Kordell Stewart had an incredible career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was drafted in the second round (60th overall) out of Colorado, and was a quarterback whose highlight reel drew scouts from all over.
And during his time in Pittsburgh, he led the Steelers to two AFC Championship games, and earned Pro Bowl honors. Even today, his statistics make him the third most proficient QB in Steelers history, behind Terry Bradshaw and that other guy.
And here’s the big thing about Kordell Stewart – he could score from virtually any position on the offense. He could operate as a wide receiver, or as a running back, or as a scrambling QB. Heck, he’s even punted a couple of times. Thus earning his nickname “Slash,” as in “QB slash WR slash RB.” It’s almost like the Steelers acquired a human Swiss army knife that wore a #10 jersey.
In modern parlance, he would be what Lamar Jackson is today – a scrambling quarterback that’s nearly impossible to plan against.
But his time in Pittsburgh was short – and it got derailed over a vicious rumor that haters were willing to believe for their own vulgar, black-hearted reasons.
And it’s all part of a current HBO Max documentary, “Kordell Stewart: Slash and Burn,” the trailer of which is listed below.
Here’s the rumor, plain and simple. Someone said that they saw Stewart at a public park in Pittsburgh, receiving (or giving, the story varies) oral sex to a male sex worker.
That’s the rumor. Never proven, never corroborated, never confirmed. But it was enough of a rumor that it spread like an oil slick on an ocean beach.
And people were willing to believe the worst. Why?
There are theories.
One theory is that Stewart was a black man playing what was perceived as a white man’s position in football – the quarterback. Black QB’s either had to prove themselves in another league, such as Warren Moon in the Canadian Football League, or languish as backups until that one opportunity of injury to a QB1 presented himself (see Doug Williams in Washington).
Plus, Stewart was multi-talented. He could excel as a running back or as a wide receiver, positions that were often considered reserved for black players. And it was easy for haters to suggest that Stewart stay in those positions, rather than take over a position previously held by St. Terry of Bradshaw.
But here’s the worst of it. By suggesting that Stewart engaged in gay sex in a public park, it now became easy to marginalize him. It became easy to treat him as less than human. Because now you have the inherent homophobia mixed with racism, and it reinforces the most base and banal of vitriol and hatred.
That’s the worst part. Now you’re questioning a person based on a prejudged notion of their manhood. Especially in a sport like pro football.
And trust me. Homophobia, especially in the black community, was treated as poison. Listen to the early rap records, where gay slurs are tossed in as cavalierly as ordering a crowd to raise your hands in the air.
Trust me. I’ve lived this. It’s one of the darkest points in my childhood. I’ve had classmates at Sand Creek Junior High School and at Lisha Kill Junior High School (Schools #9 and #10 of The Twelve) using all sorts of homophobic slurs at me, treating me as a sub-human by calling me a queer or a faggot or a homo or a tinkerbell. Without even knowing what those words truly meant. They were just slurs that really said, “We don’t like you, we think you’re beneath us, you don’t deserve to be in our world, and if you died tomorrow, we would throw a party celebrating the decay of your corpse.”
And if people treat you as a sub-human, then it’s easier for them to turn violent on you. Trust me, I’m already getting beat at home by an abusive stepfather, did I really need six of my classmates waiting until I stepped two paces off school property before they set up to kick my ass up and down the block? And to have the guidance counselor at Lisha Kill at the time tell me, in what had to be the cherry on the drizzling shit sundae, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t act so gay around them, then they wouldn’t have a reason to beat you up.”
Fantastic. And people wonder how I fucking survived that mess. I still wonder as well.
What I went through was absolutely reprehensible. And that was just located to a small area in Albany in the late 1970’s. Prior to the days of social media and whatnot. Imagine that’s multiplied now over talk radio and sports journalism and the like.
That’s what Kordell Stewart went through. He went through that for years. YEARS. And it got amplified any time he threw an interception or had a bad game or got benched. He held on to his dignity for as long as he could … until the Steelers released him in 2002. He played for a few more years as an emergency backup with the Bears and with the Ravens, then finally retired in 2012.
But that vicious untruth never went away. Even today, people still whisper about the story they heard about Kordell Stewart in a part of Schenley Park that locals call “The Fruit Loop.” Yeah. Classy. Ugh. He even addressed the rumor in 2021 as part of an essay in The Players’ Tribune, explaining that he never visited Schenley Park; heck, he had no idea where Schenley Park was even located.
What I’m saying is … Kordell Stewart went through holy hell because of a rumor. A rumor that allowed people to think the worst of a man, just based on their own depraved perceptions of LGBTQIA+ people.
Kordell Stewart deserved better.
So does everybody else who gets tagged with homophobia and gay-bashing slurs for no reason other than to cause pain and harm upon them.
