Former Division I college football player Jake Eldridge has revealed that the pressure of hiding his sexuality throughout his sporting career became so overwhelming it ultimately landed him in hospital.
Speaking to People on 27 January, Eldridge said he knew he was gay from a young age, but that football became a way of suppressing that part of himself.
“I knew I was gay pretty early on,” he explained, adding that “football became the thing that kind of pushed everything else aside”.
Eldridge was recruited to play Division I football in the Big Ten Conference at Rutgers University, an achievement he described as both a dream come true and a source of intense emotional strain.
“While it felt like everything I’d worked for was finally coming true, at the same time, it felt like an imprisonment – like this was my life now, and I didn’t have another option,” he said.
As his time on the team progressed, Eldridge said the fear of being outed began to dominate his thoughts, particularly when teammates started speculating about his sexuality.
“My roommate would come home and tell me people were asking if I was gay,” he recalled. “My biggest fear wasn’t just people knowing – it was people knowing before I was ready.”
He worried that being open about his sexuality could lead to bullying, the loss of his scholarship, or even being prevented from playing football altogether.
By the end of his freshman season, the toll on his health became impossible to ignore. Eldridge was hospitalised for three days after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune condition that doctors believed was triggered by prolonged stress.
“It was the stress of being closeted,” he said. “Going in every day and faking who I am for years on end. I’d been saying for years, ‘This is making me sick.’ And then my body finally proved it.”
