MIA photographs by Cameron Wittig.
Minnesota United Midfielder Collin Martin at the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Collin Martin with a favorite van Gogh at Minneapolis Institute of Art
Because this is a modern story, it begins at the end, in Los Angeles. Stage 56 on the CBS Television City lot, to be precise.
On a rainy Thursday in January, a small entourage gathers for CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden. Inside a chic green room, a platter of crudité and hummus, energy bars, and obscure bottled waters await the talent. Kansas’s “Carry on Wayward Son” plays over the sound system.
This being a modern story, the ratio of publicists and stylists to regular people is three to one. They are all here for Collin Martin. The midfielder for Minnesota United Football Club came out on social media last summer, and James Corden responded with congratulations. An invitation to play “Late Late Live Tinder” followed. Martin will choose among suitors, swiping left and right from an eight-foot “phone,” as if using the app.
MLS publicists excitedly banter with Martin about the prospects for true love to come from this national TV appearance. “I love love,” one sighs. Martin smiles wanly and fidgets with a silver pearl choker.
The hangers-on ask if he wants kids (yes) and if he’s a nurturer (no). Things are moving fast, to be sure. Now all he needs is a date.
Martin is the first public figure to play Late Late Live Tinder, and not just because he’s 24 years old and uncannily articulate, with all-American looks that would fit on a Wheaties box. He’s also the only out male athlete playing in one of America’s major sports leagues. And he’s single.
If you were to spend more than a 13-minute TV segment with Martin, you’d find out that those two facts are not unrelated.
***
Photo courtesy of Terence Patrick/CBS
Collin Martin at The Late Late Show with James Corden
Martin plays the field on “Late Late Live Tinder,” with CBS host James Corden
Last June 29, in his second season playing for the Loons, Martin came out publicly on Twitter and Instagram, generating 115,000 likes (to date). Notice came from far beyond the Twin Cities. Martin’s announcement appeared in the BBC and The Guardian. The sports-news website Outsports named him its Male Hero of the Year, and he received honors from the national Human Rights Campaign. Along with campaigning for Gov. Tim Walz, Martin posed for the obligatory semi-shirtless cover for Gay Times, in the U.K.
Sports culture, it appeared, was at last trending into modernity.
Yet in American soccer, Martin is just the second out male player. Erstwhile U.S. National team winger Robbie Rogers was playing in England for Leeds in 2013, when he quit “the beautiful game” and came out. Rogers quickly returned to soccer in the U.S., playing four successful seasons with the LA Galaxy before retiring in 2017.
As for the gay athletes currently playing baseball, basketball, football, and hockey? It’s a topic that can be dispensed within a sentence. There are none. Jason Collins came out at the end of a 13-season NBA career. Missouri All-American Michael Sam came out before the NFL draft, fell precipitously through its rounds, and never played a down in the NFL. He later said that coming out probably undermined his football career.
Observers expected a flood of comings out after Sam, Collins, and Rogers, but none appeared in men’s pro sports until Martin. The inevitable questions, then, are: Why Collin Martin? And why now?
The person we saw last summer in media coverage appeared self-assured and poised, almost matter-of-fact; five years earlier, Rogers had seemed emotional and vulnerable. From a distance, we guessed Martin must be an irreplaceable star on the field: a player who could afford to take the risk. His path to this moment of self-actualization must have been smooth.
As it happens, that blithe narrative reflected a good bit of wishful thinking.
Collin Martin is poised to become a role model and break down barriers for LGBTQ kids in sports. The main reason he does media is to spread the message that coming out makes life better, not worse.
Yet Martin came out not at the end of some carefully choreographed process, but almost spontaneously, at a point in his career where he had much to lose. So a lot is riding on the MLS season that begins March 2. The Loons open their quarter-billion-dollar Allianz Field in St. Paul’s Midway with expectations the expansion franchise will no longer underperform the league.
For Martin, the focus must shift to soccer as well, as he looks to finally put together the kind of impactful season that will secure a place in the game beyond 2019.
During the off-season, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine visited Martin in his hometown of Washington, D.C., traveled to Los Angeles for his TV appearance, and met him several times in the Twin Cities.
In a series of conversations that became increasingly candid, Martin revealed that last year’s catharsis followed a decade of trials. Once you’ve heard that story, it is easier to understand why Collin Martin remains the only one.
***
Courtesy of Minnesota United.
Collin Martin at TCF Bank Stadium
Martin stays on the ball in a friendly match last July at TCF Bank Stadium with Costa Rican club Deportivo Saprissa.
