Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes in American Team Sports

Andrew C. Billings (Ph.D., Indiana University) is the Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting and Executive Director of the Alabama Program in Sports Communication at the University of Alabama. He has published over 150 journal articles and book chapters along with 17 books, most of which pertain to the nexus of sport, media, and identity.Leigh M. Moscowitz (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an associate professor and Head of the Public Relations Sequence in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of The Battle over Marriage and co-author of Snatched.

“The gay and lesbian social movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries serves as a model for promoting rapid social acceptance and legal equality. Despite this, myths and misattributions surround team sport athletes. This leaves some to maintain that a toxic and hostile environment must still exist for sexual minorities. While other works have examined the experiences of gay men in sport more generally, Billings and Moscowitz provide an informed first account of the relationship between professional sport and gay men.”Eric Anderson, author, «21st Century Jocks: Sporting Men and Compulsory Heterosexuality»

• Figures – Acknowledgments – Introduction: The Arduous Ascent of the Openly-Gay Male Athlete – Inside the Sports Closet: Tensions of Hiding, Passing, and Outing – Telling Your Story: PR Firms, Strategic Media, and the Power of Mass Messaging – Anatomy of a Gay Sports Story: Assembling and Advancing the Coming Out of Jason Collins – Playing "Out" in the Media: Framing Gay Athlete Stories – Identity Politics: Gendered, Racial, and Religious Performativity – The Floodgates Open? The Future of the Openly-Gay Athlete – Appendix: List of Interview Respondents – Index.