American football: player Carl Nassib reveals his homosexuality, a first in NFL history

The Las Vegas Raiders player is the first active player to come out. He hopes his example  will make other gay athletes more visible.

Las Vegas Raiders player Carl Nassib made American football history by becoming the first NFL player to reveal his homosexuality on Monday, June 22. “I just wanted to take a moment to say I’m gay,” he said in a video shot from a sunny garden and posted on Instagram .

“It’s been a while since I thought about doing this but I finally feel comfortable enough to take the weight off my shoulders,” he explains, smiling at times, very serious to others. The 28-year-old defensive end is the first active player on a professional American Football League team to come out. Several players made theirs after retiring from the sport, the most watched in the United States.

His team supports this initiative

In 2014, a university championship player, Michael Sam, was selected by the Rams, the NFL team in Los Angeles, after revealing his homosexuality. But he had been released from his contract after playing a few preseason games and never appeared in regular season games in the NFL. Carl Nassib has already played five NFL seasons and joined the Raiders after passing through two other teams, the Cleveland Browns and the Tampa Buccaneers.

Carl Nassib wants his example to make other gay athletes more visible. In his video, the young man also announces making a donation of $ 100,000 to The Trevor Project, an NGO for suicide prevention among young people from the LGBTQ community in the United States.

The Raiders have welcomed the approach of Carl Nassib, saying they are “proud” of their player on the same social network. League boss Roger Goodell followed suit in a statement: “The NFL family are proud of Carl, who bravely shared his truth today.”

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