Former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart remembers the moment vividly. It was a Tuesday night, Nov. 3, 1998. He was watching a movie in his basement when his house phone rang.
A friend was calling to tell him a rumor he heard at a barbershop. The friend said he heard Stewart had been arrested at a park in Pittsburgh “because of lewd acts being performed on me by a transvestite,” as Stewart describes it.
“None of this stuff ever happened,” Stewart said on Oct. 28, 28 years later. But the rumor spread like wildfire, triggering gossip for years and making such an impact on the former Pittsburgh Steelers star that it’s led to a new film about it on HBO entitled “Slash & Burn.”
It’s a 40-minute documentary that focuses on how Stewart, now 54, was ahead
of his time as a Black dual-threat quarterback in the NFL and how he was subject of a rumor designed to take him down.
Stewart caught up with USA TODAY Sports about it after it was released on Oct. 27. Below is some context about the film and feedback from Stewart.
What was the context of the rumor?
Stewart believed the intent of the rumor was to “destroy” him, as he says in the film. It came at a time when homophobia was much more common in society and the NFL. And it came when he stood out because of the position he played and the way he played it. He was known as “Slash” because of the slashes in his job description in Pittsburgh. He played quarterback/running back/receiver/punter. But he primarily was a quarterback.
“Man, if I (only) play wide receiver, that wouldn’t be happening to me,” Stewart said in the film. “Hell, yeah. African-American quarterback in that city? A guy that’s an unconventional player?”
Stewart said "I'm not a gay man" and never was arrested. Those who are gay, “that’s their business, but that’s not my business,” Stewart says in the film. He’s publicly talked about this previously, including in his book in 2016. But he said this film gives him an even bigger platform to share his story the way he wants it to be told.
Why would someone start this rumor about Kordell Stewart?
The rumor originated in 1998, when the Steelers missed the playoffs with Stewart playing quarterback. Stewart was a pioneer back then as a Black quarterback in Pittsburgh, where only Joe Gilliam had broken through with a brief stint as a Black quarterback for the Steelers in the 1970s. Stewart also was a pioneer as a different kind of quarterback — not a tall, White drop-back passer in the mold of John Elway but a Black all-around athlete who could run as well as throw.
Those are the star quarterbacks of today, led by Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes.
But back then, Stewart was too far ahead of the state of the game.
“We were doing that stuff back in the ‘90s, the mid-90s, when not everyone was ready for that,” Stewart told USA TODAY Sports.
He stood out for those reasons, which also made him a target when he didn’t win. After he threw three interceptions in a 41-31 loss against Tennessee on Nov. 1, 1998, Stewart said he was leaving the field when a white Steelers fan called him a racial slur and threw beer on him.
“Those were some of the things that Kordell had to endure that the other players really didn’t have to deal with,” former Steelers teammate Jerome Bettis said in the documentary.
The Steelers investigated the rumor
On the Tuesday after that loss against Tennessee, Stewart said the phone rang with the rumor from the barbershop. It soon spread across the nation with such speed that Stewart was hearing about it from players across the league — years before social media existed to help accelerate false information or debunk it.
“It started having a life of its own,” Stewart said.
Stewart also noted how certain players in Pittsburgh become larger than life there after having success. His jersey No. 10 had become popular after he was drafted by the team out of Colorado in 1995. But after the rumor started, Stewart said young fans wearing his jerseys were bullied.
“You become very mythical in that city, and this is the stuff you think I would allow to be continued to be talked about, on my name?” Stewart told USA TODAY Sports. “No, no, no, that’s not what we’re doing here. And it’s not a thing of vigor or malice or anger. It’s just storytelling. And sometimes, when telling stories of this magnitude, you don’t really get a platform to do it all the time.”
Stewart said the Steelers investigated to find the source of the rumor and determined it came from a Pittsburgh police officer but “nobody wanted to say who it was.”
What is Kordell Stewart doing now?
Stewart felt vindication in 2001 when he led the Steelers to the top seed in the AFC playoffs with a 13-3 record before eventually losing to New England in the playoffs. He finished fourth in the NFL MVP voting behind current Pro Football Hall of Famers Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk and Brett Favre.
He now has a son and is living in Atlanta near where he helps coach the South Forsythe high school football team in Georgia. He said players and coaches from the team watched the film this week, with some telling him that “I didn’t know you went through all of that.”
“That kind of stuff I love because they were able to understand it and see it a certain way,” Stewart said. “And that mattered to me because a lot of kids were being bullied in Pittsburgh wearing those jerseys.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kordell Stewart says a rumor was meant to ‘destroy’ him. Now he’s confronting it
