SALON

Wednesday, Nov 2, 2005 5:00 PM UTC

King Kaufman’s Sports Daily

Sheryl Swoopes' coming out was no big deal. That's a big deal. Plus: Barkley's first dunk.

By

Topics:

The unfortunate thing about WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes’ coming out last week was also the best thing: It wasn’t a very big story.

Most of the coverage focused on whether Swoopes’ announcement would encourage or discourage gay male athletes in American team sports who may be contemplating going public. The consensus, in case you’re keeping score, was that it would have little or no effect. Very different things, male and female sports, lesbians and gay men. Next subject, please. Thank you.

Part of that lack of big-headline coverage was good old-fashioned sexism: What happens among women is only important to the extent it affects men. I confess my first thought was to address that angle, since we’ve talked before around here about gay male athletes in the team sports coming out.

Another part, a bigger part, was that the WNBA is a minor sport, a niche enterprise, and Swoopes, for all her MVP awards, college and pro titles and Olympic gold medals, was not a particularly famous person beyond that niche.

Most casual sports fans had probably heard her name before last week, but wouldn’t have been able to tell you what team she played for or what she looked like.

Part of that is sexism too, but not as much of it as die-hard fans would like to believe. The WNBA is an uncompelling product that’s been marketed poorly. That’s not to say women’s basketball is necessarily uncompelling. The pro league, a subsidiary of the NBA, has failed to capitalize and expand on the excitement and growing popularity of college hoops.

But the WNBA is big enough, and Swoopes was well-enough known, that the reaction to her as-told-to story in ESPN the Magazine could have been a lot stronger, and a lot more negative. That’s the best thing. This wasn’t a big deal partly because the WNBA isn’t a big deal, but partly because a star female athlete coming out really isn’t that big a deal.

Why not? Well, because most of the people who would squawk the loudest at an NBA or NFL star coming out probably figure all female athletes are lesbians anyway and to hell with the whole butch bunch of ‘em.

And also because the culture of female sports has always been more accepting of homosexuality than the culture of male sports, though that can be overstated. It took eight years for Swoopes to come out, there have only been two other publicly lesbian players in the league, neither of whom have talked much about it, and there’s still thinly veiled hostility toward gay athletes in many college programs, veiled at all only because of anti-discrimination rules.

Look at Penn State, where basketball coach Rene Portland, who spoke openly of a no-lesbian policy in the ’80s and early ’90s before such rules were put in place, has been accused of kicking a player off the team after last season because she suspected the player is a lesbian. Portland denies the charge.

But while it’s not a monumental event in the ongoing history of the acceptance of gays in the sports world, it’s a nice little moment, a signpost of progress along the way. Billie Jean King, a much more famous athlete, lost all her endorsements a quarter-century ago when she was outed in a lawsuit. Swoopes decided to come out after being offered an endorsement, by Olivia Cruises, which caters to lesbians.

Changing world.

Years from now, when the history of gays in sports is written in a world that’s changed enough that a professional athlete, female or male, coming out is about as shocking as a supermarket manager doing so, Swoopes will get a mention, but not her own chapter.

She’ll be most notable not because she was first at anything, but because she’s by far the most prominent black athlete to come out, and one of the most famous black Americans. Alice Walker was more famous than Swoopes when she came out as bisexual. That’s a pretty short list.

“I mean, you have Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell, but you don’t have your well-known gay African-American who’s come out,” Swoopes said in her ESPN Magazine piece. “Not to my knowledge. I know it’s not accepted in the black community. I know I’ll take a lot of flak.”

That’s no small thing, to chip away at that cultural flaw. But it’s not monumental either.

Have you noticed that? Every time a step is taken on this road toward acceptance of gays in sports, it’s not as big a deal as we might have guessed.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

The NBA returns [PERMALINK]

I gave up on the Dallas Mavericks-Phoenix Suns TV double-header nightcap after three quarters Tuesday night, with the Suns up by 11. They built the lead to 17 in the fourth quarter before blowing it and losing in double overtime.

I was long since in bed, dreaming of a world in which the home team didn’t wear its road orange uniforms on opening night as part of a sponsorship deal with a hardware store whose signature color is orange. Feh.

I did watch the entirety of the opener, the San Antonio Spurs’ beginning defense of their championship by clocking a good Denver Nuggets team at home, 102-91. The salespeople in the Spurs front office must be sleeping on the job. San Antonio actually wore white uniforms. Can you imagine?

Seven quarters of long-way-to-go basketball was enough for me. I’m not in midseason form yet, but it’s good to know Charles Barkley’s already in playing, uh, shape. His halftime analysis of the Mavericks: “They play defense like I did! They can’t guard anybody.”

Previous column: NBA preview

- – - – - – - – - – - -

  • Bookmark http://www.salon.com/sports to get the new Kaufman column every day.
  • To receive the Sports Daily Newsletter, send an e-mail to kingnewsletter@salon.com.

    • Next Article

    Related Stories

    More Related Stories

    Featured Slide Shows

    The week in 10 pics

    close X
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Facebook
    • Thumbnails
    • Fullscreen
    • 1 of 11
    • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
      Credit: AP/LM Otero

    • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
      Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

    • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
      Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

    • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
      Credit: AP/Molly Riley

    • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
      Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

    • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
      Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

    • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
      Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

    • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
      Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

    • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
      Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

    • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
      Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

    • Recent Slide Shows

    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Facebook
    • Thumbnails
    • Fullscreen
    • 1 of 11

    Related Videos

    Comments

     7 Comments

    Comment Preview

    Your name will appear as username

    You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

    follow salon

    Most Read

    Popular on Reddit

    links from salon.com

    From Around the Web

    Presented by Scribol
    listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own