Steelers Had "Don't Ask" Policy With Kordell

Kordell Stewart has long been the butt of gay jokes (pun intended) and it turns out his Steelers teammates felt the same way. Plaxico Burress opened up about Kordell on the radio and in his book, Giant.

From Shutdown Corner:

�It had to be tough on him personally. I didn�t call him gay or anything like that. . . . I think that�s one of the reasons why he really couldn�t become the player that he wanted to be. . . . It has to play on you mentally a little bit.�

And in his book:

People were talking about [Kordell] being gay,� Burress writes in Chapter 5. �The players heard that, but we never talked about it. I don�t know if Kordell is gay or not. It was none of our business. If ever we would have talked about it, it would have made everybody uncomfortable. If some player was gay, I don�t think he could come out while he was still playing. It would be real hard. It would mess a team up mentally and it wouldn�t be good for that person.�

[...]

�He had to watch the people that he hung around with. Just hanging out with your friends, or your boys and your cousins, all those things come to the surface. I think he just insulated himself after a while.�

The rumors were believed to reach its height when some enterprising NFL.com writer started peppering his "Marquee Matchup" and "Post Mortem" columns with inside jokes about "Kordell's coming out party" against the Bengals along with other such nonsense back in the late 1990s.

Hell, even the Steelers couldn't bring themselves to joke about it.

Sorry, but this is all a load. Kordell threw interceptions and was unable to read NFL defenses because of the gay rumors? Sure.

Kordell just sucked as a quarterback. If he sucked off the field, that had nothing with his inability to perform on the gridiron. If the rumors were really getting to him, why didn't he marry a playmate and get her pregnant with a turkey baster?