ESPN Men's Basketball

PHILADELPHIA -- Personally and privately, the circle for Will Sheridan has long been closed. Comfortable with himself and his sexuality, the former Villanova player -- who in May told ESPN.com his story as a gay Division I athlete -- doesn’t need validation or closure.

But publicly the past week has been a critical and rewarding step in the ongoing journey of his life.

On Friday night, Sheridan performed at his alma mater, singing two songs -- one he wrote specifically for Villanova and another, "Here Comes the Sun," to be released later this year -- during Hoops Mania, the Wildcats’ annual season tipoff. It was, he said, an incredible blending of his past as a Nova basketball player, one who kept his sexuality private, and his present as a recording artist who believes he has a critical message to share.

And on Wednesday night, Sheridan spoke at Saint Joseph’s during the school’s Unity Week.

A Villanova basketball player speaking to a St. Joe’s gathering is borderline epic under any circumstances. This was made all the more poignant because it was the St. Joe’s fans who gave Sheridan the worst earfuls during his playing career, hurling insensitive and cruel remarks at the rival player they suspected was gay.

“To be honest I’ve been over all of it for so long,’’ Sheridan said after speaking to about 70 St. Joe’s students and administrators. “But I believe that part of my responsibility is to break down barriers. People who heard me speak may not know someone who is gay or think that they don’t like people who are gay. And if they saw me and it helped, then that’s huge to me.’’

As important as it was to Sheridan, it was equally critical for St. Joe's. During an hour-long talk, where he chronicled his life from a closeted teenager to a comfortably out adult, Sheridan shared some of his memories from the rivalry games with the Hawks. Students, he remembered, would chant Will & Grace, referencing the sitcom about a gay man and his female roommate. One group spewed a particularly lewd and obscene question toward him -- one so bad that Sheridan closed the door to the theatre where he was speaking before sharing it -- with his grandmother sitting 10 rows away.

“That’s a shame,’’ said Evelyn Minick, who serves as the chairperson for the Unity Week.

“No it’s not,’’ Sheridan countered. “If I hadn’t gone through that, maybe I don’t have the strength to do what I’m doing now.’’

It was because of Sheridan’s comments about St. Joseph’s in the original ESPN.com article that athletic director Don DiJulia suggested Sheridan for the talk.

“Respecting people is the name of the game, that’s what this whole week is about,’’ DiJulia said of the 14-year event that teaches acceptance is possible even within the confines of the Catholic Church. “And with the history here, all the more reason to have Will here to speak.’’

Though it may not thaw the Holy War -- when given a T-shirt depicting a ‘house divided,’ Sheridan pointed with favor toward the blue, Villanova house -- it was a small but impressive start in closing the circle for both Sheridan and St. Joe’s.

Yesterday brought a strange confluence of gay-men-in-team-sports stories.

Of course, there was Will Sheridan's fascinating story of his semi-open lifestyle among his Villanova teammates during his college years, as written brilliantly by our own Dana O'Neil. Before Sheridan's tale went live, the New York Times published the story of longtime NBA executive Rick Welts, who decided to publicly reveal his sexual orientation after decades in the closet.

The ensuing conversation -- where do gay male athletes, long seen as would-be outcasts and pariahs, stand in the current jock culture? -- rightfully ruled the day. Sheridan appeared on ESPN's Outside the Lines. Welts spoke with the B.S. Report's Bill Simmons.

Tweets flew. Blogs reacted. Commenters commented. But for a few unfortunate examples, which I'll go ahead and choose to ignore here, the reaction was overwhelmingly encouraging. Many seemed to wonder what all the ruckus was actually about. Surprisingly, even some of the negative reactions seemed to focus on whether the story was newsworthy or not: "So what if the guy's gay? Why do I care?"

Guess what? That should be the reaction. That's how Sheridan's teammates felt. The old tropes about a gay athlete undermining his team's locker room didn't apply through four successful seasons at Villanova. Why should they apply anywhere else?

Sheridan's story was especially interesting -- beyond the basic premise, of course -- because it spoke to a generational gap. His friends, roommates and teammates had no problem with their friend's sexuality. It wasn't a constant topic of conversation. It just was. Meanwhile, Sheridan's father continues to struggle with his son's identity, even as he slowly learns to accept it.

That got me thinking: Could college sports lead the way? Discrimination toward homosexuals is much less common among younger demographics; the younger you are, the less likely you are to be intolerant toward sexual orientations that aren’t your own. College athletes are, you know, young. Maybe it's easier for a college athlete to be openly gay among members of his peer group than it would be for an NBA player who counts among his teammates longtime veterans whose attitudes were defined during earlier, less tolerant decades. We're just a few years removed from longtime NBA veteran Tim Hardaway's infamous "I hate gay people" rant. Maybe guys like that are still in the NBA. Maybe the unenlightened attitudes are still too prevalent for professionals to adapt so quickly. Maybe college hoopsters can set the example.

That might be some rambling wishful thinking, but if comments like the following from TNT and CBS analyst Charles Barkley are any indication, maybe some level of encouragement is warranted. Because Barkley is absolutely dead-on here. From the Washington Post:

After all, Barkley has no doubt he played with several gay teammates. “I didn’t think it . . . they were gay,” he said [...]. The Hall-of-Fame player and TNT analyst added he was certain he had gay teammates “on two of three teams I played on.”

