Football's sacred sex-taboos were first broken by former San Francisco 49er running back David Kopay, whose biography, The David Kopay Story, told of his highly publicized coming out among fellow players.

Kopay's book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks in 1977 and, according to Edward Alwood's Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media, "it was the first book about a sports figure ever to appear on that list."

If the Kopay story proved intriguing, it now appears that homosexual rumor mongering, introduced into seething hotbeds of machismo's bastions, still unsettles certain mentalities who view such rumors as causes for huffish shows of fisticuffs.

Brandishing his fists and punching vigorously, reportedly to sustain his heterosexual credentials, Washington Redskins wide receiver Michael Westbrook, was fined $50,000 and suspended from one pre-season game after beating up upon Stephen Davis, a running back for the Redskins.

Davis, according to Wednesday's Washington Post, had used "a derogatory term" in suggesting that Westbrook found members of his own gender attractive.

Rod Strickland, a Wizards player, exhibited similar behavior as he approached Tracy Murray. Strickland's posturing, the Post suggests, may have lost the Wizards three games in a row because of the injuries the two players sustained in what some now see as a botched attempt to signal "appropriately masculine" tastes. Strickland's sensitively constructed wrist went somewhat awry in the process. Murray became host too to an unwelcome poke.

An unidentified woman, who knew both players, had taped Tracy Murray as he told her that he believed Strickland to be gay. The woman, who lives in Los Angeles, is said to have left a message on Strickland's answering machine, relating Murray's suspicions.

Strickland, reported to be horrified, hurried over to Murray's hotel room, his macho pride burning, it seems, with indignation, and there he confronted his shapely teammate. The two fell passionately into the embrace of unnecessary violence and battered one another unforgivably.

Good news, though, is that some of the teammates appear to have made up. "We knew this wasn't going to be a problem," Strickland told reporters.