Former NFL player Wade Davis has said
he wishes he would have had the guts to come out gay while playing.
Davis, who played for the Tennessee
Titans, the Seattle Seahaws and two NFL Europe teams, the Barcelona
Dragons and the Berlin Thunder, came out gay last year. His
professional football career ended in 2003 when he dislocated his
kneecap and tore his patella tendon at a Washington Redskins training
camp.
The former cornerback now works at the
Hetrick-Martin Institute, a non-profit dedicated to serving the needs
of LGBT youth.
In an appearance on cabler Current's
Say Anything, Davis told host Joy Behar that he regrets not
speaking up earlier.
“I wish I had the guts to have come
out while I playing,” Davis said.
“That's asking a lot of yourself,”
Behar responded.
“It's asking me to learn to love
myself at a very young age,” Davis said. “And to understand what
sexuality was, which I didn't. You know, I didn't talk to my parents
about it. I didn't talk to anyone else about like what it meant to
be gay. I just didn't have the understanding.” (The video is
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