Martin was born November 9, 1994, the fourth of five children, to Roberta and Gerard Martin of Chevy Chase, Maryland. At Holy Cross Hospital that day, Collin’s maternal grandmother held him for the first time and observed to her daughter, “This child is different.”
I met Martin for dinner at a Greek restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland, not far from his parents’ condo. In a text, he’d advised that his attire would be “unassuming,” as he’d be coming straight from a workout. He looks like all the other young men in upscale athleisure wear—a few days from his last shave, fit, but hardly bulked up.
Martin spends the brief 90-day MLS offseason at home, catching up with friends and family, traveling, and keeping in shape. Most of his family remains in the D.C. area, and we’re meeting just two miles from his childhood residence.
At 10, Martin recalls, “A PE teacher told my parents I would be a pro soccer player. I loved it. I was obsessed.”
Martin played on the National U-14, U-15, and U-17 teams. And he played for the country on the U-20 squad in France at age 17.
Being a prodigy exacts its price. It plays with your sense of self. Throughout his childhood, Martin says he “wasn’t a very good teammate. I would yell and berate kids. You get told you’re better than everyone else for long enough and you believe it.”
That was one side of Collin Martin. In between confrontations, third-grade Collin played a different part. “I was very outgoing. I liked to perform during lunch hour.”
Martin’s face notably brightens when he shares the lyrics to his go-to song: “Milkshake,” by Kelis. “You know, ‘My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.’ And the older sixth-graders were like, ‘You’re gay!’ And I was like, ‘Why do they think that?’”
***
Courtesy of Collin Martin.
Collin Martin with his Father
A youth-soccer phenom, Martin scrimmaged in Europe and took in a game with his father, Gerard Martin, in Amsterdam.
Just after New Year’s, 2017, Martin got the news he’d been traded to MLS expansion team Minnesota United FC after what The Washington Post described as “four injury-marred MLS seasons,” playing for his hometown D.C. United. The newspaper noted, “The attacking midfielder from Chevy Chase never made much of a mark.”
“I don’t think I was prepared physically to be a professional,” Martin says. “The modern game of soccer is extremely physical. It was not something I focused on as a kid because it came so naturally to me. The game was all based on the ball and what I could do with the ball. But the reality is that you have the ball—the stat is crazy—it’s less than two minutes a game.”
Martin plays central midfielder, a field general who “does a little bit of everything,” he explains. “You have to be good at both sides of the game. I’m not a great defender. I’m not a great attacker. But I can do both pretty well, and I’m a little bit more of a connector.”
Martin’s coaches say his “technical skills” stand out. “I’m comfortable with the ball,” Martin says. “Good passer, good dribbler, my first touch is good.”
Yet Martin got on the field in fewer than half the Loons matches each of the last two seasons. He is playing out the option year of a three-year contract. The implication is that he needs to come into his own to ensure another season with the Loons, or anyplace in MLS. (Martin expects to earn $105,000 this coming season—some $40,000 over the league minimum.)
Amos Magee, MNUFC’s director of player personnel, says, “The big growth he has to do is read the game, see the game, recognize what the game needs in advance.”
Martin wouldn’t argue with that explanation. “I haven’t had an amazing season yet,” he says. “I have to show that I’m able to be a consistent contributor. I’ve shown them glimpses, but not the consistency they want.”
***
We are driving through Northwest D.C. in a borrowed Honda Civic, on a tour of Collin Martin’s childhood. He points out the two homes he grew up in, just a block from one another, on Primrose Street. The country club where he would swim with friends. The fields where he started playing soccer at age 3.
One of the more uncomfortable facets of youth athletics is that gay kids abandon it, explains Hudson Taylor, founder of Athlete Ally, a nonprofit working to make sports more hospitable to LGBTQ people. “They drop out at two times the rate of straight kids,” Taylor says. “And kids drop out of sports when it stops being fun.”
Though Martin experienced teasing about his sexuality as early as third grade, it didn’t occur on the soccer pitch. In fact, this space was a refuge: “There was never a time I got tired of soccer,” Martin says.
Rather than giving up singing and dancing, Martin’s approach was to overcompensate. “I would think, ‘How can I be gay? I’m the best athlete!’ Then I would bully someone.”
“I always felt I had to prove my masculinity throughout my childhood. That’s what I felt people wanted from an athlete. I wanted to be the most popular. I wanted to be the best.”
Martin continues, “I always felt I had to prove my masculinity throughout my childhood, because that’s what I felt people wanted from an athlete. I wanted to be the most popular. I wanted to be the best at everything. And when someone perceived me as gay, that was less than. And I didn’t want that.”
At age 12, Martin, against his parents’ best instincts, left home to attend a soccer boarding school in Ohio. His father, Gerard, says the 18 months were decisive. “They taught him toughness,” he says. “He was groomed for the career.”
In a sense, Martin’s vulnerabilities weren’t exposed on the field. “It’s funny. I was not affected by homophobic language in the game,” he says. “Because I was yelling at kids that they sucked. I always had a thick skin.”
Martin says the awareness that he was probably gay took hold as he hit puberty. “Even in high school it took me a while to kind of understand it,” he recalls. “I thought I still had to marry a girl.”
In 2012, Martin accepted a soccer scholarship to Wake Forest University, in North Carolina. He recalls leading a “double life” in this stage. “That really took a toll on me. I had to play to this façade.”
Half a decade in, Martin had never acted on his sexuality or told a soul. “I wasn’t ready to be sneaking around,” he says. “I didn’t know where to meet a gay guy.” Martin, like a lot of LGBTQ kids, had spent his teenage years learning straight culture and hanging out with straight people.
Feeling alienated on a conservative southern campus, Martin accepted a contract with D.C. United and left a soccer scholarship at Wake after his freshman year. He returned home at 18, in 2013, with a goal of coming to terms with himself.
“I had a lot of self-doubt,” he remembers. “Feeling sorry for myself that I was not straight. But there comes a point where you have to get on with it.”
***
Collin Martin at MIA walking
Off the field, Martin hangs out in the Grand Salon from the Hôtel Gaillard de la Bouëxière—an 18th century period room at Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Martin had always planned on coming out, but the timing chose him.
Figuring it out in D.C. didn’t prove easy. He stayed in the closet, while also diving into hookup culture. A religious upbringing in a traditional Episcopal church had led Martin to believe that promiscuity was inherently sinful. He also didn’t like many of the men he met and didn’t relish his experiences with them. “I was with the wrong people,” he says. “It was real lonely. There were certain things I was doing I didn’t think was even OK.”
It’s January. Martin and I are sitting in a back booth at The Lowry on Hennepin Avenue. He’s fresh from a haircut, wearing a jacket and fitted sweatpants. He’s indulging in a glass of water.
“Did I tell you about the blackmail?” he asks, matter-of-factly.
In 2013, back in his hometown, Martin arranged a meetup online. In person, he decided the chemistry wasn’t there, and drove the gentleman home. The rejection stung and the guy would not let go.
He stalked and harassed him, threatening to out Martin to the media. It went on for months. “I was thinking about it before games. I was thinking about it before practices,” Martin says. “It ate me up so much inside. It really messed with me. I lost trust in gay people my age.”
He also knew it could happen again. The solution was obvious, but hardly simple. “It was so traumatic that I needed to tell people. And I had to come out to tell people.”
That process would last five years.
***
When Collin Martin played Tinder on CBS, the producers requested he come up with one question to ask the finalists. Martin’s choice: “How is your relationship with your parents?”
Gerard and Roberta Martin are in their early 60s, and live in a rather formally decorated new-build townhome in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He is a pediatric cardiologist; she works as a pastoral counselor.
Collin Martin opened up first to friends, then to his four siblings, and next to a few close teammates at D.C. United. He describes the experience as scary, but uniformly positive and cathartic.
His parents came last. This was three years after Martin returned to D.C.; he was 21 or 22, he recalls. Though they are a politically progressive family, sexuality wasn’t a topic the Martins dwelled on. (In fact, his parents had switched churches during his adolescence; their old congregation, he says, “wasn’t inclusive to gay people.”)
Martin speaks cautiously about the acceptance he perceived at home as a child.
His mother says now, “His brother was very hard on him.”
A family friend Martin consulted for advice on coming out to his parents offered a wary “good luck.”
“I cared the most how they viewed me,” Martin says. “They’re the most important people to me. I wanted to be in a great spot personally, where I could be proud of myself. I wanted a seamless interaction. I didn’t want to be a burden to them.”
The Martins were indeed thrown for a loop. “I would have thought they would have known a little more,” Martin says. “I didn’t have girlfriends. I didn’t talk about girls much, though I was outgoing.”
“It was sad,” says Gerard. He recalls “a dinner in Minnesota where we said to him we would have liked to have been more supportive.”
On this point, Martin cannot resist inserting a public service announcement. It’s directed toward all parents, not just those who believe their children may be LGBTQ: Don’t wait for them to announce it. “I wish they would have mentioned just one or two times that it would be OK if their son was gay,” he says. “I would have been able to move forward a lot faster.”
Gerard Martin says now, “Some of what he faced, we’ll never know.”
“It’s changed my parents in a huge way,” Martin says. “The way they view the world, the way they view others. They have a different eye and ear for it. They pick up on so much more.”
***
By the time he arrived in Minnesota, Martin identified as gay in dealing with teammates. The friends he made in Minneapolis knew, too. All that remained was talking about it publicly.
That moment occurred last summer, as Martin was participating in a Pride Month soccer initiative called Playing for Pride. “A lot of famous players were supporting it, a lot of straight guys,” Martin recalls. A reporter who interviewed Martin for the event assumed he was a straight man, supporting the LGBTQ community.
“I wasn’t planning on coming out,” Martin continues. “It all came together in two weeks. My thought was, I would be ashamed if I didn’t do it. I would feel like a fraud. I would let people down.”
The timing was not what he had dreamed it would be. “I always envisioned I would be in a really secure part of my professional life. Like, I’d be a consistent starter. It’d be great to be an all-star and be like, ‘Well, you’re not cutting me now because I’m the best player on the team.’ And that never happened for me. I just came to the realization that it wasn’t necessary, nor was I going to be the best player.”
MNUFC, Martin says, “was amazing” in supporting him.
The team seemed cognizant of the stakes. “Collin was on an option,” says Amos Magee—a member of the team leadership who will decide whether to bring back Martin for a fourth season in Minnesota. “His risk was greater. It took an enormous amount of confidence from him.”
Martin downplays this. “I’m a really privileged gay man. I’m a white male. I’ve never felt economically insecure. I’ve had support systems.”
The confidence he took from his upbringing comes through in the message he wants to share at the end of the process. “There are really good people in sport,” he says. “They’re going to support you. All that matters is the performance you put on the field and the type of person you carry yourself as. Your sexuality doesn’t matter at all.”
That’s also how Martin has started to define a new relationship with his faith. “God made me. I think he still loves me. He just wants to make sure I’m treating people the right way.”
***
Collin Martin at MIA In front of Mirror
Back in the Late Late Show green room, one of the publicists asks Martin about the silver pearl choker he intends to wear on national TV. He bought it last year in Manhattan’s West Village. His mother thinks it’s too feminine; Martin resolves to wear it anyway.
On stage, Martin has game. He ad libs confidently, deletes suitors with heartless abandon. He even has the wit to mock the meal served to him and his new friend in the studio conference room. “I told you,” Martin says to Corden, “the food makes the date.”
Martin finally swipes right on Connor Gowland, 24, who works as a casting editor at A&E Television. They’re close in age and Gowland bears a resemblance to Martin’s ex-boyfriend. “But he lives in Los Angeles and I live in Minneapolis, so . . .”
No love connection ensues. The two could have spent a weekend together, Martin concedes, but that really isn’t what he’s looking for these days.
Not too long after the blackmail incident, Martin declared himself done with hookup culture. “I was disgusted with it. I was disgusted with my own decisions. I was ready to settle down at 22.”
Martin has someone in mind when he says this. He spent the better part of two years in a serious relationship with a man he’d first met while both were students at Wake Forest. They broke up last year, Martin says—but the pull of the relationship is magnetic: “I still like him a lot.” (They communicated just before televised Tinder; his ex-boyfriend was disinclined to watch.)
Martin had fun being on national TV. But he got less out of it than the MLS publicists, who successfully positioned their league as progressive and modern; less than the Loons, who put a rather obscure soccer franchise on a national stage; and certainly less than Target and Adidas, whose logos Martin paraded in front of the camera when he presented James Corden with a souvenir jersey.
This could be Collin Martin’s last MLS season or he could last another decade in the game. Either way, this isn’t his last act. Most MLS players barely make enough money to get them through the current season—no less 50 years of early retirement. In the off-season, Martin finished his bachelor’s degree in history at George Washington University.
Roberta Martin thinks her son would make a great doctor, and declares he should go to medical school.
“That’s not happening,” Martin says.
Whatever is next, and whenever that is, the prospect doesn’t faze him.
“I don’t like one thing to define me,” he says. “I don’t like it when people define me as a soccer player. I’m a really good student. I enjoy art. When I’m done with soccer, I’ll do something else.”
