Somewhere, there exists very funny footage from an unfinished film called Touch Down: Origins of the Ass-Slap in Sports that I made with director Rashidi Harper, writer-producer David Davis, and actor Darius Dudley. The protagonist in this mocumentary is straight, but we thought it would be a funny touch to cast Dave Kopay as a witness to the NFL’s very first booty smack. The punchline is that Joe Namath’s flamboyance, the '60s revolution, etc., all flowed out of this unremarked-upon spontaneous gesture.

Since the shoot I managed to lose track of Kopay, who had become the modern era’s first openly gay sports star with his 1975(!) book Kopay. Dude's an important figure, so I wrote him a letter at last year’s end and learned that Dave’s moved to Seattle, where he was once an All-American running back at the University of Washington. (He recently willed $1 million to UW's Q Center.) In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, I'll be publishing parts of a wide-ranging interview with Kopay. He remains a legend not for playing in 111 NFL games, but for coming out so early and speaking eloquently about issues surrounding sexuality and sport.

We talked on Martin Luther King Day, a day after the Super Bowl match-ups were set. Early on, we discussed his life-changing love affair with the Washington Redskins' tight end Jerry Smith, who was effectively written out of history after dying of AIDS in 1986. “When Shannon Sharpe broke his record for receptions,” Kopay informed me, “you had to try to figure out whose record Sharpe had actually broken."

How secretive did you have to be to carry on your relationship with Jerry Smith?

We weren’t secretive at all! That’s what’s funny about it. This was the product of the '60s. It was the love generation. Everything was okay then. It was okay to try a joint — although I never got into any other drugs that people did. I tried a couple of joints and it wasn’t my thing at all.

Everybody knew about Jerry. Basically, when I got close to him everybody went, “What the hell is goin’ on with Kopay?” But I also had a lady friend, a gal that I ended up marrying. And I really loved her, so they couldn’t really quite understand what was going on. They’d see me at the appropriate times with women, but I wasn’t out chasing women the way just about every married and unmarried straight guy was.

It really inspired me to be myself, to tell you the truth. I just got so sick and tired of all the shit.

What do you mean?

All the lying. The cheating. I got married out of a sense of desperation, of depression. I actually got talked into it, through a shrink. He said, "Do you love her?" I said, “Yeah!” But I didn’t love her enough.

But you said the players knew about Jerry. Was he flamboyant and open?

He was up-to-date and he wore all the latest clothes. But a lot of the straight guys did, too. They just kinda knew.

He was always available for the Redskins, and the way he was with the Redskins was kind of amazing, in terms of speaking engagements. Boy Scouts, clubs, all that type of stuff. He was one of their main speakers.

There’s a beat writer I know in New York City. He has the confidence of a lot of the guys in the locker room, and from what he says, there’s no way at all that players would accept a gay player in the locker room. But, like, with Jerry — and even myself when I was there a couple of years — we were their gay guy. I think they would protect us in a way that they might not a stranger on the street. But [the beat writer] thought that because of religion or fundamentalist beliefs, most of the players would reject having a gay player in the locker room. I didn’t feel that way at all.

I think they would go to bat for us once they knew who we were. Maybe not a player who just came in, but someone who had been through the war and through the trenches with them: Someone who had their backs, so to speak, out on the field, who they would defend, that’s how I feel. That’s how they reacted when Jerry and I were there.

Tuesday: From Glenn Burke to John Amaechi