Manti Te’o was a solid first round draft pick.
The Notre Dame linebacker led his team, the Fighting Irish, to the National Championship Game and was set for NFL greatness…and then it happened.
VIDEO: Manti Te’o Comes Clean To Katie Couric
The news leaked that he was Catfish’d.
Te’o’s dead girlfriend wasn’t really dead. In fact, she wasn’t real at all. It turns out the girl he thought was his girlfriend, Lennay Kukua, was actually a guy named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.
Since we live in a world of skeptics, people thought Manti was in on the hoax, some even suggested that Manti was secretly a gay man, and used this Lennay character as a cover-up.
I was one of those people until I heard the voicemails of Ronaiah pretending to be Lennay, and let’s just say, that dude sounds like a lady.
I’m a fair person, I believe in liberty and justice for all. I think it’s totally unfair that I can get married to the woman I love, but one of my gay friends cannot get married to the person they love. While this senseless ideology is quickly changing all over America, there is one place where it’s not happening: the NFL.
There are 32 teams in the National Football League. Each team has 52 players on its roster, making for 1,696 men who play the game. Yet none of them are gay.
Well, at least openly. Why is that so? Is the NFL too macho for a gay player? I don’t think so. Society accepted Omar, a fictional gay thug from HBO’s The Wire. No one doubts that Omar wasn’t the trillest gangster ever to grace the small screen.
It’s not just in gay-friendly Hollywood where a change has come, but also in the homophobic realm of hip-hop. Frank Ocean is one of the hottest singers out. He has penned hits for the biggest names in the game, and lent his vocals to tracks with giants like Jay-Z, Andre 3000, and Kanye West to name a few.
Then right before his album dropped, Frank announced that he was gay. People thought it would be the end of his career. It wasn’t; he made a bold move, and it changed the culture of hip-hop.
He came out and absolutely no one cared.
The NFL is no different. Manti Te’o won’t be the first openly gay player, since he’s straight – really really straight – but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t step up. Manti just came clean, telling Katie Couric all the ins and outs of the most embarrassing moment of his life.
Think about it. Regardless of how progressive the world might be, for a straight man to fall in love with a voice he only heard over the phone is bad enough. Then to find out that voice is a man…
My heart goes out to this guy.
However, the only way for moments like this to be less embarrassing is for a gay NFL player to be man enough to come out of the closet and rep for his team.
~ Blog Xilla Follow Me On Twitter
Xilla is the Sr. Entertainment Editor for GlobalGrind.com as well as CEO of the number 1 relationship blog BlogXilla.com/M2TB.com. He has been featured in XXL, The Source, Essence, LA Times and is considered one of the premiere bloggers in the industry. Follow him on twitter @BlogXilla
