Was Nico Hines' apology the worst in sports history? Big Four have no out gays.

When Nico Hines of The Daily Beast issued a statement earlier this week about outing gay Olympians last summer in Rio, it was met largely with a pretty loud collective rolling of the eyes. The statement, which was apparentely supposed to take the place of an apology, was seven months in the making and reflected an academic assessment of Hines' failings as a journalist in pretending to be a gay man on the dating app Grindr, then entrapping gay and bisexual male Olympians to reveal themselves to a journalist.

While there's no sense in debating whether Hines' apology was appropriate or not -- it wasn't -- we talk about just how bad it was and how it stacks up against other bad apologies in sports history.

With David Denson's retirement, the Big Four sports leagues in North America are again left without any publicly out gay athletes for the first time since 2013. Denson was a player in the Milwaukee Brewers system but never made it to the Majors. Robbie Rogers is still in Major League Soccer but has not played this season. 

Where does that leave us now? And how important is it to have out athletes in the Big Four sports?