There are always tons of stories that athletes are very homophobic and having a gay member of the team in the locker room would cause massive problems. I do not know what it is like today, but here is an experience I had 8 years ago or so.
I ran Cross Country in high school and during the season we would run two-a-days a couple times a week. These two-a-days were more for team building than their actual training benefits. Of course, running two-a-days with one run before school and one run after school meant that we had to shower in the locker room before school started. This was not something that we normally did, because in Cross Country you normally do not have a locker room.
The first day of two-a-days one year, one of the younger runners showered in their bathing suit and was made fun of for this. To the point that he was asked if he brought his bathing suit every time. I think this joking had more to do with a select few people secretly wanting to see him naked so they could compare themselves than anything. But if you asked them today they would never admit it.
The two-a-days were only required for the 7 varsity runners, but were open to anyone on the team. I was not on varsity at the time, but they did have some training benefit and as I said earlier they were a great team bonding opportunity. So I started getting asked “Chris, why do you come to these? Are you gay and just want to see all of us naked? Because if you are, stop coming.” I was obviously in the closet at the time.
Honestly, I went to the two-a-days because I was part of the team and we were all very good friends, but seeing a bunch of hot guys naked was a nice perk. When we spent 30 hours a week together training, hanging out, eating, and racing we became extremely good friends. It was hard not to.
Anyway, back to my story. A few years after I graduated high school we got together again, and somehow the gay topic came up. The guy who was the most homophobic during those two-a-days, also the guy who made fun of you for wearing a bathing suit, talked about his experience with a gay guy in the frat house. The gay guy would always jump on the homophobe’s back and he talked about how at first it made him extremely uncomfortable and he told the gay guy to buzz off. But after a while he realized that the gay guy was not going to do anything to him and they became really good friends.
So I guess the moral of the story is, coming out in a sports locker room probably will cause problems at first. But eventually those issues will resolve themselves once the homophobic people realize that nothing is going to happen to them most of them will get over it and it will become a non-issue.