Former NFL Football Player Carl Nassib Tells the Story of Why He Came Out

Now-retired NFL star Carl Nassib opened up about the two major points in his life – a moving exchange with an uncle and a hilarious game play moment – that helped him decide to come out publicly.

The former Las Vegas Raiders defensive end and linebacker, 32, appeared on the May 7 edition of "The Pivot" podcast, hosted by Ryan Clark, Channing Crowder, and Fred Taylor, where he told the anecdote, UK newspaper the Independent reported.

Nassib recollected sitting by his gay uncle's deathbed, with his uncle's husband in attendance. Nassib recalled to Clark that his uncle – the only other out gay member of his family – "was in a really bad shape and I came out to him."

The moment was huge for Nassib's uncle. "We're from a huge family – I have 44 first cousins – and he was the only gay guy, gay person, in the entire family," Nassib explained. At the time, Nassib was out to his immediate family and his close friends, but that was all. When he told his uncle that he was gay, the response he got was, "This is the biggest weight off my chest," Nassib related. "He was like, 'I'm not the only one.'"

Those words hit Nassib like a revelation. "I'm like, 'Man, there's probably so many people out there that are going to feel that same way,'" the footballer recalled. Reflecting on how he might have been his uncle's "backup" had he come out earlier, Nassib decided, "Hey, I've got to do this." Less than half a year later the worry about not getting a contract if he came out or got outed was allayed when he was picked up by the Raiders. "I felt like, 'Damn,' like, 'now they can't touch me.'"

The weight of history was at least as great as the call of authenticity for Nassib.

"I was like, 'This isn't even, like, something I want to do,'" the champion player recalled. "'This is something I need to do.... I have been gifted so many rights, so many freedoms that the previous generation of my community did not have.' It's like 'I cannot just sit on these and rake it in.'"

Nassib went on to say, "I feel really lucky and really blessed and grateful that I got to come out and be supported when so many people before me came out and they got ostracized, they got fired, they got all these different things."

COVID and the racial justice reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd meant that coming out would have to wait. "I actually read the room in 2020,'" the athlete recounted. "I was like, 'This isn't the time, Carl.' Like, 'You do not need to add anything into this.'"

When he did come out in 2021, Nassib made a point of shouting out to youth suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project. "I knew it would get a lot of attention," Nassib said of his coming out, "so I wanted to make sure that attention got put to a good place."

A moment of testing the waters verified to Nassib that the time was right when, in 2020, during a Raiders v. Browns game, he lost patience on the field and exclaimed about "gay ass" plays. "The entire Browns O line [offensive line] turned around and said, 'You can't say that!' And I was like, 'Oh, man, the league is ready for this!'"

"I was like, 'This is so funny. The guy about to come out, saying the word gay, getting shut down by five massive dudes,'" the footballer added, Upworthy relayed.

Nassib, who made history as the first NFL player to come out and then go on to play, had a seven-season career. He came out in 2021 in a casual Instagram post that treated the subject in almost an offhand manner.

Long before then, though, Nassib felt a yearning to be free of the closet – even though, he told the podcast hosts, "the closet door was made of glass. I mean, I was the biggest Taylor Swift fan my entire life, and I don't know how anybody didn't see that."

Before coming out, Nassib admitted, "There was a ton of things that I would say to, like, curate, you know, a look of, like, 'Oh, I was straight,'" adding an implication that part of his hesitancy was the fear of what coming out might mean for his career; he "didn't have a guaranteed contract" before coming out.

"I was very worried about getting outed," Nassib added. "I didn't want to, you know, have all the work that I put in at Penn State [where he played college football], my entire life, kind of be taken away."

Nassib's conversation with the podcast hosts ranged from his surprising original career ambitions (to become a doctor) to his passion for teaching others about financial literacy. Watch the podcast episode below. The conversation turns to Nassib's coming out at approximately the 15:30 mark.