Towleroad dug out this great 1977 cover shot of Kopay from shortly after his book was published

It's a richly deserved honor that comes after a busy month for Kopay, who was the first and remains one of the few former NFL players to come out.

UW announced last month a $1 million pledge from Kopay directed to the university's Q-Center.

He spoke to students a few weeks after the gift was announced.

The Daily reported:

In a room that had a capacity of slightly more than a hundred, the tables were filled and the window sills lined with people waiting to hear David Kopay, UW alumnus and retired NFL running back, speak at the Q Center welcome lunch Friday afternoon.

“It’s always nice to outgrow the space that is given to you,” said Jennifer Self, Q Center director. “I really think that we [the Q Center] are going to kick ass at this University.”

Kopay, who made a contribution of $1 million to the organization, continues to give to his alma mater, pledging a $10,000 gift to start a scholarship through the Q Center.

“His gift has already inspired others to give,” Self said.

The audience was visibly moved when Kopay spoke.

“What a forgiving man,” Self said. “He has insured that students in the future no longer have to come to this institution and give that part of themselves up.”

Kopay’s testamentary gift guarantees that the Q Center will be able to stay open indefinitely.

In a great feature on Kopay a few days after his gift was announced, Times  columnist Jerry Brewer explained that the gift is a significant outlay for Kopay, who played in the NFL before the era of exorbitant salaries.

Kopay isn't one of those athletes with an extra $1 million resting in his sofa cushions, either. He says he never made more than $29,000 a season during his nine-year NFL career. He played without signing bonuses, without guaranteed money. From 1964 to 1972, he tortured his body, and during the past four years, he's had both hips, a shoulder and a knee replaced.

After football, Kopay kept getting passed over for coaching positions, so he sold cars for a while before working at his uncle's California-based business, Linoleum City, which supplies flooring for motion picture and television industries. He plans to retire at the end of this year.

The $1 million gift is "about half my estate," Kopay says. After he dies, the money will go to the university as an endowment. The interest on Kopay's donation will help keep the Q Center running, ensuring its future.

For the 65-year-old former running back, this is more than a donation. It is a chance to remove more of the darkness.

"Hell yeah, it's a lot of money to me!" Kopay exclaimed while breaking from work to talk on the phone. "I struggled, and I suffered while in college because it was a different time. But it was a wonderful time, too. If I had not gone through some of that stuff, I wouldn't be who I am now.

"I owe the university everything. And I think a lot of people feel that way."

When the gift was announced, Q-Center's director, Jennifer Self, called it "an act of forgiveness."

"When David was a student-athlete at the UW in the early 60's, as a gay man, he had nowhere to go for support, affirmation, resources, or safety," Self said. "That is no longer the case, and thanks in part to him, the Q Center will be here in perpetuity."

In his column, Brewer explained the depth of that forgiveness:

Forty-five years ago, David Kopay was crumbling.

He was a football player, a future All-American, but he didn't even letter his junior year at Washington. He was a gay man in shoulder pads, surrounded by machismo, trapped in a world he knew wouldn't accept him.

He was lost.

"That year, oh, it was black," Kopay said. "It was so dark."

After all this time, Kopay still must stop an interview, sniffle and say, "I'm sorry. I get so emotional sometimes." ...

Kopay doesn't bother wondering how his college experience would have changed if the Q Center had existed 45 years ago. It's not worth the brainpower. In the 1960s, America couldn't even handle race relations. A center of this kind was an unimaginable as an iPhone.

So Kopay tried to exist. He related more to his black teammates because he didn't feel like he was "this blonde-hair, blue-eyed, all-American kid." He noticed the biting racial slurs that others would say matter-of-factly. He compared them to gay insults he would hear from people who didn't yet know Kopay was homosexual.

Kopay was more than a decade from coming out publicly, but he had his first relationship with a man in college. It was a fraternity brother, but their relationship went largely unnoticed because, Kopay says, "In my fraternity, if you got drunk enough, nothing much mattered."

During his lifetime, Kopay has seen the country become more accepting. During the past few years, however, Kopay has grown concerned by what he calls "a peel back of people's rights" in American politics. So he keeps fighting.

Thirty years ago, Kopay spoke before Congress. He's given his message to the American Bar Association and the American Association of Pediatrics. He wrote a book, "The David Kopay Story."

And he's still fighting.

"I can't believe I've done all those things," Kopay said. "I'm like, 'How in the hell did I get in that position? I carried a football under my arm.' "

Since then, of course, he has carried far more than a football. He has done much to help make the country more accepting. His book is still available on Amazon.com. His experience is still unique enough, that he remains one of the go-to guys for interviews when a media outlet tackles the issue of gays in sports, as ESPN did nine years ago.

He told The Daily last month that he plans to move to Seattle when he retires from the California flooring business where he has worked for decades. "How could you not love the UW?" he said. "How could you not call it home?"

Seattle is sure to be more welcoming this time around.