#915 Jason Collins

If you regularly read this blog, you already know how much I love sports. Football, baseball and basketball are my favorites and I watch a lot of games. I listen to sports talk radio. I read sports magazines. I am a fan. What is it about the games that attracts me? I like the competition. I admire the athletes for the way they train their bodies to achieve physical supremacy. I like the concept of team.

Sports is the ultimate in reality TV.  Someone wins, someone loses, sometimes someone gets hurt. Someone plays great, someone doesn't have a good game. "Your" teams gets a new player who used to be someone you didn't like, but now he's the best; he's your new favorite. Your former favorite gets traded to another team and now you can't stand him. Drama! Sports has drama and feel good stories and stories that make you root for a guy you didn't know much about before. Sports give you something to talk about, to build friendships (or rivalries) around. It can give you something to talk about with a stranger, if you're lucky. We got a little bit of all of that yesterday.

Yesterday morning I was listening to the Dan Patrick radio show and Dan was hinting about a story he was going to talk about that would be the big story of the day, something everyone would be talking about tomorrow. That's when he started talking about Jason Collins.


I didn't really know much about Jason Collins before yesterday. I knew that he was the twin brother of Jarron Collins, and I knew Jarron Collins because he played for the Jazz.

Now I know that Jason Collins is gay and that he is the first athlete in one of the four major U.S. sports to come out.

In an article that he wrote for Sports Illustrated, Collins talks about his decision to come out. He talks about his career and the support he's received from his family. If you are interested in reading the article, you can find it here. I think it's very well written. He's funny and well-spoken and unapologetic. I think he's fantastic.

I was moved by the outpouring of support he received almost instantaneously from other athletes, including Kobe Bryant.  (Man, if I'm not careful, I'm going to become a Kobe fan!)  There are countless tweets supporting Collins and I'm not sure why, but it made me feel kind of teary and hopeful and it sort of restored my faith in the goodness and kindness of people.

I do not get hung up on gay or straight. I think everyone has the right to be happy and your sexual orientation doesn't matter to me any more than your religious preference or the color of your skin. As long as you are not hurting anyone else, get your happy on! Be joyful! Be kind and all the good that you put out in the world will come back to you.

Cheers, Jason Collins! Well done :)