know who has to perform perfectly in sync together, in genuinely hostile
territories, sharing shelter, sleeping quarters, and showering together with
gay teammates? The members of the United
States military, who are so worshipped and lauded as heroes by men like
Knudsen. Additionally, while the workers
in the 9-5 office setting may have very different job titles and duties, they
are hired on for the same bottom line reason; to help the company be profitable
and succeed in the marketplace.
Mark Knudsen turns to George Karl’s ‘teamness’
concept at this point in the article, saying that individualism and personal
agendas are fine in other workplaces, but not in team sports. He is speaking out of his ass here. I will make no apologies for being crass
about it, folks, because every job I’ve
ever worked, the bosses told me to leave my personal business at home, or to at
least keep it somewhat quiet and not let it affect my work. So no, sir, it isn’t
fine for other workplaces, that’s the truth of the corporate world. In any company a person works for, every
employee has to work as a cohesive group to get the work done at its highest
level of quality. Team pro athletes are
not Olympian gods, sir, so stop treating them as if they are.
As for the notion of personal
agendas hurting the team, it only does so when that agenda negatively reflects
upon the organization. A few years back,
when Terrell Owens was being a glory hog and drama queen on and off the field,
yes, it negatively impacted the teams he played for, because it damaged their
reputation for being professional outfits. The Atlanta Falcons had to go into
major damage control mode when Michael Vick was arrested and successfully
convicted of his role in operating a dog-fighting ring. These two pro athletes damaged their teams
because of their personal behaviors and agendas. Yet, Owens was given multiple
chances with various teams, and Vick returned to play in the league at a
premier level of play, ultimately taking the front-man spot vacated when the
Eagles didn’t keep Donovan McNabb. If
Vick and Owens can have their personal agendas and still be allowed to thrive
in the NFL after what they did, then gay athletes should be allowed to do the
far more harmless thing of coming out of the closet.
Knudsen goes on then about how gay
players will “check out” straight players they find attractive in the locker
room. What happened to giving pros the benefit of the doubt to act, oh, I don’t
know, professionally? If there are
unwelcome looks or comments made, and the straight player being made to feel
awkward wants something done about it, then he needs to do what the attractive
woman from Knudsen’s office worker comparison should do in the same
circumstances- file a formal complaint with management! It’s on them to perform an investigation, to
observe what’s going on in their locker rooms and on the field, and to take
appropriate action. If that response isn’t
to Mr. Knudsen’s liking, perhaps he shouldn’t have brought up the comparison in
the first place.
In wrapping up his article, Knudsen
goes once more to the well of team cohesiveness and how personal agendas have
no place in a locker room. I’ve already mentioned the armed forces and how they
seem to be doing just fine with gay teammates.
Perhaps we should also take a look at the efficiency and capability of
police officers and firefighters, two more machismo-riddled professions that
seem to be doing just fine integrating gay squad/team members into the mix. And
what do all of three of these professions have in common? The men and women in
these fields, risking their lives, protecting the common citizenry? They are
paid peanuts compared to these glorified gym class all-stars, Mr. Knudsen. Even
the most famous cop couldn’t make nearly the kind of money these guys in the
NFL command.
By encouraging gay athletes to stay
in the closet for ‘the good of the team’ is a complete cop-out for what’s
really going on here, which is the perpetuation of the idea that pro sports
must be the realm of only straight men who adhere to conservative values. The NFL and all team sports organizations need
to face reality; gay players will be on the team. Do you want them spending a whole lot of
their time and effort keeping their sexual orientation a secret? Or would you
rather they spend their energies on being the best performer they can be for
the benefit of your team? You have a
choice to make, folks. I’d choose the
benefit of the team, myself.
Cheers.
