Why recruiting is the biggest challenge for an openly gay coach
The next time Division I men's basketball's first openly gay coach visits talent-rich St. Andrew's School, he can expect to be treated the same as he has always been.
St. Andrew's coach Mike Hart intends to swap stories and crack jokes with Chris Burns just like he did before the Bryant University assistant revealed his sexuality in a first-person essay published Thursday morning.
"Today's announcement doesn't change what I think of Chris at all," Hart said. "He's a top-level recruiter, he's funny as hell and he's a great guy. I hope one day a couple of our kids go to Bryant because it's such a great school and he's a tremendous ambassador for it."
Whether the rest of the basketball community in the Northeast is as enlightened as Hart could go a long way toward determining the fate of Burns' coaching career.
It's the responsibility of any Division I assistant coach to identify potential impact recruits, to forge relationships with those prospects and their advisers and to entice them to sign a letter of intent. That task only becomes tougher if a program's pool of possible recruits shrinks because some aren't comfortable with an openly gay coach on staff.
When Burns first revealed he was gay to some close confidantes on campus last year, Bryant coach Tim O'Shea urged him to consider whether coming out in the media could be detrimental to his goal of someday landing a head coaching job. O'Shea feared athletic directors might view an openly gay coach as too great a risk as a result of potential challenges wooing recruits and soliciting donations from boosters.
Ultimately, Burns decided to go public anyway this week with O'Shea's full support. Burns grew tired of living in fear of being outed and hoped that the support and acceptance he has initially received at Bryant would inspire other closeted athletes and coaches to be open with their teams too.
"Chris is not a guy who's out there looking to be a celebrity or to draw a lot of attention to himself," O'Shea said. "He felt that by coming out publicly it could potentially help someone who was struggling with this issue, and I agreed with him.
"Logically, there are probably some people out there who have a bias in this area, so it's possible we could lose some recruits because of this. At the end of the day, I don't really care. If someone wants to disqualify us because we have an openly gay coach, so be it. I believe if you do the right thing and you treat people well, it will work out."
How Burns fares in the coming months will surely be something closeted gay coaches watch closely. Burns is currently the only openly gay man among the roughly 1,500 head coaches and assistants working in Division I men's basketball, but his story could persuade others to emerge from hiding if he can do so without torpedoing his career.
What will surely complicate Burns' efforts is the cutthroat nature of recruiting in men's basketball. Unscrupulous rival coaches are likely to try to drive away recruits from Bryant by branding the Bulldogs as the gay team.
If it sounds ridiculous that coaches would stoop to that level, consider the vile tactics used in the past. Steve Lavin told reporters in Jan. 2012 that he had to reassure prospects he'd soon return to the St. John's bench because opposing coaches were telling recruits that prostate cancer could force him to retire. Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy has dealt with similar negative recruiting since announcing four years ago that he suffered from early-onset Parkinson's disease.
"It angers me when people tell recruits I may not coach much longer because it's coming from people who don't really know me," Kennedy told Yahoo Sports in 2013. He also added, "There are some insecure assistants in high-profile programs that do whatever they have to do to get a player."
It's difficult to assess how frequently gay men's basketball coaches would have to combat negative recruiting because there's no precedent to study. Recruiting pitches emphasizing a program's family atmosphere and implicit heterosexuality are often used as a subtle weapon against unmarried female coaches in women's basketball, but openly gay coaches in other sports report experiencing fewer issues.
Neither Ball State women's golf coach Katherine Mowat nor UC Santa Barbara women's tennis coach Simon Thibodeau recall losing a single recruit because of their sexuality since coming out in 2011 and 2013, respectively. They both gladly answer any questions prospects or their families have, but they prefer to let the topic of their sexuality come up organically rather than making a point of addressing it with every recruit.
"There's been no negative backlash that I'm aware of in recruiting," Mowat said. "I'm certainly not naive to the possibility that it could happen at some point, but we haven't come across it."
Thibodeau even goes a step further.
"The only parents who have brought it up did it to congratulate me or to tell me they're supportive," he said. "I do not feel I've lost any recruits because of it. If anything, I think it has helped me."
Will recruiting be as problem-free for Burns or future gay basketball coaches that follow in his footsteps? High school and AAU coaches admit the testosterone-heavy culture of a men's team sport makes that unlikely.
Keith Howard, founder of California-based Inland Empire Basketball Program, is skeptical that the parents of many of the prospects he has coached would be comfortable sending their kids to play for a gay coach. Howard is hopeful that changes as prejudice slowly fades away, but for now he believes an openly gay coach faces an uphill battle unless his communication skills are so phenomenal that he can connect with families and build trust.
"If you were to survey 100 families, there are not going to be 100 families that are OK with a gay coach," Howard said. "If a family isn't OK with that, there are going to be challenges. If the parents aren't comfortable with a coach, there's a strong possibility that coach won't get that recruit."
What that highlights is the importance of having a supportive boss and administration, something Burns definitely has at Bryant.
O'Shea has entrenched himself at Bryant by guiding its transition from Division II to Division I, engineering a 17-win turnaround in 2013 and following that up with two more winning seasons the past two years. The 53-year-old can live with losing an occasional recruit or two because he is under no pressure at Bryant, nor does he have any intention of trying to jump to a more high-profile school.
"If someone doesn't want us to recruit them because of Chris, truthfully I couldn't care less," O'Shea said. "This is something he felt gave him a chance to help people who have struggled with the same issue. He doesn't want to be leading a double life, which I totally understand."
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
