Is watching football the harmless pastime it claims to be?

Having time to relax is important. Sharing what we enjoy with our kids can be valuable. Yet is football the answer?

Football:

• excludes half the population who could be playing it.* (more)
• restricts girls and women to subservient roles. (more)
• perpetuates the emphasis on girls and women as visual aesthetics for boys and men. (more)
• raises our kids to think that boys deserve to be the center of attention and girls deserve to watch. (more)
• maligns girls and women to incite aggressive behavior in boys and men. (more)

It’s time for parents, coaches, and managers to call an end to excluding girls and women from playing football. Without girls’ and women’s involvement, football perpetuates and strengthens harmful mindsets, leading to damaging behaviors off the field; some of which are dreadfully serious.

Football excludes half the population who could be playing it.

If you are a girl or a woman (or know a girl or a woman) who doesn’t ever want to play football, that’s fine. If you are a girl or a woman who thinks you will never have the size or physical ability needed to play football, that’s fine. Own that choice. It is yours to make. However, do not rationalize your choice by saying it’s because you’re a girl or a woman. If you look for them, you’ll see plenty of women who are solidly built, broad, or husky. You’ll see women who are powerfully athletic, strong, and capable. You’ll also see women who are taller than you.

Be honest about your own reasons. Such as:

• you’ve never lifted heavy weights to strengthen your body.
• you’ve never done 20 wind sprints in one morning to develop speed.
• you’ve never learned to shove, grab, and push others out of your way effectively.
• you’re 5’0” and 99 pounds.
• you’ve never practiced throwing or catching a football the correct way until it became second nature.
• you’ve never done the hustle needed to be at your physical peak.
• you’ve never learned to fight for something with your whole being.

Make it for whatever reason is unique to you. Never, though, make it because you’re a girl or a woman. If you make that your excuse, such as by saying, “Women just don’t have the strength,” “Girls aren’t big enough,” or “Women aren’t aggressive enough,” you are throwing all girls and women under the bus for something that is your individual reality, preference, and/or choice. And you would be wrong. There are countless women and girls who could play tackle football. There are girls and women who can be aggressive in sports, particularly if they’re given the opportunity. Some girls and women are already playing tackle football well, even without the excessive and continual support and resources given to boys and men (Women’s Football Alliance and Utah Girls Tackle Football).

There is countless evidence that girls and women have been undervalued for their physical abilities and still are.

Women alive today weren’t allowed by the men handling sports programs in the 1950’s (such as those in the National Federation of State High School Associations, aka NFHS), to run the full court in a basketball game. They were also not allowed to bounce the ball more than once. Even today in 2020 the board of directors of the NFHS is egregiously missing the 50% representation on their board that would reflect the actual student population. Women and men need to be making decisions together for girls and boys, not just men.

As author Chris Crowley states, “There was a time in this nation when there was a serious body of thought that exercise was bad for women. My very own mother [Lurana] experienced it. One day, [around] 1900 or 1902, when mother was six or eight, she came home to this serious scene. Her mother and a [male] acquaintance were waiting for her in the formal parlor of [her home]. Because, as the man had told my grandmother, ‘I saw Lurana running this morning.’ He thought my grandmother ought to know. She was told not to do it anymore. In the fifty years I knew [my mother], I never saw her do a single athletic thing. Not one.” ¹

This restricting of girls and women would be ridiculous and hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. Think of the thousands (millions, really) of girls and women who have been robbed of opportunities to express their athletic ability, feel the sense of accomplishment and joy that comes from playing sports, and gain awareness of how truly capable their bodies are. We have all been robbed of the ways girls and women could have been contributing to the development of athletics since our country’s beginning.

For those of us who say we don’t want girls and women to be hurt as the reason we don’t want them playing football, we are deluding ourselves. Girls and women are hurt every day by certain boys and men because we teach them that girls and women are their subordinates to be used as they wish–not their peers, teammates, or equals. We segregate them from girls and women as much as we can until we want them to date, and then we wonder why date rape and other forms of assault happen. Also the activity we channel girls and women towards, “cheerleading[,] is by far the most perilous sport for female athletes in high school and college, accounting for as much as two-thirds of severe school-sports injuries over the past 25 years.”

The landmark Title IX ruling was to give girls and women access to the athletics they had been denied, not to give a legal loophole to certain men so they can run a men’s only or boys’ only club that still receives federal funding. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation” is Title IX language.

Football restricts girls and women to subservient roles

Girls and women haven’t just been excluded from playing football and freed up to be the center of attention in another sport or activity. They’ve been directed into a secondary, side-line role at the football field:  cheerleading.

Cheerleaders may be athletic, gifted, and skilled, but they will always be second to the players. Because that is what they are there for:  to support the boys and men on the football team.

