Gender bending in pro football?

In the classic R-rated baseball comedy Bull Durham, an up-and-coming minor league pitcher wears his girlfriend’s garter belt under his uniform when he pitches.

The undergarment’s purpose, the much older girlfriend tells him, is to “keep one side of your brain occupied when you’re on the mound, thus keeping the other side slightly off center, which is where it’s supposed to be for artists and pitchers.”

When I think of that line, Caleb Williams now comes to mind.

The Chicago Bears made Williams the No. 1 overall pick in the National Football League’s annual college player draft back in April. In arguably America’s most testosterone-fueled sport, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from the University of Southern California presented a stark contrast to football’s celebrated tough-guy image. He wore nail polish and lip gloss, carried a pink iPhone, and openly cried in his mother’s arms after losing a game to the University of Washington in 2023.

Williams reportedly stopped wearing nail polish after leading Chicago to a 4-2 record earlier this season. After that, the Bears lost 10 straight—tying a franchise record for futility—before beating the playoff-bound Green Bay Packers in their season finale. The Bears’ losing streak prompted Cyd Zeigler of the LGBTQ website Outsports to recommend that Williams resume decorating his digits in womanly fashion.

Should he?

Even granting that quarterbacks can seem less aggressive to some because their teams and the NFL go to great lengths to protect them from vicious hits—Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions’ Hall of Fame defensive lineman, notoriously detested them for that reason—most still exemplify wholesome and commanding masculinity. Not Williams: When he says “I want to go home, cuddle my dogs, and watch some shows” after a loss, he hardly sounds like the cocksure greats who have played football’s most esteemed position—leaders who remained bloodied but unbowed, even in defeat.

And in football-mad Chicago, Williams’ perceived (if not actual) lack of toughness has engendered ire from fans frustrated by his failure to turn around a once-proud franchise that has only posted one winning season in the last 10 years.

Williams, of course, isn’t the first male athlete associated with a Chicago pro team to be known for wearing nail polish: Dennis Rodman, the legendary rebounder for the Michael Jordan-led Bulls of the NBA, wore it, too. But at least Rodman painted his nails black, not pink. And no one dared suggest he was gender-confused, given the ferocity he demonstrated on the court. Rodman did it more to cultivate his image as a provocateur—his nails only complemented his outlandish hairstyles, tattoos, and piercings.

Williams also isn’t the only pro quarterback who has dared display a feminine side: Joe Namath, who led the New York Jets to their only Super Bowl title in 1969, famously wore pantyhose in a 1970s commercial. But Namath was playing into irony, not gender-bending.

Still, Williams’ rise to starting NFL quarterback seems oddly fitting in a world where the distinctions between male and female are becoming increasingly blurred. Williams is hardly the only male athlete to wear nail polish—or “male polish,” if you prefer. In fact, he’s the face of a trend. University of Alabama wide receiver Ryan Williams (no relation to Caleb, as far as I know) announced in early February a deal to promote nail polish brand Sally Hansen. Former New Orleans Saints wide receiver Kenny Stills painted his to look like Skittles. And Jared McCain of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers paints his nails, too.

McCain says he does it for “self-care.” He has also offered a performance-based reason for it: “One of the reasons why I kept painting my nails is I had a game after I painted my nails (for the first time) and ended up playing pretty well,” he told The Mirror. “I’m not crazy superstitious, but I thought it looked nice and it helped me play better and so far, it’s worked, so I’m just going to keep doing it.”

Back when I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, I interviewed Solin Piearcy, a female wrestler from Cupertino High whom I’d just seen win her fourth section title. The win sent her to the Northern California regional tournament, one round below state.

To motivate his young charge, Piearcy’s thick-bearded coach, Mike Moyano, offered to let her paint his nails in front of the entire school if she finished all of her matches from the beginning of the season through the section tournament in less than three minutes. Piearcy did that and then some, winning all 29 of her matches by pin and letting just three opponents reach the second two-minute period (out of three).

Asked what color she planned to paint Moyano’s nails in front of Cupertino High’s student body, Piearcy responded, “Mostly pink, sparkly—whatever feminine girly colors he doesn’t like. A different color for each nail.”

What Moyano did is different than what Caleb Williams does: Moyano put his man card on the line to give his protégé some added incentive to win. By contrast, Williams and other athletes like him seem intent on sending a message that doing womanly things is manly.

Thus, when it comes to sports, I share Archie Bunker’s lament from the theme song from the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, in which the show’s central character longs for the days when “girls were girls and men were men.”

Those were indeed the days.