Gay Miami Hurricanes Player Opens Up
A gay Miami Hurricanes player opened up in a recent interview.
TJ Callan had a unique experience in college football.
Recently, he spoke to Outsports regarding what it was like for him when he attempted to figure out who he could come out to.
Callan said during the interview that he found one person he thought might work.
“Coaches were saying stuff, teammates were saying stuff, and it was this person I felt I could confide in,” he said.
“I was getting close to telling him. I had to tell someone or I was going to go insane.”
Unfortunately, while a group was discussing the movie Moonlight, that person ended up saying something that Callan found especially disappointing.
“It’s sad to see where the world has come to with this whole homosexuality thing,” he recalled him saying.
“I’m never going to say someone is gay, I’m going to say someone is ‘struggling with their sexuality.’ They aren’t gay. They are just letting the devil win.”
It was at that moment that Callan realized that being gay in college football would render him unwelcome in the locker room.
Prior to coming to college, Callan was at a very progressive high school that had many gay students and athletes. At Ronald Reagan High Schools in Doral, he did not feel out of place.
That all changed when he arrived at the University of Miami.
With the Hurricanes, Callan discovered a “totally different environment.”
There he said he experienced a lot of crudeness and homophobia, recalling one particular instance where a teammate compared gay marriage to bestiality.
Callan made it a point to avoid defending gay people or same sex marriage for fear of being outed.
“I can still remember every single person who said something to me,” he said. It was traumatizing at the time. I would get devastated.
“Like when your heart just drops and you get cold, that’s how I’d feel every time someone talked shit about gay people, because it felt like they were saying it about me.”
Callan is quick to mention that his former head coach, Mark Richt, never made any homophobic comments.
Furthermore, he is not even sure if Richt was aware of the behavior that he witnessed.
Callan ultimately graduated from Miami this past May. His goal is tow work with college athletes so that they do not have to endure the experience that he faced.
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A graduate from the University of Texas, Anthony Amador has been credentialed to cover the Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and high school games all over the Lone Star State. Currently, his primary beats are the NBA, MLB, NFL and UFC.
