Harbaugh announced that the Ravens were to hold two practices before departing on their bye week vacation. This is the player’s “spring break,” so to speak. This is the one opportunity they can take to go home, see their families, escape to the beach, fly to Florida, airmail to Arizona, or in some cases, to hang out in the basement for the weekend. Think of it as 53 players going in 53 different directions for five days and returning whole.
Those two practices in the wake of the embarrassment in Houston would change the Ravens’ season, its course and its fate.
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In the modern era, nothing is sacred for a public figure. Players use Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, and blogs to build a fan base and engage their audience. The last five years of technological progress that has put every piece of film and game plan on an Ipad, also created a sensational platform for athletes to advance their personal causes via social media. For charity, for profit, or simply just to be heard while trying to change the world through politics or a cause – it’s the tip of the iceberg for the what the next generation of the modern sports personality will become – for better or worse.
The Baltimore Ravens, with strong leadership and a strong veteran presence, also had strong personalities with strong messages. During October 2012 and right up to the election date of November 6, politics made its unprecedented way inside the Ravens’ locker room and onto the national stage on a fiery issue: marriage equality.
As much as many athletes have used the public platform to make a political stand or statement of some kind – think Muhammad Ali or Tommie Smith and John Carlos – or even Chad Ochocinco, or whatever his name currently is – they all needed the power of communication and the ability to rally people to their message. It didn’t matter if it was for political gain or just whimsy and entertainment. In 2012, whatever your message, it’s simply a click away and you are instantly talking to your fan club. Sometimes, this is the biggest fear of franchises, who formerly believed that they could control the message of players by having them only speak in five minute intervals in front of a locker under the deep supervision and scrutiny of suited public relations officials.
Those days are gone forever.
Ravens special teams ace Oladele “Brendon” Ayanbadejo, is a legacy Ravens player. His brother Obafemi, or just “Femi,” was a fullback with the 2001 Super Bowl champion Ravens, a player who Brian Billick coached in Minnesota and always liked. The Ayanbadejo boys were born to a Nigerian father and an American mother of Irish descent. While born in Chicago in the 1970s, they spent part of their early childhood in Africa before returning to a very rough area of Chicago, living on food stamps in a drug-addled community. Their mother finally escaped that poverty, settling with the boys in Santa Cruz, California, where Brendon attended middle and high school.
As long as he can remember, Ayanbadejo, who went to college in the social melting pot of U.C.L.A., has been politically active and very vocal about his American rights to be vocal in the political process. As a child of interracial parents, his reality is that his parents’ marriage would’ve been illegal in 1967 in 16 states, and the laws changed because people with the ability to be heard showed courage and spoke out for change. At the turn of the century, he and former Bruins point guard Baron Davis created a group that focused on diversity in higher education.
In recent years Ayanbadejo, 36, became a tireless advocate for marriage equality, and as the election date grew closer his outspoken position attracted him toward a TV commercial to show his support for the issue that was on the ballot in Maryland. During the 18 months leading up to the election cycle, he had become a hero to the LBGT community throughout the United States and has used platforms like The Ellen DeGeneres Show to share his message as a rare outspoken professional athlete who realizes there are gay players in the NFL who are fearful of coming out of the closet because of the scorn they’d face from fans and, potentially, their teammates. There have been several former NFL players who have “come out” in their retirement, but never an active player. And there had never been an athlete who was so forthright in pushing the issue about whether an athlete should come out. Ayanbadejo is respectful. He is calm. He makes his case and has a deep intellect, a quick wit, and a sharp, almost street, sense of humor.
“I see the big picture,” Ayanbadejo said at the time. “There was a time when women didn’t have rights, black people didn’t have rights, and right now, gay rights is a big issue, and it has been for a long time. And so we’re slowly chopping down the barriers to equality. We have some minority rights we have to get straight and some gay rights, then we’ll be on our way.”
Meanwhile about 12 locker stalls and 30 feet away in the Ravens’ Owings Mills complex sat Matt Birk, also 36, Harvard graduate, Christian, and equally humble statesmen, who holds an opposite opinion on the issue of gay marriage. Birk espoused that marriage is “between a man and a woman,” and he has been as outspoken regarding his Pro-Life views as Ayanbadejo has been in his marriage equality quest.
Birk’s television commercial script for the election season: “Marriage is not easy, but it has lasted throughout the ages as an honored institution because it provides unique foundations for societies and children. Marriage is more than what adults want for themselves. It is also about the next generation. Marriage is and should remain between a man and a woman. Gay and lesbian couples already receive benefits in Maryland, like hospital visitation, state health benefits, and tax breaks. We don’t need to redefine marriage. Vote AGAINST Question 6.”
