It's time for a shoutout to women in sports

These past couple of months have been historical for women in sports.

Kim Ng became the first woman hired as a general manager in Major League Baseball when the Miami Marlins chose her in November. A couple weeks later, Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play in, then score in a Power 5 college football game. A couple weeks after that, Becky Hammon became the first woman to serve as a head coach in an NBA game.

Then on Tuesday came more glass-ceiling-shattering news: Sarah Thomas will become the first woman to officiate the Super Bowl.

(Last year's Super Bowl had history, too, when Katie Sowers became the first female assistant coach in the game.)

So many great moments for women in sports.

And yet, I couldn't help think about some other news

that surfaced Tuesday, the same day Thomas was announced as the down judge for the Super Bowl. The New York Mets fired their recently hired general manager, Jared Porter, after ESPN reported he sent dozens of unsolicited and explicit text messages and pictures to a female reporter.

To his credit, new Mets owner Steve Cohen moved swiftly to remove Porter. Cohen had spoken after buying the franchise about the importance of integrity, and he said Tuesday, “There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”

Hear hear.

There should be no place for harassment of women in sports media by the people who they cover, and yet, talk to just about any woman who has covered sports for any amount of time, and you will hear how prevalent harassment it is.

I feel lucky that I haven't had any incidents during my career that made me feel like my personal safety was at risk. But there have been plenty of times I have been made to feel uncomfortable. Just because I'm a woman. Just because I'm doing my job.

A decade ago, I had the honor of serving as the president of the Association for Women in Sports Media. One of our duties was to be an advocate for women in the business who faced harassment, and unfortunately during my two years as president, the association had to do that several times.

I say unfortunately because I would've rather not have had any instances during my presidency where such advocacy was necessary. Alas, that was not to be. The most high-profile situation involved a reporter covering the New York Jets in 2010. She was not a beat reporter but rather was at practice working on a piece about then-quarterback Mark Sanchez. A Jets assistant threw footballs at her as she stood on the sideline, then in the locker room, she was catcalled.

The Jets and the NFL apologized to the reporter. Additionally, the league issued a memo to all its teams to review protocols and procedures as well as mandated antiharassment training for everyone within the Jets.

At the time, I remember thinking maybe harassment like that was on the verge of becoming a thing of the past. I didn't believe then — and I still don't believe now — that there would ever come a time where such instances stopped completely, but maybe a day was coming where they were few and far between.

Instead, here we are, a decade later, and harassment of women in sports media is still happening, and it is happening far too often.

Fortunately, women have continued to join the sports-media ranks. There are more women than ever covering sports for newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and websites, and you've enjoyed the work of some of them right here in Oklahoma. Maddie Lee. Abby Bitterman. Brooke Pryor. Stephanie Kuzydym. Gina Mizell. Andrea Cohen. It has been my honor to have all of them as co-workers.

But I know many of them have dealt with harassment on the job. They stayed in sports media despite that. Many, many other women have done the same, but some did not. They might not have left the business because of the harassment, but it may have hastened their departure. That is sad, but frankly, it's sad that any woman in sports media has endured this at all.

So, as we celebrate so many glass ceilings broken by so many women in sports, a shoutout to all the women in sports media whose names might not be in the history books but whose courage in the face of harassment is epic. You are seen. You are celebrated.