A Normal Family

The Raes—Mike and David—Discuss Fatherhood, Sports & Coming Out

I spoke with David Rae just a little more than a month before the annual AIDS/LifeCycle, an event he has participated in for the last three years. The 33-year-old financial planner has found his niche in sports—and he has pretty much tried them all.

Growing up in southern California, the blond-haired, blue-eyed All-American kid played baseball, football and volleyball, and even tried his hand at surfing. While a good athlete, he didn’t quite have enough passion for those team sports to pursue them after high school. For many sons of professional athletes, going in a different direction than dad—in David’s case, it ended up being musical theater—could’ve put a strain on the relationship. But not for Mike and David Rae. While they had their own father-son obstacles to overcome, David not following in Mike’s footsteps was not one of them.

“Let’s put it this way: I kind of took a different approach with my kids,” Mike told me. “I didn’t need to live through my child and get strokes that way ... because I was already (a successful athlete).”
Frankly, said Mike, “I made an evaluation of my kids and where they stood on the ability level, and I made the determination that they weren’t going to be pro athletes.”

Nevertheless, Mike made sure to expose his children to every sport available and let them choose which way to go. While there was an expectation that the kids would play sports, David added that Mike was definitely not the “stage mom” version of a “football dad.”
“I felt some pressure to play football,” said David. And who wouldn’t? Mike was a national champion quarterback at USC and has a Super Bowl ring from his time with the Oakland Raiders.

While sharing quarterbacking duties with Pat Haden at USC, Mike helped the Trojans to an undefeated (12-0) record in 1972, including a 42-17 thrashing of the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl. That season he threw for over 1,700 yards and had a quarterback rating of 127.56; he also ran for 247 yards and 5 touchdowns. That USC team is widely regarded as one of the greatest college teams of all time.
“That we are even talked about or considered as one of the greatest teams—that’s a nice statement,” said Mike, who turned down scholarship offers from UCLA and Notre Dame in favor of USC.

During a professional career that spanned the next decade, Mike went from the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League to the NFL’s Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the United States Football League’s Los Angeles Express. Although not a Hall of Famer, Pro Bowler or even a starter at most stops, Mike had a career that only a fraction of a percent of anyone who has ever played football can match. Every year in professional football, it is a fight to make it onto a roster. And Mike did it repeatedly at arguably the most important position.

“At the time it really didn’t register,” said David, who was in kindergarten when his dad retired from the sport. Many of his friends were children of other players, so it all seemed pretty much normal. In fact, when the family attended games Mom had to entertain them to get them through all four quarters. The biggest thrill for David and his brother, said Mike, was when he would take them to the locker room and they got Cokes.

It was the years that followed—when Mike was coaching at Orange Coast College—that David got to learn about the sport and about his father’s contributions.
“We went to all the USC games,” said David. “At one game they brought the whole 1972 championship team on the field to recognize them.”
“I actually had my picture on the ticket to that game,” added Mike.
That’s the moment David started to understand his dad’s legacy.

David’s high school football coach was a big USC fan, so there was some initial pressure for David to succeed. He played cornerback and quarterback, and could run exceptionally fast thanks to some good athletic genes. But while he says his retired dad was still “throwing rockets” at that time, David realized that football wasn’t the best sport for him. David gravitated toward the school’s drama department, and explored his love for musical theater. For a while he was on the football team and in show choir—he was living a real life Glee “before it was cool and on television.”

When he speaks of his days in the theater—which continued at the University of Redlands—you can hear the difference in his voice compared to when he speaks of playing football.

Now in his early 30s, David has found a nice balance: a financial planner in his professional life; a musical artist by night (check out his parody videos “California Gays” and “Only Gay in the World” on YouTube); and an athlete on the weekends. In addition to his ongoing training for the AIDS/LifeCycle, he participates in at least one triathlon per year. While riding for Team Popular, he’s been one of the top fundraisers for ALC the past three years, but it is his success at recruiting others—70 this year alone—where he has had the biggest impact. The more riders, the more money that comes in. He hopes to recruit 100 new riders in 2012.

And it all started just because he was looking for an activity that would allow him to get back into sports. He was looking for a sport that he could “walk into and compete at” … and the fact that it has a charitable aspect made it an even easier call. The man who didn’t even own a bike four years ago now spends most weekends putting miles on his Scattante road bike.

That balance extends to his relationship with his father, whom he came out to eight years ago in a way many would deem anti-climactic.
“It was actually very simple,” David says of the dinner he had with his father and then-boyfriend. In retrospect, he adds, his dad probably had an inkling by the end of David’s high school years.
Not so, says Dad. “It may have been different if I had stayed in the home.” When David was in junior high his parents split up, changing the dynamics of the father-son relationship, said Mike.
“When you don’t see someone every day, it’s hard.”

But nothing about the relationship between a professional football-playing father and his son is easy (or “normal”). Mike was gone a lot when his sons were growing up, traveling to various cities for games. On the flip side, he had six months off every year, so he was able to be with his boys a lot during that time. “That’s a luxury most other fathers don’t have.”

Additionally, Mike believes that moving the family to Tampa, D.C. and Oakland during his playing days had as many pluses as minuses. His sons got to experience different places and diverse populations.

As unique as a childhood is for the son of a professional athlete, it’s still pretty normal—if there is such a thing. Most of the issues Mike and David have had were typical parent-child stuff. David says his sexual orientation has never created waves between them. Mike has even attended parties and fundraisers—where most of the people in attendance were gay—at David’s house. There’s no archetypal jock mentality left in Mike, who now coaches golf at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., even though, according to David, 59-year-old dad can still outrun him.

Said David: “As a dad he would’ve loved the bragging rights of ‘My son is the quarterback.’ … But he’s a good, understanding dad.”
Added Mike: “With my experience as an athlete I saw so many people who were abnormal, I realized that nobody is normal.”