The WSU Inclusion and Diversity Office, WSU International Services Office, WSU GLBTA, Southeast Technical College, and Anoka Ramsey Community College present Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL with guest speaker Esera Tuaolo. The event will be held in recognition of National Coming Out Day. Further details are available below.
- Topic: Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL
- Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
- Location & Time: Winona State University, East Hall, 7:00 p.m.
- Sponsored by: WSU Inclusion and Diversity Office, WSU International Services Office, Southeast Technical College, Anoka Ramsey Community College and WSU GLBTA
- Free and Open to the Public
- Guest Speaker: Esera Tuaolo
A Note from Esera Tuaolo
During my nine years in the NFL, I lived that close to the edge of destruction. My success tormented me. The better I did the more exposure I received, the more exposure; the greater the chance of someone discovering my secret. A secret that a man who plays the most macho of team sports is not supposed to have. The stress nearly killed me.
I am a Samoan who grew up in Hawaii. My family lived in a hut with a dirt floor. I'd gone from that poverty to the fortunes of the NFL. Football gave me a college scholarship, the chance to buy a house for my mother, the opportunity to travel, and much more. My NFL career lasted nine years with five teams—the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons, and Carolina Panthers. I'll go down in history as the first player to sing the national anthem and then start an NFL game, the first rookie nose guard to start all sixteen games, and the last guy to "tackle" John Elway in his storied Hall of Fame career.
The dream to succeed in the NFL and achieve all that football had to offer was at times a nightmare. I struggled to survive the combative, macho world dominated by a culture that despised who I really am. Had opponents and teammates known I was gay, they would have mocked me the way I heard them ridicule others with sexual slurs. More than likely—as several former teammates admitted—they would have tried to injure me so that they would not have been viewed as guilty by association.
In other words, they would have taken me out so that their own masculinity would not be questioned for playing alongside a sissy. It's rough down in the trenches, where linemen weighing more than three-hundred pounds hurl themselves at one another in brutal hand-to-hand combat, but it is nothing compared to the pain I kept buried inside so I could play out my dream. This is the story of how I dared to dream, not only of surviving professional football, but of living openly for who I am, a gay man.