‘I excelled in football because my being a gay man persisted against adversity’: Former Titans trainer
Blake Mundell was a Tennessee Titans massage therapist for 12 years. Now the gay man is the only Titans LMT not hired back to his NFL job.
Mark
I was born into football — the archetypal coach’s kid.
You know him. The one doing cartwheels down the sidelines at practice or occasionally perched atop his father’s shoulders during pre-game warmups, covering his ears while whistles bleated.
Dad had once played defensive back at the University of Colorado in the 1970s, and then he returned to the southeast corner of the state to teach algebra, to coach and to raise a family.
Some of my first memories involved Gatorade coolers and tackling dummies, the latter of which I would often appropriate, stacking them into little towers that dotted the end zones.
Dad’s fellow coaches were constantly demolishing my creations to conduct their tackling drills.
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I refused to stop.
That was, until the afternoon a greasy-haired waterboy stripped a pilfered dummy from my hands, held it up, and instructed me to tackle it.
“That’s what they’re for,” he said.
But I told him I didn’t want to — that I didn’t like tackling. When he started laughing, I realized I’d given the wrong answer.
Although I didn’t yet know the word “gay,” I could sense that something about me was out of place in my father’s world.
If I wasn’t careful, I might accidentally draw attention to that fact again. Others might notice, too.
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A companion to help with his gay ‘hypervigilance’
So I developed a companion. A helper. An observer.
From that day on, I appointed an ever-present me that hovered just behind and above my body, surveying my environment for the waterboy’s approach, assessing my own movements and words as well as others’ reactions to them.
My therapist would later call this hypervigilance — a constant state of alertness when the nervous system gets stuck on overdrive, monitoring the environment for present and future threats.
As is the case with many gay men, this awareness emerged as an early survival strategy for navigating a world that felt both hostile and inescapable.
Small-town folk keep their eyes on the sons of local sports legends. They take great interest in our destinies, perhaps because they believe the true test of a coach is how well he trains up his own progeny.
Or perhaps because they require a repeat performance before deciding whether or not the original was a fluke.
But even under their unwavering gazes, where there seemed to be no place to hide, I found a place: in plain sight.
With the help of my “observer” companion, I learned to precisely anticipate the expectations of everyone in my sphere. I became perfect.
When you make no mistakes, you draw no attention. Perfection is a kind of stillness, and stillness is a kind of invisibility.
I would later find that my observer proved useful beyond avoiding “sissy” accusations.
On the field, having my companion’s threat-detecting vision enabled me to dart through openings others didn’t see. He revealed to me the intentions of my blockers, of the defenders, of the coverage.
Once it was finally my turn to don the uniform I’d spent my childhood admiring, I led the high school team in both rushing and receiving yards.
By the time I graduated, I’d racked up enough honors to satisfy onlookers, but I’d started longing to experience at least one autumn without the stink of old sweat fermenting inside shoulder pads, without those stale gazes following my every achievement.
I moved to Tennessee to attend music school and figured that I was done with football.
But football wasn’t ready to release me.
My tryout for the Tennessee Titans
In 2014 I received an invitation to try out as a massage therapist for the Tennessee Titans medical staff. Later, I was told that other candidates competed for the position too, though I’m still unsure how many.
I do know that I was the youngest — and no doubt the least experienced — of the candidates, having received my license only that previous summer.
Those other massage therapists, whoever they were, must have had so many qualifications that I didn’t.
I do wonder, however, if any of them had a companion who could read minds.
A pro-sports training room functions best when every member of its staff knows and performs only their role — no more, no less. When one member overestimates their own importance or isn’t able to maintain objective therapeutic distance from the players, they often overstep, inserting themselves in situations and relationships where they don’t belong.
I never had that problem. My extra set of eyes were keen in intuiting where I did and did not belong. Where to be present, and more importantly, where to be invisible.
I was 25 when I got the job, wide-eyed and unsure of myself, and still deeply closeted. An imposter with imposter syndrome.
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The athletic trainers and physical therapists became my unwitting mentors. While I worked to address one player’s complaints, my watchful companion studied how they addressed another’s.
While I carried out my game-day responsibilities, the companion kept all my colleagues within the bubble of his awareness. His watchfulness helped me map out the contours of my role.
Spend a little extra time with this player, he would say.
Be ready for a call today.
Now is not the time to ask for a raise.
With his assistance, I stayed on through coaching changes and the subsequent “house cleanings.” Through rebuild years and playoff runs.
I built out a larger team of massage therapists that could meet the players’ growing demand for bodywork.
NFL teams utilize massage therapists differently, and with the Tennessee Titans we became some of the busiest and most integrated in the league. We put in long hours, worked games, went on trips, showed up at the facility seven days a week, often developing repetitive motion injuries ourselves.
My companion was often pushed to his own limits during pre-game treatments, monitoring which players were in line for work, which ones were injured, which ones had seniority, and which ones would throw a fit if they didn’t get their way.
Hypervigilance rarely comes without a cost. And I, like so many closeted gay men in sports, couldn’t afford to pay indefinitely.
I came out in 2019. I knew it would risk everything. Over the years, I’d heard my fair share of slurs and gay jokes from players and staff.
I’d witnessed the organization release countless colleagues under the guise of “needing fresh faces,”when everyone knew there were other reasons.
So to clear the air, I scheduled a meeting with my boss — Todd Toriscilli, the team’s head athletic trainer— at the beginning of training camp that year.
It was as if he’d been waiting for me. He himself had always been a watchful man. He remains something of a legend in pro sports athletic training circles, and I wouldn’t be the only one of his former employees to call his mentorship invaluable, and at times, fatherly.
That day in his office, he made sure to look me directly in the eyes when he assuaged my worries.
“As long as I’m here, you won’t be let go for that.”
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‘I excelled in football because my being a gay man persisted against adversity’: Former Titans trainer
Blake Mundell was a Tennessee Titans massage therapist for 12 years. Now the gay man is the only Titans LMT not hired back to his NFL job.
Those words would prove prophetic.
We would work together for six more years, until his retirement. Then, within the year, I would be informed that the organization wanted fresh faces.
And yet, amongst the team of massage therapists I had built, the only face they replaced in the end was mine.
I’m not sure yet whether football is done with me. Either way, I’m happy to bid my companion adieu. Reading minds, it turns out, is bad for your heart health.
Football was a world I first inherited, and later, one that I carved a home within.
Some might call it an unlikely home, but I don’t think so. I refuse to conceive of myself as an outsider in this sport, even now.
I excelled in the world of football, not despite being gay, but because my being a gay man persisted against adversity — and in doing so, bestowed its adaptive advantages without which I never would have stepped foot inside of an NFL organization.
Being gay, in so many things, is a beautiful and irreplaceable asset. Even in football.
Blake Mundell worked for the Tennessee Titans for 12 seasons until earlier this year. You can find Blake on Instagram and LinkedIn, and at his website.
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