Sometimes in this business you stand in the driveway staring open-mouthed at a headline on the front page of the newspaper. At times such as this you wish you had any other job because you don’t want to write about the news of the day.

Kirk Reynolds was as professional as any public relations coordinator you’ll encounter in the world of sports. He was as respected and admired as any PR person in the NFL before the training tape he starred in fell into the hands of the San Francisco Chronicle and created a swirling controversy throughout the Bay Area and the nation.

Not only that, but he’s a good guy, a good person.

So, the question becomes, how did someone whose job is damage control create the kind of scandal that he was trying to prevent? Why did someone who implemented a diversity education program that has been copied by other NFL teams produce a video that offended civil rights leaders are describing as “racist, sexist and homophobic?”

The simple answer is that Reynolds got caught up in the locker room mentality that is rampant with the inner sanctum of male professional sports. In trying to connect with NFL players for the purpose of educating them about media relations Reynolds stooped to a level of insensitivity that remains accepted inside NFL lockerrooms but is unacceptable in virtually every other work place in America.

That such a mentality is not only tolerated but condoned is what created this controversy in the first place and, ultimately, cost a rising star within the 49ers’ organization to be leave the team in order to seek employment elsewhere.

It’s not as if raunchy sex scenes like those that appeared in the video can’t be found in popular movies. We can hear and watch skits involving racial stereotyping and gay weddings on our favorite morning radio or late-night television shows.

But where outside of the testosterone-crazed world of professional sports would a public-relations specialist employed by a company that is extremely conscious of public perception believe that such a raunchy video was the best way to relate to his audience?

This is the third incident in the past three years that exposes the culture that not only exists within the 49ers organization but throughout NFL and all of pro sports.

First it was ex-running back Garrison Hearst making derogatory remarks about homosexuals during the 2002 season. Then longtime trainer Lindsay McLean retired and admitted that he had been the target of occasional harassment because of his own homosexuality. Finally, a private training video intended in part to encourage players to “embrace diversity” was delivered in a way that undermined a point it was trying to drive home became public and turned into a very public scandal.

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These are just symptoms of a much larger problem. One of the NFL’s most competent public relations directors may never find work in the league again because he believed he had to stoop to the type of wink-wink male jocularity that defines the locker room environment to relate to the audience it was his job to educate.

Reynolds is not insensitive. He is not a racist, as some have portrayed him to be. McLean, for one, has rallied to his defense, describing him to the San Jose Mercury News as “one of the most decent, non-homophobic people I have ever met in the world.”

McLean asked critics to put the video into the context of an NFL locker room.

“Things are done differently in there,” he told the paper.

McLean exposes the real problem right there. It’s that boys-will-be-boys mentality that must change. Nobody wants the political correctness police patrolling NFL locker rooms. However, the gap between acceptable behavior behind close doors at team headquarters and acceptable behavior in any other workplace must be narrowed, if not bridged, if the 49ers and other sports franchises want to avoid further embarrassment.

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