Jamie Kuntz kissed his boyfriend during a break from filming a North Dakota State College of Science football game. Problem was for Kuntz, he is a man and he kissed another man. That act led to his dismissal from the team and a worldwind of controversy.
The freshman linebacker, who was filming because he had not participated in enough practices to play in the game, said he was devastated two days later when the team’s coach, Chuck Parsons, dismissed him from the team. Parsons, had pulled him off the team bus and asked him about a “distraction” that had occurred in the press box during the Wildcats’ blowout loss to Snow College during the Mile High Shootout in Pueblo, Colo.
Kuntz was clearing his locker by the end of the day.
It all started when Kuntz invited his 65-year-old boyfriend, who lives in Colorado, to join him to watch the game. During the second half of the 63-17 blowout, Kuntz took a minute away from the camera to kiss his boyfriend. The kiss was caught by some of Kuntz’s teammates and word started to spread.
Up until that point, Kuntz had hidden the fact that he was gay.
“He pulls me off the bus to talk to me and he said, ‘What was going on in the press box?'” Kuntz told Yahoo! Sports. “So I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I was playing stupid. And he goes, ‘People said that you were distracting them the whole game.’
“At that point I kind of knew, but when he said the whole game, I felt like he was trying to put the loss on me. When you guys lose by 40 points, there’s no way a distraction like that is going to throw a whole team off in the second half. So, when he said that, I was like, ‘Oh nothing, it was just my grandpa up there with me.”
When the team made it back to Wahpeton, N.D., Kuntz told the truth and apologized for lying.
“I asked him if I could get a suspension or any extra conditioning because I thought it was a little rash for him to be kicking me off for this,” Kuntz said. “And he said, ‘Um, no. We just decided it’s too big of a distraction.’ So, I didn’t want to bring [the kiss] up. You’re not going to tell the truth anyway. I don’t know if he’s homophobic. I can’t tell in his heart, but what happened, in my experience, I was getting cheated.
“To be honest, I thought he was going to kind of leave the door open for it to be my decision, what I wanted to do. But he said I was too big of a distraction to have on the team still, so I just grabbed my stuff and left.”
Kuntz said he was uncomfortable sharing his sexuality with his teammates. He said his mother did not know. He also said the kiss was more than a peck but “not a make out session.”
Kuntz said he thought about bringing legal action against NDSCS, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. Now, he’s just worried about what the story and the dismissal might do to his football future. He applied to the NCAA Clearinghouse and said he’s going to reach out to a few FBS schools about becoming a preferred walk-on.
