After coming out, former Maryland player feels he has a second chance
Akil Patterson's career with the Terps football team was derailed by alcohol and partying as he struggled with his sexuality
Former Maryland football player Akil Patterson, an openly gay athlete… (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun)
For years, Akil Patterson wouldn't tell the world who he really was: a gay man playing Division I college football.
His secret weighed on him, frightened him, confused him, taking on a life all its own.
In lonely periods, the former University of Maryland player would go online and type in "gay," "athlete" and other keywords. And Patterson, an offensive and defensive lineman on former coach Ralph Friedgen's teams of 2001-03, would wonder: how many other Division I athletes are gay — and black — and feeling as isolated as he was?
"It's not like it's a terrible, deep, dark secret, but you think about the ramifications," said Patterson, now a highly ranked Greco-Roman wrestler and unpaid Maryland wrestling coach. "They're talking behind your back, and everywhere you turn there's this culture that says you're not supposed to be like this."
Patterson, who said he was a binge drinker during his Maryland football years, is one of a half-dozen or so football players to have publicly declared after college or NFL careers that they are gay.
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