But they recently bought a second home in Huntington Beach, Calif. He and Isabel are considering bringing up the children there while visiting Minnesota during the season.

Although Kluwe says he has no idea what he will do in retirement (“Play video games?” his mother said), he will probably not recede from public view. He blogs for The Pioneer Press several times a week, and his growing popularity makes it possible that he will have a national platform someday. The good he has done for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the Twin Cities and elsewhere is tangible.

“In the sports bar where I hang out, they now see this issue differently because of Chris Kluwe,” said Brad Michael, of Minnesotans for Equality. “That impact can’t be measured.”

It is doubtful that Kluwe will join the fraternity of former coaches and players in sports broadcasting. There is a better chance of seeing him on an episode of “Nova,” bemoaning the fact that after centuries of studying the heavens, we still know so little about our existence.

“I saw a study a couple days ago where they showed a scaled picture of the size of the dust cloud that surrounds our galaxy,” Kluwe said, putting his bass guitar down. “And then you zoom out and see how far away our galaxy is from all the others, and it’s this microscopic dot. And that’s just one galaxy out of the billions and trillions there are in the universe. You’re going to tell me we have all the answers?”

He did not wait for a response before continuing, “If you look at it, our planet and our being on the planet is almost a 0.0 percent chance of happening in the size of the universe.” He thought for a moment. “You know, we could be nothing more than a quantum fluctuation in the stat line of the universe.”

With that, the most interesting man in the N.F.L. popped a few more Gobstoppers into his mouth and stepped into the cold night air before driving back to the team hotel, moments before curfew.