Bob Cook

In the abstract, it appears America is getting more comfortable with the idea of big-time male athletes and coaches who are openly homosexual. In reality, the men’s lacrosse coach at the University of Missouri, not exactly big-time, is getting a firsthand understanding of why they tend to stay in the closet.

On June 10, not long before Chicago White Sox Ozzie Guillen felt a backlash from baseball for calling a newspaper columnist a "fag," Kyle Hawkins identified himself by name on a message board for the gay-themed sports site Outsports.com, ending nearly two years of psuedonymity as "Frustrated_Coach," trying to come to grips with his homosexuality and whether he should acknowledge it to others.

It’s an indication of how rare it is for a mid-career athlete or coach to come out that Hawkins’ declaration is big news, and not just among his team. To Hawkins’ shock — he said he thought he was just posting to a few people on a message board — The New York Daily News and MSNBC.com have interviewed him, and he said all the major papers in Missouri want to talk to him, too. He’s not liking the attention — especially with so many questions in his mind about how his players and their parents, his recruits and their parents, high school coaches, rival college coaches may or may not use his homosexuality against him.

Even before he outed himself online, Hawkins gradually came out to others, first telling his strict Southern Baptist family (whom he said disowned him) and his fellow lacrosse coaches and administrators at Missouri (whom he said were supportive). But Hawkins is now nervous that if his open homosexuality is too much of an issue, the once-supportive administrative might not be so supportive anymore. Missouri hasn’t publicly stated it is unhappy with Hawkins, but his contract is up at the end of July, and he’s coming off of a subpar season.

"If you put yourself in a gay person’s shoes, the outright fear is not what people think of you, but what people can do to you," Hawkins said.

"In sports, whether you’re a coach or a player, your terms of employment are not protected. There are lots of reasons to get rid of somebody."

The lesson in Hawkins’ case is that coming out isn’t an easy process for anyone, and for someone wrapped up the masculinity of he-man sports, it’s that much harder. "It’s messy," said Eric Anderson, author of the

2005 book "In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity," who was among the first male coaches at any level to be openly gay, coaching high school track and cross country in California in the 1990s.

The lesson also is that even if Americans in the abstract are willing to accept a gay athlete, that athlete’s experience will depend mightily on his personal situation. "No kid running cross country in Indiana in 2006 will use [a big-time athlete’s] experience to assess his situation,"

Anderson said. "He’ll say, ‘What is it like on my team?’"

While the WNBA’s Sheryl Swoopes and golf’s Rosie Jones are among the most recent of female athletes who have acknowledged they are gay, their impact is blunted by those sports’ already well-established gay fan base, as well as long-held stereotypes that women who pursue sports are, well, more manly than others. Olympian Rudy Galindo is a rare male who came out during his prime, but he’s a figure skater — not considered the most he-men of sports.

The final frontier for open homosexuality is still the traditional manly men’s sports — pro baseball or hockey, or pro or big-time college football or basketball.

It would seem America is more ready than ever to accept such an athlete.

Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images The Week in Sports Pictures The nation grieved for those hurt, killed and affected by the Boston Marathon bombings. After one of the suspects was caught on Friday — following a day-long lockdown and manhunt — sports returned to Boston over the weekend.

Various surveys show a majority of sports fans claiming their positive opinion of an athlete wouldn’t change a whit if he were gay. This offseason, for the first time the NFL invited a gay athlete, retired defensive lineman Esera Tuaolo, to lead its rookie orientation session on homosexuality. The idea of a big-time athlete being gay might have been unthinkable even 15 or 20 years ago, but the question these days is not if there are gay athletes, but how many -- and who -- they are.

Dan Woog, the head boys’ soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., and author of multiple books about gay men in sports, said athletes today are "intelligent" and "worldly" compared to past generations, and that any gay athlete’s fears that coming out would be wholly negative might be unfounded. Woog, who is openly gay, said that when he goes on presumably knuckle-dragging sports radio call-in shows, "the questions from hosts and calls from listeners have been intelligent and well thought out. They don’t always agree with me, but it’s not like it’s, ‘There’s a fag in my lockerroom, get him out."

Plus, he said, the athlete himself will benefit. "The fact he will not have to hide, to expend that intense psychic and physical energy [to stay in the closet] will make him a better athlete."

But there are reasons athletes get mixed signals. A 2005 Sports Illustrated survey shows how complicated an environment it is for a gay athlete to even think about coming out. The survey showed that 78 percent of fans said it would be OK for openly gay athletes to participate in sports, and 76 percent of fans disagreed with the statement that they would be less of a fan of a certain athlete if the player were gay.