Epilogue (March, 2020): A year after writing my profile of Collin Martin, much has changed, and a lot of my text about his crucial 2019 season rings rather hollow a year later. Martin barely played for the Loons in 2019, appearing in three games. Focused on a playoff run, the team had upgraded its talent in the offseason and it’s unclear if Martin really ever fitted into its plans from anything other than a PR standpoint.
Martin was so little used that he requested a loan to Hartford’s minor league team early in the season to maintain his skills. Returning to Minneapolis during summer, he was prominent in the MLS’s national pride commemorations, and a few games that didn’t count in the standings, but the die seemed to be cast.
In October the Loons cut ties with Martin, who spent the offseason looking for another MLS gig to no avail. In February, after MLS teams had started training camp, Martin signed a contract with the United Soccer League’s expansion San Diego Loyal, which is co-owned by US soccer legend Landon Donovan. The team plays as part of USL’s Championship tier, the proximate minor league to the MLS.
He is clearly hoping to play his way back into the expansion-minded MLS, but for the time being, there is again no openly gay male player in the top tier leagues of American pro sports.
Collin Martin’s Twin Cities
The downtown Minneapolis resident finds it an “easy town to be gay in. A very accepting place.” You’re most likely to find him out at a local restaurant, less so a gay bar. (He’s not a fan of the local ones.) Here are some of his favorite spots:
Restaurants: The Lynhall, Spyhouse, Victor’s 1959 Cafe, Brasa, Kyatchi (for sushi), 4 Bells
Store: MartinPatrick3
Entertainment: Hewing Hotel’s Rooftop Bar and Lounge
Culture: Mia, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Activities: Biking the lakes
Bars: CC Club, Hewing Hotel, Marvel Bar, The Basement Bar
The Locker Room Must Include a Really Big Closet
Where are all the gay men in professional team sports?
There are more theories about why gay men don’t come out in pro sports than there are gay men who’ve come out. (The total count of active players numbers one—that being Collin Martin, of course.) We asked a handful of athletes, team officials, and commentators to weigh in. Fair warning, they didn’t offer a consensus explanation.
“Data is limited,” says Hudson Taylor, founder of the advocacy group Athlete Ally. “This is a population it is difficult to get concrete answers from, because they don’t wear their status on their sleeves.”
Theory 1: A climate of fear pervades sports due to homophobic owners and coaches.
Look at the NFL and the saga of All-American defensive end Michael Sam. Or consider the Vikings’ long relationship with coach Mike Priefer. Suspended for homophobic comments in 2014, Priefer remained employed by the team for another five seasons. “You don’t have to be actively homophobic,” says former Vikings punter Chris Kluwe. “It’s enough to just stay quiet.”
(Last June the Vikings hosted an LGBTQ summit. According to COO Kevin Warren, the team is dedicated to an ongoing dialogue about purging this bias from sports.)
Theory 2: Sports careers are so short that players don’t want to do anything that might endanger that window of income.
Taylor raises the specter of replacement: “Everyone has someone vying for their position. There’s always a just cause to lose status or playing time. If someone in a position of power wants to discriminate, there’s always a legitimate reason.”
Kluwe, who believes the Vikings cut him in response to his same-sex marriage activism, notes that the average NFL career is 3.3 years. And contracts are not guaranteed.
Theory 3: Intolerant locker-room environments, with rampant homophobic language, deter (or scare off) players long before they reach the pros.
“High school locker rooms are rife with homophobia,” says Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of the website Outsports. “There’s a perception that gay athletes drop out.”
Collin Martin subscribes to none of the above hypotheses. “People opt out of sport for all different reasons,” he says. “They can’t drive three hours to the practices, they can’t lose weight, their parents have harassed them and they’ve lost the love for it. But for people who love to play, they won’t let anything get in the way.”
Why should we care? “Every human being has a right to live their authentic self,” says Taylor. “People denied that option inevitably see it affect their on-field performance, and sports loses out on a rich talent pool.”
But living a gay identity in public remains a lot to ask, especially for athletes who may have lacked Martin’s advantages. Rick Welts, president of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors (and himself one of the few out executives in the upper ranks of sports), notes that the players tend to be young, and may still be finding themselves. “We tend to think of athletes as more fully formed human beings because of the brief cycle of that career.”
Whatever the answer, the topic continues to make people uncomfortable. The Timberwolves and Twins declined to make a player personnel executive available for this story, while University of Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle declined to comment.
“We keep saying the next generation will get it right,” says New York Magazine’s Will Leitch, who has written extensively about sexuality and the locker room. “But anti-gay bias still is an acceptable part of belief systems. And that’s not something sports can overcome.”
