Pioli big in O’Callaghan’s life story

It’s not overstating things to suggest Scott Pioli may have saved Ryan’s O’Callaghan’s life.

Not his career. Not his reputation.

We’re talking about Ryan O’Callaghan’s life.

O’Callaghan, whose two seasons as an offensive lineman with the Patriots included a reserve role with the 2007 bunch that ran up a 16-0 regular-season record, announced this week he is gay. And while there’s no such thing as a “routine” coming-out story, given the natural fear of the unknown that is deep in the belly, O’Callaghan’s story, reported by Cyd Zeigler of Outsports.com, tells of the years of agony this man suffered, and how he spent considerable time contemplating suicide.

But my mission here is not to rewrite Ryan O’Callaghan’s coming-out announcement, which was deftly handled by Zeigler. What I’d like to do, and feel compelled to do, is applaud Scott Pioli, a former Patriots executive who signed O’Callaghan to join him in Kansas City when he took over football operations for the Chiefs in 2009.

In the interest of brevity, I’m going to skip past O’Callaghan’s injuries, his tilt toward a reliance on prescription pain-killers and the time he spent with Susan Wilson, a clinical psychologist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has worked with the Chiefs. Read the Outsports.com story. It’s worth your time.

It’s O’Callaghan’s meeting with Pioli that merits additional discussion. For at a time of crisis in O’Callaghan’s life — his football career unraveling, his body being taken prisoner by Vicodin, his sexual orientation so much a burden that he had already written the suicide note and decided on a place to finish himself off — he had the good fortune of sitting down with Pioli.

“I’m gay,” O’Callaghan told Pioli. Pause. “So what’s the problem you wanted to talk me about?” Pioli asked.

Imagine that. You’re a pro football player, you have this, this . . . stuff . . . rattling around in your head about being gay. So you put your faith in the hands of the guy who runs your team, and next thing you know he’s hugging you, offering support, getting you pointed in the right direction.

Don’t ask me about the deals and signings Pioli has made over the years with the Pats, Chiefs and other teams. Don’t ask me about his current job as assistant general manager of the Atlanta Falcons. This is about humanity, not football. As Pioli told Zeigler, “He built this up and built this up to the point where he said he was nearly suicidal. What Ryan didn’t know is how many gay people I’ve had in my life.”

The meeting with Pioli took place after the 2011 season. O’Callaghan’s career was already over by then. He had played parts of two seasons with the Chiefs. With the Pats, he appeared in 26 games in 2006 and ’07, making seven starts; his lone start during the 16-0 run in ’07 being the regular-season finale against the New York Giants, a game best remembered as the night Tom Brady completed his mauling of the NFL record book by throwing his 50th touchdown pass of the season.

Said O’Callaghan in the Outsports.com piece, “I played damn well in that game.”

A shoulder injury landed O’Callaghan on injured reserve for all of 2008, and in 2009 he moved on to the Chiefs to be reunited with Pioli. And thus the stage was set for a meeting that not only changed O’Callaghan’s life but may have saved it.

Here, I am reminded of a piece Pete Thamel wrote in Sports Illustrated in February 2014, after Michael Sam had come out following his final college season as a defensive lineman at the University of Missouri. Sniffing about to see if the NFL was ready for an openly gay player and dangling anonymity as the carrot, Thamel made contact with “eight NFL executives and coaches,” one of whom said, “I don’t think football is ready for (an openly gay player) just yet. In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game. To call somebody a (gay slur) is still so commonplace. It’d chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.”

I don’t know Thamel’s sources.

I’m guessing that for this particular piece they didn’t include Scott Pioli.