Troy Vincent: NFL ready for openly gay player

Former Eagles cornerback and current NFL senior vice president of player engagement Troy Vincent says the NFL is ready for an openly gay player.

His views were published in this report from ESPNW.com's Kate Fagan.

Vincent took part ina a seminar hosted by the You Can Play Project, which is intended to connect LGBTQ youth with leaders from professional sports.

"As far as we're concerned, it's 'Come on out!'" Vincent said. "We aren't worried about the locker room. We're worried about how to keep a guy safe when he leaves the locker room."

"Football is a mask," Vincent said. "It allows us to hide, to not have to discuss certain parts of our lives. For a football player, his play is how he communicates, how he is celebrated. We're trying to break that down and have conversations around family, relationships, sexual orientation, mental health."

"People always ask me what's keeping the first NFL player from coming out, Vincent said. "And they seem to think that there is something the league is doing wrong that's preventing it, or that there's something specific about the culture. I've never believed that. The same obstacles that keep people all across the world from coming out are what keep an NFL player from coming out."

"The locker room is ready, but days like today make us even more prepared."