NFL Vet Ryan K. Russell Still Wants To Play After Coming Out
Ryan K. Russell publicly came out as bisexual last year. At the time, Russell was primarily known as a former Dallas Cowboy defensive end, and a four-year veteran of the National Football League.
Less than a year before, Russell’s former teammate and best friend Joe Gilliam passed away from cancer. Russell had just come off of his last full NFL season and had been released after playing through a torn shoulder ligament for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I lost my best friend on September 11, 2018, around the same time as I felt I had lost my football career,” he shares with ‘LGBTQ Nation’ in an interview. “So, it was super hard for me as a person, because I lost the one person who knew me, who accepted me and loved me, and then I lost football – the one thing I was very proud of, the one thing I was presenting to people: ‘Oh yeah, I’m a football player, so my life is great.’
“So, I had to find out what really made me great. I had to really fall in love with myself, outside of what I do, and stop filling this void with other people’s love and affirmations or acceptance.”
Russell moved to Los Angeles and for a time, focused on writing. His debut poetry book, Prison or Passion, was published on April 12, 2019. Eventually, he had to sit down and confront something he learned about himself from his days attending Purdue University in Indiana: he was attracted to men and women.
“I had always written – but sharing it publicly, kind of falling in love with my art, my emotions, my sensitivity, and with my sexuality, who I was and just accepting that.”
Initially, being a desired free agent was “really exhilarating” but then, “terrifying – because in that moment, I thought, ‘okay, I’m going to have to go back in the closet’… that didn’t seem like an option to me.”
So the decision came. “I kind of knew what sacrificing would feel like, and what that life was like being in the closet, and I didn’t want to do that again, so I felt that, ‘I need to come out – and I’m still going to pursue my football career, because I should, and teams want me, and I’m damn good, and I deserve to be happy in my personal life.’”
Since his coming out, Russell has remained an unsigned free agent, and the NFL has yet to have an out player active on game day. Nor has the NBA, the NHL, or Major League Baseball.
Still he believes that he can be the first openly LGBT+ player to play in the four major professional sports leagues. That’s why the 28-year-old still gets up at 5:00 a.m. every morning, spending at least four hours in the gym every day, keeping himself in shape for when the opportunity comes.
He’s far from “wait[ing] for a call” either, he adds in the interview. “I manifest it. I physically pursue it every day.”
“I’m not just sitting here like, ‘Yeah, it’ll happen’ – it will happen because I will make it happen, because I’ll finally get an opportunity,” he emphasises.
“If I didn’t [believe], I would call my agent, retire right now, and start doing the other thousand things that I feel like I am f**king great at,” he laughs.
The NFL, for their part, has made a solid effort to celebrate Russell and further incorporate LGBT+ progress into their social advocacy.
Russell helped bring to life the permanent webpage at NFL.com/Pride, and appeared in the league’s PSA campaign for National Coming Out Day 2020. Just last month, Troy Vincent, the NFL Executive Vice President for Football Operations, declared that “The NFL is ready for its first openly out active player.”
“I want to make something abundantly clear,” Vincent opined. “The National Football League condemns homophobia. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind in our sport… we acknowledge and welcome members of the NFL family who have come out.”
Russell commends the league for “taking some big swings… on a corporate level.”
Talking about how he believes other NFL players would react if an LGBT+ player joined their team, Russel states: “I think that everyone that I’ve talked to in the league, and played with, or was friends with in college and transitioned to the league, are very loving and accepting people. I think any player that comes in… and tries to help the team win, will be accepted.”
“We’ve seen that across ethnicities, across religions, in every other sphere of characteristics of a player. I don’t see why this would be the one thing that is not going to make a team do the work.”
He admits, “I know there’s a big media story, [or] narrative, right now that LGBTQ+ players won’t be accepted, and that they’re a distraction – all these things, without any basis, without any evidence backing it up.”
“That’s one of the reason why I’m very vocal about the NFL and being in the locker room,” he stresses, “because a lot of these people that have assumptions about locker rooms, have never been in an NFL locker room. Not as a player. So I have a very different perspective.”
Read related myGwork articles here:
NFL Veteran Has Come Out As Bisexual
The NFL Could be About to Get Its First Ever Openly Gay Player
Former NFL Player To Be The First Gay Person On The California Supreme Court
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