Players' Taunts Undermine The New York Giants' Inclusive Message
— -- The moment was almost bigger than 18-year-old Ashton Searls could handle. On a cold but bright day at MetLife Stadium, Searls husked his coat so his gray shirt with "You Can Play" and the New York Giants logo would show, and he jogged out to the middle of the turf field.
There were fireworks as each of the Giants ran through his group of LGBT students, friends and corporate supporters before the team played the undefeated Carolina Panthers.
"I almost had a heart attack, I wanted to pass out," Searls said with a smile, "but it was a good pass out."
The Giants' front office has been deliberate about its support of You Can Play, a group dedicated to the inclusion of LGBT athletes in sports, and other like-minded groups. In a recent interview with espnW, Giants owner John Mara described it as the "right thing to do."
Sports, particularly football, have been one of those cultural spaces where open homophobia has been most entrenched. We have seen it in the reaction to Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend on live TV after the St. Louis Rams drafted him and in the slurs that are sometimes thrown around on the field during the game.
On Sunday, Josh Norman and Odell Beckham Jr. reportedly joined in that unsporting tradition during a heated contest that came to resemble a steel-cage fight as much as a contest between an excellent young wide receiver and the talented cornerback assigned to cover him.
Those 90 representatives of the You Can Play Project and the Hetrick-Martin Institute in the plush fifth-floor suites filled with food and drink couldn't hear the specifics of what was said on the field, but the slurs might have sounded familiar.
Ballerina. Michael Jackson. These were some of the terms Norman used to describe Beckham in his official post-game news conference. Fellow Panthers cornerback Cortland Finnegan speculated their disagreement may have been over a "female." As he came off the field, Norman told Steve Overmyer of CBS, "F--- him, he's a b----."
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