Kordell Stewart wrote really interesting piece(long) about his experience in Pittsburgh

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“Look, man ... are you sitting down?”

You never want to hear those words coming from the other end of the telephone. Especially when they hit you on the landline. It’s never good news, right?.......
They said you were having lewd acts performed on you. In the park. And you got locked up. And look, man … I’m just telling you, they’re saying that you’re gay. They’re saying a whole lot of stuff.”

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Imagine this happening in 2021. Imagine a team suggesting to their quarterback that he should get up in front of everybody and defend himself against some wild lie from Twitter. No police record of it happening. No one standing behind it. Nothing.

It’s almost comical, right? Seems impossible now. But this was a different era, and the next thing I know, I’m standing up in front of all my teammates and coaches like there’s something to talk about.

I mean, what am I supposed to even say?

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A couple weeks later, we were playing against New England, and I had a rough game. We lost, and as we were walking off the field, about to go into the tunnel, I got hit with a beer. Right in my face. Drenched. I looked up into the stands, and this guy said plenty of words I’d heard before.He said, “You effing n******.”

I can already hear people getting defensive. Just some trash talk, right? Just how it was back then when you went on the road, right?

Nah, bro.

We weren’t in New England.

We were playing at home. We were in Pittsburgh. Dude was wearing a Steelers jacket.

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See, when Mr. Rooney called me back into his office to give me an update on what was going on, I said, “Hey, big fella, did your people find anything?”

That’s when he told me that the rumors were (allegedly) spread by a local police officer.

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I remember another time I got a standing ovation, three years before that. It was a few months after the rumors started, and I just needed to get out of the house. I took my girlfriend out to dinner at a nice restaurant in the city. Morton’s steakhouse. And as we were walking through the dining room to our table, somebody stood up and started clapping.

My girlfriend looked at me like, What the heck is going on?

Then the whole restaurant started clapping. They gave me a standing ovation. The whole place.

Because I was there with a woman.

For a minute, I felt like an animal in a cage.

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