“First of all, every player has played with gay guys. It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say, ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”

[...] “Any professional athlete who gets on TV or radio and says he never played with a gay guy is a stone-freakin’ idiot,” Barkley said. “I would even say the same thing in college. Every college player, every pro player in any sport has probably played with a gay person."

That last bit is simple math. If you assume a certain percentage of the male population is homosexual, then at least some portion of that percentage will make its way into collegiate and professional sports locker rooms. Acting like that's not the case is ignorance. Acting like Sheridan’s story will suddenly change the nature of that locker room is ignorance. Sometimes the ignorance is chosen. Sometimes it's a default setting. But as anyone with a gay friend can tell you, that's not how things work, whether on the field or off.

Granted, there are larger concerns in the professional realm. Would being openly gay hurt endorsement possibilities? Doubtful. Would it be a prohibitive, media-driven distraction? That seems more valid. Maybe college, a more sheltered media environment where there aren't millions of personal endorsement dollars on the line, is a better place to take on some of these barriers.

Either way, the barriers are there. It's going to take a very brave person to be the first to actively confront them in the midst of a playing career, whether that career is at the collegiate or professional level.

Eventually, it will happen. In the meantime, it's clear the conversation is changing. The shock and disbelief that might have accompanied Sheridan's announcement 10 or 15 years ago seems to be fading. Now, for the most part, people -- including longtime NBA guys like Charles Barkley -- are reacting the same way Sheridan's teammates did:

Wait ... what's the big deal?

That's not about agenda, or your political beliefs, or your religious code, or anything else. That's about accepting people for who they are.

If sports retain any measure of cultural importance in 2011, that's why: On the floor, it doesn't matter what you look like, where you're from, or how much money you have. Team sports, from youth soccer to "Monday Night Football," are about what you earn and how you earn it. They test equally. They teach universally. That's why this stuff matters.

Someday soon, we'll be able to add "who you date" to that list of non-qualifiers. These games we love so much -- and the lessons they teach -- will only be better for it.

Editor's Note: To read Dana O'Neil's story on former Villanova basketball player Will Sheridan, click here.

In the past two weeks, Sean Avery voiced his support of same-sex marriage and an NHL agent quickly denounced him.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Peter Vidmar, an opponent of same-sex marriage, was named the liaison between the U.S. team and the International Olympic Committee.

To Jim Buzinski, the CEO of Outsports.com, the news isn't that Avery was attacked or Vidmar appointed.

It's what came after.

It was Todd Reynolds, the agent who tweeted his disappointment, who was almost universally slammed for his comments -- not Avery. And within a week, Vidmar resigned from his position, concerned that his personal views would overshadow the athletes.

"The whole culture is changing," Buzinski said. "It's not cool to be homophobic."

In the 10 years since he and Cyd Zeigler began Outsports.com, a site for athletes and sports fans that are part of the GLBT community, Buzinski has watched a generational shift give rise to acceptance instead of tolerance. He points to the number of popular mainstream television shows -- "Modern Family" and "Glee," to name two -- that feature homosexual cast members as evidence to how comfortable we, as a society, have grown with homosexuality.

Sports, perhaps, aren't changing at the same meteoric rate, but the change is happening. Buzinski has more profile stories than he knows what to do with, tales of high school and college athletes who are comfortably out of the closet while competing.

Better, when those stories do surface, the expected outrage rarely happens and even more rare are the horror stories of athletes estranged or worse, attacked because of their sexual orientation.

"There's typically a flurry of interest for a while but then people move on," Buzinski said. "Eventually they're judged just as all athletes are judged -- by how they perform. The media is supportive and the fans, honestly, it's the same as always. If it's your team and your guy is good, you like him. If he stinks, you'll rip him for a million years."

What's missing, though, are athletes from the big sports -- the four major professional ranks and the high-profile college level -- to share their stories.

There is still, Buzinski said, a hesitancy at that level to come out. He privately knows of plenty of people who are gay but who aren't, as he terms it, publicly out.

And while stories of swimmers and golfers and runners matter greatly, they don't offer the same sort of impact that a person at the highest level can.

"It's like anything else. It's about having role models," Buzinski said. "It gives people encouragement when you can put a name and a face to a major sport. It will tell people or reconfirm to them that there are gay people playing every sport you can imagine and they're quite good at it. You can show people, especially younger people, this is possible for me."

You know those NCAA commercials, the ones that air during the NCAA tournament, just in time to remind you that most NCAA student-athletes "go pro in something other than sports?" Apparently, one of those athletes is former Villanova forward Will Sheridan.

Yes, Sheridan, who played in 133 games for 'Nova from 2003-2007, has gone pro in something other than basketball. In his case, that "something" is not nearly as boring as the usual examples like, say, accounting. (Though now that tax day is behind us, your accountant friends are about to get a lot less lame.)

No, Sheridan decided to go into music. The result, at least thus far, is this slickly produced song and accompanying music video titled "Welcome To The Jungle," released by Royal Advisor Records. No, it's not a remake of the Guns 'N Roses classic. In fact, it shares little but the name. But it is professionally produced, or at least appears to be, and it features some interesting genre mashup stuff from Sheridan -- a mix of hip-hop, tribal rhythm, Euro-synth, and M.I.A.-inspired lyrical styles.

Even if none of that means anything to you, it's still worth checking out. Plenty of athletes want to be musicians. Some of them even release YouTube videos to that effect. Few ever come this close to excellence.

(Hat tips: The Nova Blog, Matt Norlander)