ESPN’s Outside the Lines show this Sunday tackles the topic of negative recruiting and perceived sexual orientation. My son is far from college age, and I have no idea if he’ll turn out to be an athlete, but I have to wonder how the fact of his two moms would play in a recruiter’s mind. More immediately, sexual orientation (and gender identity) bias is a problem for young people today, and it bothers me as a mother, a lesbian, and a former NCAA athlete (albeit at a non-scholarship school).
The National Center for Lesbian Rights has been working with Outside the Lines to shed light on this topic:
In October 2006, NCLR co-hosted an LGBT Sports Think Tank with the NCAA designed to examine ways to address negative recruiting and sexual orientation. Following the success of our Think Tank, NCLR along with Pat Griffin, the Director of the “It Takes a Team!” Educational Campaign for LGBT Issues in Sport, began calling for a national dialogue concerning the impact of negative recruiting based on perceived sexual orientation. Recently, we’ve worked closely with the producer of Outside the Lines on the difficult task of convincing coaches and athletes to break the silence around this harmful practice. . . .
The program will air on ESPN on Sunday, March 23 at 9:30 a.m. EST, and will re-air at 12:00 p.m. EST on ESPNEWS. Reporter Julie Foudy will discuss the topic of negative recruiting and perceived sexual orientation with several special guests.
Yes, that’s 9:30 a.m. No interference with the season finale of The L Word in the evening.
I’m glad they are FINALLY talking about this. I have met so many gays and lesbians who were scholarship athletes and felt they had to hide to keep their scholarships.
I wouldn’t worry too much about your son. I know KU recruited someone to the football team back in the early 90’s (when we were actually half decent) who had two mommies. That seems to be much less of a problem for recruiters than perceived sexual orientation of the recruit.