Carl Nassib Is Seeking His Path as an Out Athlete

Nassib, the N.F.L. player who made history this week when he came out as gay, has long yearned to make a difference in the world.

Carl Nassib was not the most eager interview subject on Penn State’s football team. He once begged off a media scrum by claiming he had a chemistry exam, which was not strictly true, though he was known to rhapsodize more about “recrystallization as a purification mechanism” than the minutiae of Purdue’s off-tackle trap. He arrived on campus as a walk-on in 2011, majoring in biology and intending to become a pediatrician. Many people, Nassib included, thought at the time that he would probably make his mark in medical school, not in the N.F.L. “I thought he would run a hospital and be the chief surgeon,” said Kevin Pellegrini, who coached Nassib at Malvern Preparatory School outside Philadelphia.