While the Super Bowl, pitting the New England Patriots against the New York Giants, will threaten to be the most-hyped football game in memory, the commercials are giving the game a run for its money.
We previously reported on a Volkswagen commercial featuring Star Wars dogs and an underwear commercial featuring the best side of David Beckham. Outdoing them both today is a teaser for a Ferris Bueller commercial that has Ferris Bueller trending on Twitter.
Amal Fashanu, niece of Justin Fashanu, the only professional British soccer player ever to come out of the closet, has worked with filmmakers to put together a documentary exploring why no gay soccer players have come out since her uncle.
Not surprisingly, she found the fans pointed fingers at the establishment, the establishment pointed fingers at the players, and the players pointed fingers at everybody else. From the show’s description:
Josh Acut of LaxAllStars.com dove headfirst this week into the question of gay athletes in lacrosse. He related an eye-opening story about talking to a group of high school students about lacrosse’s “Grow The Game” initiative. What he came up against was lacrosse’s dominant “bro culture”:
This week, I was talking at a school with an emerging group of interested lacrosse players, and I brought up the idea of recruiting openly gay/lesbian athletes from other sports, and from within the community, to help grow the game. To be honest, I really wasn’t thinking it would garner the response that it did. The response to my suggestion went something like this:
Openly gay Swedish pro soccer player Anton Hysen talked with Gay4soccer recently and had a bold prediction: Not only does he very much want to play professional soccer in the United States, he will at some point:
Noting “I like everywhere; it’s still America,” where he plays isn’t much of an issue, he just wants to play professionally in one of the great cities in a country where he has come to enjoy his time. To him living and playing in America “would be an amazing feeling,” a feeling he’s had since his time in North Carolina. …
Openly gay and HIV-positive Olympic diving legend Greg Louganis wants to waltz on ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ next season. Louganis fans have created a Facebook campaign to push the alphabet network to extend an invitation to Louganis, and the campaign is getting some attention. DWTS has been in Louganis’ cross-hairs for a couple years, as he told People in 2010:
“I want to be on Dancing with the Stars,” he tells PEOPLE. “It would be such a blast.” …
Nick Clark
Nick Clark, 25, is the assistant men’s and women’s volleyball coach at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, N.C.
By Nick Clark
I am just a little past the midway point of my first season as an “out” coach. It has been largely gratifying with few hiccups. I was hired by Pfeiffer University in May 2011, a month after an article was written about me on Outsports. I am so happy and thankful for the article. I was inspired by those who had articles written about them and I saw how much it helped me and I wanted to help others in return. I received many emails from people all over the country. All were positive. They shared their own lives with me. Some were out and others were still closeted. Some were athletes and others were just sports fans. Continue reading →
Madonna is the halftime entertainment for this year’s Super Bowl. According to the gossip page of the New York Daily News:
MADONNA is “bringing gay to the Super Bowl.” That’s what we overheard one of her dancers say at the premiere party for Her Madgesty’s “W.E.” at Top of the Standard on Monday night. On the red carpet, Madonna told us she’s “extremely nervous” about the big game, but looking forward to singing her new song, “Give Me All Your Love,” and some “oldies but goodies.” Continue reading →
When we put together our list of the 100 most important moments in LGBT sports history, we knew we’d probably overlook something. Maybe an Austrian hurdler came out in the Eighties, or some Slovakian soccer player had said something horribly homophobic and damaging. And we may have missed something like that. But I was incredibly embarrassed when I realized we missed a story that we had written about extensively, and that I personally feel is a deeply important moment in our history.
Many people, gay and straight, wonder when we will have the first openly gay professional team-sport athlete in America. The truth is, we’ve already had him.
Openly gay professional soccer player David Testo has been elected by his peers to one of 18 open positions on the U.S. Soccer Athlete Council. Testo is the first publicly out man to serve on the council; He has been elected to a two-year term.
His election is a testament to where the world of sports is in regards to homophobia. Testo told Outsports previously that one of his main objectives if elected would be to help end homophobia in soccer.
Sidney Franklin in 1932
An exhibit has opened in Israel highlighting Jewish athletes who competed prior to the state’s founding in 1948 and one of the most interesting deals with Sidney Franklin, who became the first American and first Jewish bullfighter in the world in 1923.
“It is no coincidence that very little has been heard up to now about the amazing story of the Jewish bullfighter who captured the Spanish people’s heart,” says the exhibition’s curator, sports journalist Adi Rubinstein. “He just did not fit in with the commonly accepted image of the weak, puny Jew from the ghetto who always gets beaten up by the gentiles.” Continue reading →
Voted last year Britain’s “manliest man,” professional rugby player Sacha Harding appears naked in the Gay Times naked issue (click on image for larger view; video after the jump). And according to an interview with the Advocate, fighting for gay rights is an important part of his identity.
Have you witnessed homophobia in sports?
I personally have not.
Blogger and athlete Robert Scott
Phillip Parker, 14, of Gordonsville, Tenn., killed himself this month, a victim of constant bullying at school, his parents said. “He kept telling me he had a rock on his chest,” said Ruby Harris, Phillip’s grandmother. “He just wanted to take the rock off where he could breathe.” His death stunned his family (750 people attended his funeral) and should outrage us all. It angered Robert Scott, an openly gay high school soccer player in Memphis, who is part of the teen blog BradRobertBen we have written about before.
While [Philip] has passed and will be remembered as another of the wrongly killed students of our time, he has sparked something in me and others alike. We want to lift that rock from his chest – let him breathe freely without others freely bullying students like him. Continue reading →
This is an old video but I just stumbled across it. It’s a testament to the power of determination. This guy Chris Krueger obviously had a really nice body at some point before his injury, and he wanted to get it back. In 70 days he lost a boatload of weight and looked fantastic. When I moved to Los Angeles I inadvertently lost almost 20 pounds in eight months by simply eating more healthily (not trying to lose weight, just trying to eat more healthy) and exercising more.
All of that takes determination. I hear people who say they can’t lose the weight they want. If that’s you, you can! Can everyone get that currently deemed-perfect 6-pack? No. But everyone can get more fit if they can muster the will-power. For some inspiration as to the power of the human will, check out the guy’s body transformation video…
We at Outsports certainly appreciate Baltimore linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo’s NFL-leading advocacy for gay rights. Unfortunately, a Tweet from early this morning has also proven him to be a sore loser. Hours after his team blew a game to what Ayanbadejo deems an inferior team, he held a little pity party on Twitter:
OMGay.tv has put together what they call the “Best of Gay Sports” videos. No, it’s not the finals of the latest Gay Softball World Series. You won’t see any thunderous dunks from the Coady Roundball Classic. Failing to make the cut were any of the hard hits from the Gay Superbowl.
No, the producers decided to include Turkish oil wrestling, a prancing soccer referee and a crude sexual “move” from scripted professional wrestling. It’s another overtly stereotypical homage to the same old “Ha, I’m gay, what’s a football?” creed we’ve heard from so much of the gay media for years.