As the National Federation of State High School Associations states on its website, “The cheerleading team is the connection between the fans and the athletic team. The energy and enthusiasm produced by the crowd can rally a sports team to play better and boost overall morale. It is the cheerleading team’s task to unify the crowd in its efforts.”

Football perpetuates the emphasis on girls and women as visual aesthetics. 

If cheerleaders wore the most comfortable and practical clothes for being outside in autumn weather, they would be wearing pants, flexible fabrics, and layers. They would be keeping their entire body, including their legs, warm.

But the girls and women who cheerlead are not given pants to wear (in high school, college or in the professional league).

If the girls and women in cheerleading didn’t wear such revealing clothes, we would automatically focus more on their skills. Football culture however wants us to treat girls and women as visual accessories to the action displayed by football players.  Cheerleaders’ clothing shows off the shape of their bodies and bare skin. At the NFL level, where football culture is at its peak, outfits are stripped down to even less, so our eyes automatically go to a cheerleader’s chest, stomach, crotch, legs, and rear end, hardly noticing her dance moves. She is exposed for boys and men to view as they wish. They can watch her hungrily or not give her a second look. They hold the power of choice; she does not. She is exposed for their whims. 

NFL cheerleaders are also held up as the ideal woman in football culture. We are rarely told their names or their stories (as those are clearly not important in football culture). Yet we know the details of their bodies. As the TV camera sweeps past their eerily similar bodies and faces (when compared to the variety that exists in the world), the underlying message is clear:  these ideal women are as highly regarded as women will ever be and they are happy to be relegated to the sidelines, supporting whatever men are doing, wearing tiny outfits, being uncomfortable in cold weather, smiling, and dancing around. (When you dig deeper, you find they are also “happy” to be paid low wages and receive few perks for their efforts. Another message is that this is what even the best women are worthy of. They are fulfilled being near men doing things and waiting to have the male gaze upon them, even for the briefest of moments, to validate their purpose in life. Football culture is saying, “Attention girls and women of the world:   know your place, because this is it.” (“Boys and men, listen up, too, so you can keep football culture going by being fans and tolerating this.”)

Football raises our kids to think that boys deserve to be the center of attention and girls deserve to watch.

By literally putting boys and men in the center of attention as the main event and preventing girls and women from joining in–and then relegating girls and women to a supporting role on the side of the field, we are unquestioningly teaching our kids the stark messages that boys and men do great deeds, we all need to watch them, girls and women don’t do great deeds, and boys and men don’t need to watch girls and women do anything. (The only way some men do line up to watch women is when they take off their clothes, whether the women are working on their PhDs or paying for their kids’ tuitions.)

These experiences from the football field feed how kids act in school, who steps up to lead group projects and who doesn’t, who expects to be listened to and who submits to listening, who expects to win elections and who helps on the campaign, who asks for what he wants in a relationship and who keeps her needs to herself, who believes they are capable of greatness and who doesn’t, and on it goes. 

Football culture fuels girls and women acting passively around boys and men, and leads boys and men to expect them to. When girls and women are not, conflict happens. The boys and men most influenced by football culture will more likely resolve conflict with aggression and physical force.

Football culture maligns girls and women as a tool to incite aggressive behavior in boys and men.

The coaches and parents who drill football-culture messages into players’ heads incite boys’ and men’s aggression, strength, and power by demonizing girls and women–defining them as weak and having no place on the football field. This emphasis on aggression and physical force to get results combined with their claim of superiority over girls and women oozes off the football field and into our lives. Spectators who merely watch the game are influenced. There is “significant and robust evidence that football game days increase reports of rape victimization among 17 [to] 24-year-old women by 28 percent. Home games increase reports by 41 percent on the day of the game and away games increase reports by 15 percent. These effects are greater for schools playing in the more prominent subdivision of Division 1 and for relatively prominent games.”

Certain men connected with football also want us to think that assault and sexual assault inflicted by football players are unusual. Even people in charge of the media choose to use words like “stunned” and “shocked” when reporting yet another assault case. What pattern do you see after reading the high-school stories below? Warning:  explicit content.

(In Maryland) “Several junior-varsity football players pinned a teammate in a locker room, pulled his pants down and sexually assaulted him with a broomstick.”

(In Ohio) Two football players used their fingers to penetrate the genitals of a 16-year-old girl, who one referred to as “like a dead body,” “while she was so drunk that she lacked the cognitive ability to give her consent for sex” and posted it on social media. Then a football player circulated another picture of “her lying naked in a basement with…semen on her body.” This assault was “proof as well, some community members said, that Steubenville High School’s…football team held too much sway over other teenagers, who documented and traded pictures of the assault while doing little or nothing to protect the girl.”

