For years, the NFL has been a tough guy’s playground—a place where vulnerability hides behind helmets and rainbow flags seem like distant dreams. But in 2021, Carl Nassib made history and cracked that façade wide open by becoming the first active NFL player to come out as gay. Now retired, Nassib is reflecting on what led him to make that courageous decision—and how love, loss, and a bit of Taylor Swift helped him break the silence.
In a recent sit-down on The Pivot Podcast, Nassib opened up to hosts Fred Taylor, Ryan Clark, and Channing Crowder with an honesty that’s both rare and refreshing. He talked about the years of holding it in, the fear of being outed, and the moment that changed everything: a final goodbye to his uncle.
“I knew I wanted to do it for like years before that,” Nassib explained. “[But] there were a few catalysts that really were like, ‘Yo, you gotta do this.’ Two big ones. First one was my uncle — my mom’s youngest brother — who was gay.”
Uncle Bill had been battling cancer for years, and in 2019, his health took a turn. Nassib, already out to his immediate circle, made the decision to come out to his uncle in those final days.
“When I came out to him, he and his husband were there, and he was like, ‘This is the biggest weight off of my chest. I’m not the only one.’”
That moment hit hard. It lit a fire in Nassib—one that pushed him to think about all the other queer people who’ve ever felt alone in a crowd.
It wasn’t until months later, though—after signing a solid contract with the Raiders—that Nassib decided the time was right to go public.
“Five months after coming out to [my uncle]… I felt like, ‘Damn, now they can’t touch me.’”
Still, he waited. Why?
“George Floyd got killed, and there was a lot of turmoil with the NFL, with social justice, and COVID. There was a lot going on. I actually read the room in 2020. I was like, ‘This isn’t the time, Carl. You don’t need to add anything to this.’ So I waited until 2021.”
When he did finally share his truth with the world, it wasn’t just about visibility. Nassib made his announcement while raising funds for The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ crisis intervention and suicide prevention organization. He donated $100,000—and the NFL matched it. It was more than a milestone; it was a message.
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Nassib has no regrets about when he came out, but if he had a do-over?
“In a perfect world,” he says, he would’ve done it sooner—especially for Uncle Bill. “I’ve been gifted so many rights and so many freedoms that the previous generation in my community didn’t have. I can’t just sit on these and rake it in.”
And then, in classic Nassib fashion, came the Taylor Swift moment. Fans of the 2018 Hard Knocks series may remember him name-dropping her back then—before he was publicly out. Was that a cover-up move?
“First off, I gotta say I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan way longer than all these other bandwagon fans. Excuse me!” he said with a laugh. “Also, the closet door was made of glass. I mean, I was the biggest Taylor Swift fan my entire life. I don’t know how anybody didn’t see that.”
Beneath the humor, though, there was truth.
“There were probably some, or a ton, of things that I would say to curate a look of, ‘Oh I was straight. Oh, I wasn’t gay.’”
“I didn’t have a guaranteed contract,” he added. “I was very worried about getting outed. I didn’t want to have all the work that I put in at Penn State my entire life to be taken away.”
Today, Nassib isn’t just an ex-NFL star. He’s a speaker, a philanthropist, and the founder of Rayze, a platform that connects people to nonprofits in need of support. In short, he’s doing what queer folks have done for generations—making something powerful out of vulnerability.
And for LGBTQ+ youth looking at locker rooms and wondering if there’s space for them, Carl Nassib is a walking reminder that yes, there is. And it’s only getting bigger.
Watch the full interview here:
Guess Carl is back to being single.
Glad I never got an Instagram, can’t believe people break-up and then have to scrub their socials of all instances of a relationship as if that will actually delete those images from the world.
Of course, all stories like this one on sites that simply embed those ‘gram images now have broken links!
Sigh.