In 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional baseball. Bob Surace later wrote a thesis on Robinson. In 2015 Princeton football coach Bob Surace got to be a part of another ground breaking moment when his offensive lineman, Mason Darrow, came out and became the only openly gay football player in Division I football.
Darrow, a junior offensive lineman, came out to Surace in what Surace thought was something totally different.
Surace said,
“He told me he needed to talk and I was worried because he had just come off a major knee surgery. Then he told me and I was like, ‘This is great. I think it’s a great sign that some of the players knew since he was a freshman and it didn’t get back to the coach. The guys respect him so much. He’s a courageous young man. And hopefully by virtue of a strong, tough, physical football player coming out like this, he can help another young man perhaps in high school to do the same in being himself.”
That’s what is perhaps the most inspiring part of this story. Surace, a coach of what is said to be the most masculine sport in the US, came in with an open mind. He didn’t talk about the media’s perception or that of others.
He talked about the acceptance, and that just because Darrow has a different attraction won’t change the fact of who he is on the field or off the field. Surace shows that the most masculine sport in the US can be accepting and he doesn’t care that for the next few weeks Darrow and himself will be analyzed by every major news source. He just wants to coach the game of football as much as Darrow wants to play And it’s things like this that puts faith back in humanity.
But you can watch the whole video for yourself
