Learning from Jason Collins

 

As many of us know, last year Jason Collins announced to the world that he is gay and yesterday he became the first openly gay athlete on a team in North America’s four major professional sports. I applaud Collins for all that he has done. In this post, I am not going to write about the politics of what happened or what this means for the LGBT community. However, I want to try to point out what I think we can all learn from Collins about pursuing our goals and dreams both professionally and personally.

Under Further Review: Michael Sam Steals the Show

"I'm not afraid to tell the world who I am. I'm Michael Sam: I'm a college graduate. I'm African American, and I'm gay." - Michael Sam

While the media was still trying to wrap their minds around the situation with Marcus Smart and those who were tired of the near-24 hours of coverage were taking in some action from Sochi, something happened. Changed happened. Former University of Missouri All-American defensive lineman and National Football League hopeful Michael Sam did something that no NFL prospect had ever done. He announced he is gay.

The Sports Biz Report: Episode 4 - Jason Collins

Athletes and Twitter: What Can I Say?

We currently live in a very social media driven world and an even more social media driven sports entertainment industry. Twitter is the quickest and most effective way to receive the up to the second updates on your favorite leagues, teams, and players. Remember the days of turning on SportsCenter every morning and night to get that day's news on all your favorite sports? Not anymore. As long as you have a twitter account you can now receive updates by the seconds on the leagues, teams, players, and so much more that you choose to follow. Not only to you get the updates faster, but you also now can choose to only get the news you want to read. Waiting through a whole hour long episode of SportsCenter for the report you want to hear is a thing of the past. A wise, fictional, character once said something that correlates to the social media world perfectly. "With great power, comes great responsibility."