Carl Nassib enters a Tampa Bay Buccaneers locker room a bit different from those of the 1990s

Carl Nassib likely will walk into the Tampa Bay Buccaneers locker room this week with little to no fanfare.

The seventh-year defensive end out of Penn State reportedly will be returning to the Bucs after spending the last two seasons with the Las Vegas Raiders.

During one of those years – 2021 – he came out.

That Nassib became the first active NFL player to publicly say he was gay and to play in a game should not raise an eyebrow. But we all know better.

One of the first responses after ESPN's Adam Schefter broke the news of his signing Tuesday on his Twitter account was this: "Is he the gay one."

Just about every headline about his signing with Tampa Bay mentions the "first active gay player" – including the one on this column.

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The comments on social media have been 50-50, some saying it's about time to have this out in the open, others saying why does it even have to be mentioned that he's gay.

Here's hoping there comes a day when we will not have to write about a player being gay just like we no longer write about quarterbacks being Black.

Having covered the NFL back in the '80s and '90s, every quarterback who was not white was labeled, most often not in a positive way.

As awful as that was, an openly gay NFL player back then would have been shunned and quickly out of the league. That's why the sexual preference of those players never became public knowledge.

In 1990s, locker rooms were very different places

When gay athletes started tentatively coming out in the early 90s, I asked several then-Tampa Bay Buccaneers how they would feel about a gay teammate. The answers were not shocking.

One player, who will not be named, told me he would not want a gay teammate in the locker room. He later came up to me and asked me to not quote him for the story. He had not changed his mind but did not want his honest feelings, based on his religious background, aired publicly.

Little did he know there was a gay player already in that locker room. A gay friend of mine confided that he was dating him. I asked if the player would talk about it – even without identifying him – and what he was dealing with in that jock, homophobic environment. It never happened.

Have things changed 30 years later? Scholars have documented an increasing trend toward openly gay athletes in high school and collegiate level sports, but not the pros.

"This is an example of the broader society changing much quicker than the institution of sport or the cultures of sport have done," Cheryl Cooky, a professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Purdue University, told NPR's Joe Hernandez in 2021.

Coming out among major sports leagues is still a rare occurrence

Some professional athletes have come out in recent years after retiring, but those still playing and acknowledging they are gay are few and far between whether in the NFL, NBA or NHL.

Meanwhile, many top female athletes have not been shy about declaring their sexuality, among them U.S. World Cup star Megan Rapinoe and numerous players in the WNBA.

When Nassib, who previously played for the Bucs in 2018-19, went on Instagram last year and came out, among other things, he said, "I hope one day videos like this and the whole coming out process are just not necessary."

At that time, Nassib pledged $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention and mental health counseling among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. The Raiders matched that donation.

This past June, Nassib pledged to match all donations to the organization up to $100,000 to commemorate Pride Month.

Let's hope Nassib continues to play in the NFL and continues contributing to projects such as this while more fans accept him for who he is.

That truly would be something worth a lot of fanfare.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Carl Nassib, NFL's first active gay player, back with Buccaneers