We tend to talk a big game about the notion of gay athletes. That we'd be fully supportive of any player in any sport, should they come out. That it wouldn't matter, as long as he could help your team win. Yet, we've still never seen it happen, and part of that owes to a culture of sports and sports fans that seems to suggest a lot of us may be lying.
Aaron Ward and TSN producer Mike Farrell have put together Re-Orientation, a three-part documentary that will air on the Canadian network's version of SportsCentre Jan. 15-17. It will be placed on the network's YouTube channel for all around the world to see shortly after.
Much of it deserves to be seen. It's important, honest, and a breakthrough for TSN, which is unfortunately having a lame duck year with the NHL. They debuted a similarly excellent documentary about a hockey program in Israel right before Christmas. If this is a signal of where their supplemental work outside of their already great game broadcasts were going, it is a double shame that the NHL left for Rogers.
Ward, a former NHL defenseman who's become one of the game's breakout stars on Canadian television in recent years, does a really solid, honest job as a host and interviewer. He also makes a couple of important choices along the way. Ward offers up his own experiences in NHL locker rooms with what's known as casual homophobia, and that turns especially key late in the third act of the documentary during an interview with current NHLers Dustin Brown and Ben Scrivens. Farrell is an award-winning Canadian producer, but Ward has a lot to be proud of here.
