No, Cam Newton, sexism is never funny
QB is wrong to think women are lacking in football acumen
Amy Trask. Sarah Thomas. Jen Welter. Kathryn Smith. Katie Sowers.
Any one of those women, and countless others, can talk routes and whatever else you’d like to throw at them as a “test” of their football acumen. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that every one of them — and, again, the countless other women — can talk circles around Cam Newton when it comes to the game he seems to think belongs in a clubhouse with a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the door.
Before you start snickering or roll your eyes, let’s revisit. Trask was the NFL’s first female CEO, hired by Al Davis, who wasn’t exactly known for suffering fools or hiring folks for fun. Thomas is the league’s first female referee. Welter was the NFL’s first female assistant coach, followed soon after by Smith, the league’s first fulltime female assistant.
As for Sowers, you can find her up in the press box at San Francisco 49ers games this season, part of Kyle Shanahan’s offensive staff.
So no, Cam, it’s not “funny” to hear “a female talk about routes” as you said Wednesday when you tried to belittle Jourdan Rodrigue, the Carolina Panthers beat writer for the Charlotte Observer, after she asked a perfectly reasonable question.
It’s 2017. And your response was as ignorant as it was sexist.
“The comments are just plain wrong and disrespectful to the exceptional female reporters and all journalists who cover our league,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “They do not reflect the thinking of the league.”
Sadly, though, they still do reflect the thinking of too many people out there.
Women have been involved in sports for decades now, at every level of the game. Team owners. Executives. Journalists. Broadcasters.
Yet talk to any woman in sports, and she’ll have a story — more like 100 — about the times she’s been grilled about her knowledge of sports. Belittled for the questions she asks. Made to feel uncomfortable or as if she didn’t belong. Forced to defend the “real” reason she’s in this job.
It’s exhausting. It’s infuriating. It’s offensive. And it’s high time it stops. I could make the argument that most male reporters have never played the games they cover — not at a level above what their female counterparts have, anyway — but that’s really beside the point. Whether a person has played a sport has little to do with whether he or she can report on it, just as a business degree does not dictate whether someone will make a successful CEO.
(See Bill Gates. Better yet, see Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling.)
But that doesn’t matter to some, who act as if not having a Y chromosome somehow disqualifies women from being knowledgeable about sports. Newton might be the latest example, but he’s far from the only one.
Last month, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly was both belligerent and condescending when a female reporter had the audacity to ask about his team’s troubling tendency to lose close games. This occurred after the Irish had done exactly that, falling 20-19 to Georgia in a finish reminiscent of their seven one-possession losses in 2016.
(Note to Kelly, who thought he was being oh, so clever with his parting shot: A one-point loss is a one-possession loss.)
It’s dumbfounding that, in 2017, we have to remind people that everyone in the workforce, men and women alike, should be treated with courtesy and respect. That a woman in sports media — or business or medicine or any other profession there is — is just as capable, just as informed as the guy sitting next to her. Maybe even more so. Yet here we are. Still. Panthers coach Ron Rivera acknowledged Thursday that Newton made “a mistake” but then hurriedly moved on to Detroit and would say no more. Newton has yet to publicly address his comments, perhaps hoping this will all blow over in a day or two.
Good luck with that.
Women make up almost half of the NFL’s fan base, and studies have shown they drive 70% to 80% of all consumer purchasing. No surprise, then, to see Dannon announce Thursday that it was pulling Newton as pitchman for its Oikos line of Greek yogurt while Gatorade, another sponsor, called his comment “objectionable and disrespectful to all women.”
See, Newton might think sexism is still funny. But there are fewer and fewer people laughing along with him.