Craig James Condemns Gay People To Eternal Thursday Night Football Broadcasts

Is former football player and whooper Craig James actually ignorant about how people become who they are, or is he trying to take advantage of ignorance for the sake of lowering his impressive disapproval rating a tad?

Doesn't really matter, though the latter's probably worse. It doubly doesn't matter what he thinks, as he'll never be elected to do anything in the state of Texas after robbing a popular Texas coach of a job, starring for a Texas program just before it was nuked by the NCAA, and ruining many a Thursday night Big 12 game between Oklahoma State and whoever.

But it still matters, and not just because James may want to return to broadcasting very soon.

He's put himself in a strange world now. If a NBA or NFL player were to say that God will punish dead gay people for choosing to be gay, that player would find himself publicly apologizing within days. Everyone involved is too smart to allow discriminatory talk to stand. It's bad for modern business, for one thing. James could've never gotten away with saying this while being employed by ESPN.

Tim Hardaway's similar remark about gay people is still one of the first four search results for his name, and he started apologizing for it five years ago. But for a politician, it's nothing.

Demographics dictate that James has had gay teammates at SMU and in the pros. He's certainly worked with gay people at ESPN. He may have even directly employed gay people in his ranching enterprise or on the PR goon squad that cost Mike Leach a job. If James voted in the AP poll alongside gay football writers, we can be confident their ballots ranked Boise State more correctly than did his. Sending gay people to hell is something he simply couldn't talk about all that often in his daily life until now. Politics: a strange thing.

And now here he is, saying things he'd never be allowed to say in the sports world and bragging about refusing to show support for people he disagrees with. A man with a filthy past is not only judging people for being who they are, but judging a man for attending a parade:

JAMES: I think right now in this country, our moral fiber is sliding down a slope that is going to be hard to stop if we don't stand up with leaders who don't go ride in gay parades. I can assure you I will never ride in a gay parade. And I hear what you're saying, Tom, but leaders - our kids out there people need to see examples.

I leave you to be the judge of just how butch this may or may not be: