“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” stated Jason Collins as he came out in a Sports Illustrated article April 29,2013. That date will go down in sports history, because Collins became the first “active” player to come out in the National Basketball Association.

If you ask me, to be “active” you have to be on a team, and Collins is a free agent, meaning he is not on a team at all. Regardless, Collins coming out has sent shock waves all through the sports world.

Let’s get this straight, I am not homophobic nor do I mind homosexuals. I believe that you should live your life how you think you should, and if that means coming out of the closet by all means do it. What I don’t understand is why does it even matter?

I got the news from a notification from the “Scorecenter” application, and I immediately turned on Sportscenter and there it was. The first thought that came to mind was how is the league going to react? Then Magic Johnson came to mind. For those of you that don’t know, Johnson was one of the best players to ever play and was diagnosed HIV positive.

Players at the time didn’t want to play with him because they thought just rubbing up against would give them AIDS. In their defense at the time no one knew how you got HIV/AIDS and how it spread.

However, Collin’s situation was different than Johnsons. The biggest names in the NBA tweeted and texted Collins expressing their support. Two presidents (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton) also contacted Collins in support.

Surprisingly there was not much public criticism. There was one case, if you consider it criticism, where wide receiver Mike Wallace of the Miami Dolphins in two tweets said “I’m not bashing anybody don’t have anything against anyone I just don’t understand it.  All these beautiful women in the world and guys wanna mess with other guys SMH(shaking my head)…”

I don’t think it was criticism; Wallace was just expressing his opinion in a non-hateful way. He later deleted the tweets, and apologized to anyone he offended in another tweet.

Now everyone in the sports media believes that other players in the four major sports (NBA,NFL,NHL, MLB) will begin to come out. I honestly don’t see this to be true. I would not be surprised if maybe one more person came out but not multiple from the four major sports.