Last offseason, Scott Frantz divulged to his Kansas State teammates a long-held secret. Wednesday, he did the same to a much broader audience.
Speaking to ESPN‘s Holly Rowe, Frantz revealed that he told his Wildcats teammates at a team-building exercise last offseason that he is gay. So strong is the football bond that the offensive lineman, who started 13 games at left tackle last season, told his teammates before he even told his own family.
Still, it wasn’t without some trepidation that Frantz took that huge personal step -- only to find himself overwhelmed by the support he received in the locker room.
“So the very first time I said those words were in front of, you know, 110, 120 football guys,” Frantz told Rowe. “So you can imagine how scared I was, how nervous I was. ... This could go either really bad or could go really good. And thankfully my teammates embraced me with open arms, and it was great. ...
“I came out to my teammates, and I’ve never felt so loved and so accepted ever in my life than when I did that. And ever since then it’s been great. I’ve grown so much closer to my teammates since. So it’s been an amazing experience.”
Frantz is the second active or soon-to-be-active FBS player to come out this year. In February of this year, 2017 Arizona signee My-King Johnson revealed in an interview that he is gay as well.
In 2014, Arizona State’s Chip Sarafin became the first active player at the FBS level to be openly gay.