Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is an openly gay American Football player who almost became the first openly gay player in the NFL. Today's Out Spotlight is Alan Gendreau.

Alan Scott Gendreau was born May 27, 1989 grew up in Apopka, Florida in a deeply religious home. A devout Christian, Gendreau has been openly gay since high school when he came out to his parents at the age of 16. Afterwards, they placed him in church-based counseling that spanned four sessions.

He attended Orangewood Christian High School in Maitland, Florida, where he was a placekicker and a first-team all-state selection as a junior and senior. After making 14-of-16 field goals and 27-of-30 extra points in his senior year, he was selected to play in the Central Florida All-Star game. He ended his career as the school's all-time leading scorer. He also played soccer at Orangewood, twice earning Orlando Sentinel Player of the Year for soccer and setting the all area scoring record with 172 career goals.

Gendreau attended Middle Tennessee State University. He made the difficult decision to play football over soccer, and played for the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders for four years. This team represents the Middle Tennessee State University in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and competed as a member of the Sun Belt Conference. While his teammates, coaches, classmates, and friends knew of his sexual orientation, they made no mention of it to the media. Otherwise, he could have been the first publicly out gay player in Division I college football.

He began his career being named to the Sun Belt All-Freshman team, and was later named twice to the All-Sun Belt first team. He also made the second longest field goal in Sunbelt Conference history and set multiple school placekicking records. Gendreau ended his college career as the leading scorer in Sun Belt Conference history and despite his strong second half of his Senior season, interest from the NFL waned. He finished his college career with 295 points, the most in Sun Belt Conference history.

Scouting reports leading up to the 2012 NFL Draft rated Gendreau as an average kicker. With only 62 field goal attempts in college—just over one per game—he did not receive attention from many NFL teams. He also did not have an agent and he did not know how to obtain one. He went undrafted. Gendreau stayed in shape through this year, hoping to become the first openly gay NFL football player. Last week Outsports, released his story about being a gay football player. "I'm a kicker that happens to be gay. It's a part of who I am, and not everything I am. I just want to be known as a normal kicker."

Chris Kluwe, a punter for the Minnesota Vikings said "It's totally legit that he can get into the [NFL]," Kluwe believed that place-kicking, which is limited to one specific skill set, allowed proficient kickers to be successful even if they had taken a break from the game for years.

Unfortunately he was not selected to be part of this year's NFL draft. Gendreau tweeted to respond the news as well as give some idea of his future plans.

"Just an FYI. I am NOT a part of the NFL draft. I am training right now with hopes of landing a tryout at a training camp in a couple months!"

In another sad twist the Minnesota Vikings selected UCLA punter Jeff Locke in the draft and Chris Kluwe claims the pick, which might put him out of a job, was made due to his vocal support of the LGBT community.

Kluwe told NBC's Pro Football Talks blog: “It’s a shame that in a league with players given multiple second chances after arrests, including felony arrests, that speaking out on human rights has a chance of getting you cut.”