Roger Brigham, the Bay Area Reporter's former sports columnist who was unsparing in his coverage of the controversies surrounding global LGBTQ sporting events and shone a spotlight on local out athletes with his coverage, died March 5 after a long battle with renal and cardiac issues. The gay Oakland resident was 71.
Mr. Brigham, who wrote about his living with HIV, retired his "Jock Talk" weekly column in 2022, 15 years after he had taken over the paper's athletic news coverage. His approach to it was a mix of straightforward news reporting and no-holds-barred commentary when such writing was required.
He had particularly acerbic takes when it came to his coverage about oversight of the Gay Games and the ill-fated World Outgames launched to compete with the better-known event started in San Francisco. Mr. Brigham notoriously labeled the rival group "a nihilistic golem haunting LGBT participatory sports since 2004" upon its demise 13 years later.
As he wrote in his final column for the B.A.R., "I hope you have come to see me for the cheeky and combative columnist I have striven to be."
B.A.R. news editor Cynthia Laird called Mr. Brigham "the quintessential sports columnist." She had hired him to take over the paper's column, with his first debuting in January 2007.
"His coverage of the ups and downs around the Gay Games was required reading for LGBTQ sports fans, even as he was involved with the organization over the years, which he disclosed," stated Laird. "He brought a real news sense to his writing, as he was an experienced sports reporter during his career. I will miss the conversations and emails we shared over queer sports issues."
A lifelong wrestler and one-time rugby player, Mr. Brigham was elected as the Federation of Gay Games' officer of communications in 2004. He said that he was reelected in absentia in 2005 against his wishes and resigned within a couple of months. In 2023, he received the FGG's Dr. Tom Waddell Award, named after its founder.
In a post on its X account, the Gay Games paid tribute to Mr. Brigham.
"Roger Brigham is remembered by the LGBTQ+ sports and culture community for his service as a professional journalist and directly for the FGG, where he created communications initiatives, served on the Strategic Planning Committee, and developed the FGG's anti-doping policy," stated the post.
Mr. Brigham died just days prior to the 34th anniversary of first meeting his husband, Eduardo Guardarramas, which they had planned to mark on March 9. The men had first married in 2004 when San Francisco officials began marrying same-sex couples, but due to that wedding being annulled by the courts, they exchanged vows a second time in 2013.
"He was a very smart man; he was a very, very giving man," Guardarramas said. "He was a mentor to many journalists or to many sports writers."
Guardarramas had alerted Mr. Brigham's friends that he was close to dying in a March 3 post on his Facebook account. Guardarramas told the B.A.R. that Mr. Brigham had been in the hospital awaiting surgery after a septic bacterial infection of his artificial hip led his doctors to want to remove it but were waiting to proceed due to concerns about his kidneys and heart.
But when it became clear his organs would not be up for the procedure, Mr. Brigham asked to be taken home, as he did not want to die in the hospital, said Guardarramas. Back at their Oakland home on February 27, he was surrounded by the couple's seven cats all with Macedonian and Greek names stemming from Mr. Brigham's having a double major in ancient civilizations and journalism, and their two Bernese Mountain dogs.
"He is a 40-year AIDS survivor. It wasn't the AIDS that killed him, it was all the freaking medication after a while," said Guardarramas. "He had two artificial hips, a kidney transplant, stents in the heart, and you put it all together ... we had remarked over the years that he died on me many, many times. This is the final time. We used to call him nine lives."
Over the past week, family, friends and former wrestling teammates and wrestlers he coached came to say their goodbyes. Friends began posting tributes to Mr. Brigham on his Facebook account March 5 upon learning the news of his passing.
"Roger never wanted the story to be about himself, so he would find everyone remembering him with love to be a tad embarrassing," stated Outsports co-founder Jim Buzinski in the news site's March 6 obituary for Mr. Brigham.
Buzinski and Mr. Brigham were early trailblazers as out gay sports editors, over which they bonded, noted the outlet.
"I have fond memories of watching Roger wrestle at several Gay Games and then come off the mat all sweaty and launch into a discourse with me about sports, politics, journalism and life. I will miss him," stated Buzinski.
The end of his B.A.R. column also marked Mr. Brigham's retirement from a 46-year professional journalism career and 41 years in sports writing and editing. He started work in 1976 as a news reporter with the Times Record in Troy, New York, and at the age of 23, became the editor of the Daily Mirror in Kodiak, Alaska.
In 1982, he became the first openly gay sports editor at a metropolitan daily newspaper, the Anchorage Daily Mirror, a biography on Muck Rack noted. His later daily newspaper stops included being a sports feature writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner; executive sports editor for the Albany (NY) Times Union; and deputy sports editor for the Oakland Tribune. He handled sports coverage for two early internet media startups, eWorld and @Home.
Mr. Brigham was inducted into the National LGBT Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.
As a former rugby player, Mr. Brigham bonded with the SF Fog rugby team in the months after 9/11. Mark Bingham, a gay man who was a leader and player on the SF Fog, had been killed on United Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field. It's widely believed that Bingham and other passengers were able to prevent the airplane from reaching its intended target, thought to be a government building in the Washington, D.C. area.
"I was very down after 9/11," Mr. Brigham recalled in an interview with the B.A.R. in 2023.
After meeting a Fog player at Oakland Pride, Mr. Brigham packed up his husband and dog and drove out to the team's practice in San Francisco. He said he spent the day berating a reporter for not telling Bingham's story earlier. He said Bingham represented the best of gay athletes and disproved those who believed LGBTQs could not play sports.
Mr. Brigham said that he got involved with gay sports not because he was gay, but because he was disabled, having had hip replacement surgery.
"After I had hip surgery I couldn't run anymore," he said, and he perused the Team SF website and joined the Golden Gate Wrestling Club in 2003 at the age of 50 with artificial hips. "I knew it'd be painful, but I went back to wrestling."
It, in turn, led Mr. Brigham to become involved with Team San Francisco and the Federation of Gay Games.
"I was so grateful for the opportunities they afforded me that I devoted a great block of my time to volunteering for both of those organizations," as he wrote in his last "Jock Talk" sports column. "Connections from that involvement led to my signing on to write about sports for the B.A.R. It was, essentially, one more way for me to give back to my supportive community."
Mr. Brigham was born October 14, 1953, and grew up in Columbus, Ohio.
Per his wishes, Mr. Brigham will be cremated. A celebration of his life is being planned.
Updated 3/7/25 with comments from Eduardo Guardarramas.
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