Welts' coming out is a turning point in sports, but the turn isn't that sharp
By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
The sports world reached a milestone this week when Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts told the world in a New York Times article that he was gay.
Welts is no run of the mill National Basketball Association executive. He has been involved in the sport for decades, and has proved instrumental in helping create today's pro game.
Welts went from being a Seattle Super Sonics ball boy as a a teenager in the 1970s to the NBA's executive vice president, the No. 3 man, by the late-90s. He was the Sonics public relations director during their championship run in 1979 and in 1984 helped create today's popular All-Star Weekend, an idea later copied by Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
Welts was responsible for creating the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” marketing program, and was named Marketer of the Year by Brandweek Magazine in 1998 for his role in creating and launching the WNBA. He's a veritable marketing guru.
And now he's probably one of the highest-level business world individuals to come out of the closet. He's not an actor, musician or performer so you can't dismiss his sexual preference on supposed Hollywood perversions.
He's in the sports world, and the sporting world up to this point has not been receptive to the possibility that homosexual individuals may be among them. In fact, sports has been pretty hostile, what with its “don't touch my junk” approach and recent anti-homosexual comments by Kobe Bryant.
It's to be expected. Sports are macho incarnate. It's an attitude just as much as it's physical and mental talents.
But while many people are rejoicing that a barrier to prejudice has been brought down by Welts coming out, I agree with Yahoo! Sports blogger Eric Freeman that the “boardroom isn't the locker, and progress in one doesn't always lead to broadened horizons in another.”
Misconceptions about homosexuality (they're out to convert you) will need to be dispelled before it becomes acceptable among players, if ever. Some of those can make a locker room environment uncomfortable where, let's face it, we bare ourselves in more ways than one.
Overcoming these will only take place through education and example. The latter has not always been a strong suit for the gay community in the past, and it's a past that still sets the tone for modern day stereotypes.
Perhaps Welts' coming out can help in that sense. There will be a media focus on him now as the gay guy in charge of the Phoenix Suns. But if all we hear about him is what he does in the front office, what he does for the league, that gay guy focus will be diminished and may even disappear.
I've known several gay individuals in the past, worked with a couple before their sexual preference was ever revealed. All they wanted to do was do a good job, be a part of the team and be respected as a professional at what they do.
Welts' coming out may not do much yet in breaking down sports resistance to gays in the locker room, but it could go a ways in changing the perception of homosexuality as aberrant behavior to one of normalcy.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)