Carl Nassib is out, but he’s not the first gay player in the NFL, or even in Washington

Growing up as a child of the 1980s, watching the Redskins lay the foundation of a dynasty, the sexual orientation of various football players was one of the furthest things from my mind - except perhaps on the rare occasions that they started romances with supermodels whose appearance stirred something in me that hardly understood, but yet enjoyed.

But it was also the era of AIDS, and the outsized effect that horrible disease was having on the gay community. So while, generally speaking, discussions of homosexuality weren’t had among “polite company” - at least in the (admittedly small) circles I traveled in at that point - the sensational arrival of AIDS did have the impact of forcing society to admit gay people existed, and that they were all around us.