Raider fans, and all Nevadans, should be proud to have Nassib on their team

When Carl Nassib made history this week by becoming the first active NFL player to come out as gay, it was a shining moment for him and for the Las Vegas Raiders.

We applaud Nassib for his courage and the team for its support of him.

Raiders owner Mark Davis had a refreshing reaction to the news, not only commending Nassib but musing as to why his announcement was even a story in this day and age in America.

Davis is right in one sense — all things being equal, an athlete’s sexuality shouldn’t matter. It has zilch to do with his or her ability to play a game, after all. But Nassib’s coming out is richly symbolic and is a big step forward for inclusion in major sports.

The Raiders are a franchise of many firsts in terms of promoting diversity, having hired the NFL’s first Hispanic head coach, the first Black head coach in the modern era, the first female team executive in the league and one of the first women in an assistant coaching role, among other distinctions.

The team isn’t perfect — no team is — but it unquestionably has set itself apart, beginning with its former owner, Al Davis.

“Going back many decades, Al hired without regard to race, gender, ethnicity and other individualities which have no bearing whatsoever on whether one can do the job,” said former Raiders CEO Amy Trask — the aforementioned first female executive in the league — to USA Today Sports. “My expectation, and my hope, is that (Nassib) will be accepted as a teammate in the locker room, and in the organization as a whole, and that he will be evaluated only on merit, as should be the case for all.”

Trask witnessed the team’s inclusive culture first-hand, notably when a reporter referenced her in asking Raiders Hall of Famer Gene Upshaw what it was like “having a girl work for the team.”

“She’s not a girl, she’s a Raider,” Upshaw replied.

A perfect response. And we’re confident that if asked what it’s like having an LGBT individual on the team, today’s Raiders will express the same sentiment. Several players, including quarterback Derek Carr, have already sent words of support to Nassib.

“I have often said I love my teammates. I mean it,” Carr said. “We always say we are a family in that Raider locker room, and we mean that too. I want to win a championship here with Carl and the rest of our teammates.”

Nassib certainly has earned his teammates’ support based on his on-field performance. In five seasons, the defensive end has established himself as a solid player, with 143 tackles and 20.5 sacks in 73 games.

He also has an inspirational backstory — a player who never started a game in high school, walked on at Penn State and went on to earn consensus All-America honors as a fifth-year senior in 2015, the only year he started for the team. In a gesture that reflects well on his character, Nassib made his announcement this week as a show of support for Pride Month and donated $100,000 to the Trevor Project, an organization devoted to suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.

To his credit, Nassib also gave thanks to other LGBT athletes and advocates who paved the way to make his path less rocky. That list includes Jason Collins, the NBA’s first openly gay player; Esera Tuaolo, a former NFL player who famously came out of the closet in 2002; and Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted in the NFL.

We’re proud of Nassib, and of the Silver and Black.

The announcement is yet another sign that the Raiders and Las Vegas are a good match.

We also recognize that diversity is a strength of our community. While so-called leaders elsewhere are pushing for discriminatory and hateful bans on transgender athletes or bathroom bills, we soundly reject that bigoted thinking in Southern Nevada.

Mark Davis shares our community values. Not only has he followed in his father’s footsteps by promoting inclusion within the Raiders organization, he recently purchased the Las Vegas Aces WNBA team with an eye toward addressing the gender gap in pay in the league.

Now, Nassib and the team have given us another reason to cheer on the Raiders.

“I actually hope that one day videos like this and the whole coming-out process are just not necessary, but until then I’m going to do my best to cultivate a culture that’s accepting and compassionate,” Nassib said.

That’s a goal we all can strive for. We applaud Nassib for breaking through the walls of bigotry and helping lead us further in that direction.