Birk also shot a lengthy video for the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment and penned a lengthy missive in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on October 2.
Ayanbadejo’s stance drew the wrath of Maryland State Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr., who during the summer wrote a letter to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti on Maryland State letterhead, demanding that Bisciotti “take the necessary action to inhibit such expressions from your employee.” Burns’ letter also said: “I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.”
Ayanbadejo was forced to respond to it. “I was surprised,” he said. “Just what our country was founded on, for someone to try to take that away from me, I was pretty surprised that something like that would come up, especially from a politician.”
But such is the state of politics and the political process in 2012 and clearly, the Ravens as an organization weren’t touching any of this, but Harbaugh had to manage it inside the locker room.
“[I] don’t discourage it or encourage it,” the head coach said. “As long as everybody respects everybody else’s opinion, that’s the main thing. We talk about politics, religion, all those kinds of things, movies, music. It’s OK to have an opinion; it’s really important to respect everybody else’s opinion.”
Birk said, “I took a stance like other guys have done before me. In doing so, it’s not my aim, it’s not my goal to engage in any debates with any one person or persons. Obviously, we all have opinions. It just so happens we disagree on what marriage is in the public forum. It’s certainly a very inflammatory, very hot topic because it’s important. I understand that. Out of respect to my teammates and my team, the organization, this isn’t going to turn into a circus.”
Birk also said, “I guess I could say this as many times as I want and people aren’t going to believe you, but that’s not a hateful attitude toward people who are gay. I have gay people in my life – gay people in my life that I love. If you’re asking me if I would accept a gay teammate: yeah, absolutely. It would be really not that big of an issue to me personally.”
Both had their side of the issue. Both were passionate. Both donated incredible amounts of political and moral capital, and put themselves up and out there for the public’s scrutiny because they believed in their cause. Both had made multiple Pro Bowl appearances. Both busted their asses in the classroom, on the field, in the community. Both were truly leaders – the kind of men the Ravens wanted on their team.
“Obviously on the issue of marriage we couldn’t be further apart, but he’s my teammate and I respect him,” Birk said. “I’ve known him since before he was my teammate and continue to respect him. I just think he’s wrong, and I’ll just kind of leave it at that.”
On November 6, 2012 the citizens of the state of Maryland voted 52.4% to 47.6% to legalize same sex marriage. On January 1, 2013, Gov. Martin O’Malley passed it into law.
While Ayanbadejo became a lightning rod regarding the gay marriage issue, Birk also took up the cause of children’s literacy to win the NFL Man of The Year Award and very publicly donated his brain to a Boston University research project on head trauma and athletes. “It’s my obligation as a professional football player to try to do my part to make the game as safe as possible for future generations,” he said. “I don’t really look at donating my brain as that big of a deal, it’s kind of like donating an organ. I think it’s something that I should do. It’s kind of a morbid thing when you think about it and it kind catches you, but really if you think about it, it’s not that big of a deal. You don’t need it once you’re dead and I think it’s important for the cause and for them to compile as much data so they can learn as much as they can about head traumas and the effect it has. CTE and all these things that weren’t on anybody’s radar five years ago.”
“Just to make the game safer. I think this is great that we’re having this discussion now. Five years ago we weren’t talking about this and it’s so important for our game at the professional level and the future of it, but especially and more importantly, for the hundreds and thousands of kids that play football. It’s a great game. The best thing about football is the things that it teaches you about life and being a part of a team, something greater than yourself, values, teamwork, hard work, overcoming adversity, all of those things, and to show all these kids who play that they’re as safe as possible and can have a positive experience.”
Causes, passions, politics, personalities, religion, charity, donations – the Ravens locker room was a melting pot of leaders and ideologies. In New Orleans, Terrell Suggs was asked about whether he had an opinion on Ayanbadejo’s opinions about a NFL gay player coming out and how it affected the team.
“On this team, with so many different personalities, we just accept people for who they are and we don’t really care too much about a player’s sexuality,” Suggs said. “To each their own. You know who you are, and we accept you for it. Everybody deserves a certain amount of privacy. Who cares? Whatever a person’s choice is, it’s their choice.”
The Ravens would need unity – from both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, believers and non-believers, Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers, Pro- and Anti- gay marriage advocates – if they were going to win a Super Bowl together.
Harbaugh, in retrospect, actually believed that the relatively harmonious yet deeply passionate discourse was a big part of the Ravens’ success. “That right there could’ve torn us apart,” he said. “Instead, it made us closer.”
