Kansas State tackle and NFL Draft prospect Scott Frantz has come out as gay, as detailed on ESPN.com. Frantz first came out of the closet to his teammates in 2015 during an exercise where Wildcats players told everyone a personal secret, but he did not truly go public with the news until this week.
“So the very first time I said those words were in front of, you know, 110, 120 football guys,” Frantz said. “So you can imagine how scared I was, how nervous I was. … This could go either really bad or could go really good. And thankfully my teammates embraced me with open arms, and it was great.”
Frantz started 13 games for Kansas State last season and it is believed that he has the ability to play at the next level. He’ll become draft eligible in 2019 and NFLDraftScout.com has him listed as a top ten tackle in the 2020 class, so he has a chance to become the first openly gay player to take the field in an NFL game. Former Rams linebacker Michael Sam was the first openly gay player to be drafted, but he never played in a regular season game.
Here’s a look around the NFL:
- More and more people are calling for fully guaranteed salaries in the NFL, but that won’t fly in football, Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap argues. The way it works now is that teams are paying a large premium on the frontend of a contract with the hope that they will have something of a bargain in the latter years of the deal as the cap increases and the market for players at the position grows. If the league were to shift to full guarantees, then teams would adjust accordingly and they would instead offer deals that are shorter without frontloading. The real solution, Fitzgerald says, is for players to reduce the length of rookie contracts and tear down the franchise tag mechanism, allowing players to reach free agency at a younger age. If the NFLPA can manage that, players will be getting better compensation on the open market. On the flipside, that sort of change could take free agent dollars away from mid-level players in their late 20s.
- Will we ever see another two-sport star at the professional level like Deion Sanders? Robert Klemko of The MMQB explains why it is unlikely. UNC commit Jordyn Adams earned All American honors in both football and baseball and he would like to pursue both sports professionally. Still, even he admits that it’s an unrealistic goal in today’s climate.
- If you’re not already, follow @ProFootballRumors on Twitter for the latest NFL news.
What a person does behind closed doors is their business. Not sure why we need to celebrate Nd even make this a story.