Sowers left flying flag for female coaches in NFL
Despite attempts to break down barriers, gender equality remains a long way off as Super Bowl looms. By Molly Mcelwee
‘I tell Katie she belongs in her role with the 49ers because she does’
Katie Sowers always wanted to be a coach, “but I never saw an opportunity in football because I’d never seen a female coach. All it takes is one and then it opens the door for so many”.
For the millions of women likely to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow night, Sowers is that “one”. America’s most important night on the sporting calendar will finally feature a female coach as Sowers takes to the field as the San Francisco 49ers’ offensive assistant, and the only openly gay coach in the league.
“I tell her she belongs there – because she does,” John Konecki, Sowers’ coach when she played in the US American football team that won the 2013 World Championship, told The Daily Telegraph. “She was a sponge as a player, would sit in the film room and take copious notes. She had this knack to interpret complex ideas and pass on that information to others. It’s a no-brainer that she’s in the position she’s in.”
Sowers’ participation is a big statement for an event in which 46 per cent of television audiences were women last year and, in some senses, the NFL could be regarded as head and shoulders above others in female representation, with eight of the 32 teams having women holding primary ownership stakes. Not only that, but in 2016 the NFL extended the Rooney Rule to women for all executive positions, meaning at least one female candidate had to be interviewed for every vacancy of that kind in the league. That increased opportunities at an administrative level.
But in the same way that rule has had limited success in its original form – which aimed to increase the number of black head coaches
– so too is the
NFL lacking on gender issues.
The league has been blighted by a spate of domestic violence cases involving players, and its decision last July to impose a minimum six-game suspension on players accused of domestic violence – a violation of its “personal conduct policy” – is arguably still too lax. This week NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said he was concerned for the welfare of Antonio Brown, a former New England Patriots wide receiver dropped after he was accused of rape last year. Brown – who denies the allegations – will not face criminal charges, but it remains a tone-deaf comment for the
NFL boss to make during the Metoo movement (not to mention that it took a second sexual misconduct accusation for the Patriots to drop him).
The NFL does seem determined to show its female audience there is a place for them, by introducing a women’s summit in 2016 and promoting the stories of women coming through the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship. But just four of 179 coaches awarded the fellowship were women in 2019.
Indeed, Sowers benefited from the programme. But her first breakthrough had to come from a stroke of luck, when then-kansas City Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli gave her an “in” after he met her when she was coaching his child’s youth basketball team.
Sowers wants to become a head coach, but acknowledges pathways for women coaches are much more muddled than for men. For now, her message is this: “Being the first, it is historic, but the most important thing is to ensure I’m not the last.”