Member Since: 9/3/2011
Posts: 22,014
|
Gay student kicked off football team
Quote:
Jamie Kuntz started to tear up when he was told that he had been dismissed from the North Dakota State College of Science football team on Sept. 3; in the freshman linebacker's mind, he had done nothing wrong.
But two days earlier, Kuntz's coach, Chuck Parsons, had pulled him off the team bus and asked him about a "distraction" that had occurred in the press box during the Wildcats blowout loss to Snow College during the Mile High Shootout in Pueblo, Colo.
By the end of the day on Sept. 3, Kuntz was packing up his locker and he believes it's because of his sexual orientation.
Kuntz, 18, had been injured much of fall camp and had only practiced a couple days prior to the trip. So, the coaching staff asked him to film the game from the press box. While in the press box, Kuntz invited his 65-year-old boyfriend, who lives in Colorado, to join him to watch the game. During the second half of the 63-17 blowout, Kuntz took a minute away from the camera to kiss his boyfriend. The kiss was caught by some of Kuntz's teammates and word started to spread.
Up until that point, Kuntz had hidden the fact that he was gay.
"He pulls me off the bus to talk to me and he said, 'What was going on in the press box?'" Kuntz told Yahoo! Sports. "So I was like, 'What are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about.' I was playing stupid. And he goes, 'People said that you were distracting them the whole game.'
"At that point I kind of knew, but when he said the whole game, I felt like he was trying to put the loss on me. When you guys lose by 40 points, there's no way a distraction like that is going to throw a whole team off in the second half. So, when he said that, I was like, 'Oh nothing, it was just my grandpa up there with me.'"
Kuntz eventually came clean with his coach when the team got back to Wahpeton, N.D., and apologized for lying. He said he expected a punishment, but didn't think he would be dismissed.
"I asked him if I could get a suspension or any extra conditioning because I thought it was a little rash for him to be kicking me off for this," Kuntz said. "And he said, 'Um, no. We just decided it's too big of a distraction.' So, I didn't want to bring [the kiss] up. You're not going to tell the truth anyway. I don't know if he's homophobic. I can't tell in his heart, but what happened, in my experience, I was getting cheated.
"To be honest, I thought he was going to kind of leave the door open for it to be my decision, what I wanted to do. But he said I was too big of a distraction to have on the team still, so I just grabbed my stuff and left."
...
And Kuntz had a good reason for initially lying. His sexuality was still largely a secret. With the exception of a couple close friends, Kuntz hadn't told anyone he was gay, not even his mother. He said even if he had wanted to discuss his sexuality with the NDSCS football team, he never felt comfortable doing so because of jokes and comments his teammates made about homosexuals in the past. But what was worse, Kuntz said, is that he was forced to tell his mother about his sexuality because he didn't want to lie about why he had left school.
"It was awful," Kuntz said of coming out that way. "Especially being a football player and trying to make a name for myself. It was one of those things where I wanted to do it on my own time, not when all this happened."
...
"Jamie Kuntz is no longer enrolled at the North Dakota State College of Science because he voluntarily withdrew," the statement said. "While a student at the college, Kuntz was a member of the football team. Prior to his withdrawal, he was dismissed from the team for a violation of the football team rules, which are set forth below."
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-...98--ncaaf.html
|
This is obviously homophobia 
But some parts of this story I just  65 year old boyfriend?! Kissing him and then saying he's your grandpa?!  mess.
|
|
|
|