(In Oklahoma) Four football players “confessed verbally and in written statements to participating in the assault of [a younger football player] with [a] broomstick.” A student “witnessed the victim being carried from the freshman side of the locker room to the varsity side. The witness said he then saw someone ‘grab a broomstick and shove the stick up [the victim’s] rectum.’ ”

(In New Jersey) “Seven Sayreville players were charged with hazing and sexual assault of four teammates in the high school’s locker room.” A player confides that there was “ ‘a  pattern of ritualistic abuse and bullying’ against younger members of the team.”

(In Connecticut) Two “members of the…football team have been charged in sexual assault cases involving different 13-year-old girls”

(In Illinois) A teen during football camp was “standing in a line during practice when the four upperclassman tackled him, stripped him of his shorts and held him down while one of the teens sexually assaulted him.”

(In California) “Four football players were cited for the assault on a…teammate and that the assault occurred after practice in a locker room.”

(In Michigan) A high school football coach (and teacher) had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student. There was “evidence [that] Stewart ‘furnished alcohol to students at parties,’ created a ‘sexually charged and hostile learning environment,’ propositioned another student and ‘threatened a student with physical harm because the student had told Mr. Stewart to leave high school girls alone.’ ”

(In Arizona) A “football player [is] accused of physically and sexually attacking some of his teammates.”

Some of the incidences above are football players sexually assaulting other players. Football culture breeds this behavior. The maligning of girls and women as weak and inferior combined with suppressing the unaccepted feelings of boys and men (those categorized under “weakness”:  sadness, fear, insecurity, hurt, and disappointment) create a volatile mix. Suppressed feelings don’t go away; they remain buried until a situation triggers their sudden release in uncontrolled ways.

In the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Debra Umberson, Kristi Williams and Kristin Anderson explain, “repressed emotion plays a role in triggering violent episodes.” “Certain groups…emphasize violence as an acceptable way to express feeling and solve problems” and violent acts are linked to men who “devote considerable energy to controlling and avoiding emotion.”

Repressed feelings find the path of least resistance for expression, which among football players, is through aggression and anger. Unhinged, aggression and anger become violence. Any football player who shows weakness in this environment becomes a potential trigger for others and a target.

These perpetrators of sexual assault are “saying” to their boy victims:

“You are such scum, you are the worst of the worst. You are so weak, you are like a girl, a woman, so we will treat you like one. This is what we do to girls and women.” 

“It’s truly astounding how many awful things that occur in this world because men are afraid of appearing weak,” says Deandre Levy, linebacker and free agent in the NFL. “We’re considered models of masculinity, which is at the very root of a lot of these issues.”

“Man up! You pussy! Grow a pair!”

“These are insults that are so commonplace,” shares Levy. Revealing is that these comments are not gender neutral, such as “Suck it up.”  Every single one is connected to maligning women and girls (as threats to being competent, strong, powerful, or valuable). Even when coaches themselves don’t say the insults and harassing statements, they create an environment where this thinking festers and look the other way when players inflict it on each other. 

As former NFL quarterback Don McPherson explains, “We don’t raise boys to be men [in football culture]. We raise boys to not be women or gay men. We don’t affirm what a loving man is. … [Football players are] not supposed to…care or love or be sensitive, and it’s all utter BS because we are all these things.”

The number of rapes, assaults, and other crimes committed by just one college football team is described in Scoreboard, Baby:  A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity.

At the professional level, what does football culture create?

Former NFL player accused of “drugging of two women so he could rape them…similar allegations involve as many as 16 victims in four states.”

Former NFL player “faces charges of raping a hitchhiker, forced oral copulation with the same hitchhiker and sodomizing the same homeless woman he was convicted of raping. He also faces charges of raping an unconscious woman in 2003.”

A free agent with the NFL “accused of raping a woman who worked as his trainer.”

NFL football player “accused of sexually assaulting a dancer…at a nightclub.”

“Former NFL Network [employee] alleges she was subjected to repeated instances of sexual harassment by retired players and network executives,” including being pinned “against a wall and demanded that she perform oral sex.”

An employee with the NFL Network claims a former NFL player “rubbed his genitals against her, grabbed her ass, and harassed her via private Instagram messages.”

Don McPherson says, “If my power as a man lies in my privilege over women, or my privilege to be identified as a hyper-masculine football player, I denounce that power. That’s not power to me.” “That’s a privilege that comes from oppression.”

Now is the time to stop the parts of football culture that lead to violence off the field:  (1) excluding girls and women from playing, (2) maligning them as weak and inferior, and (3) using them as a hostile motivational tool to incite aggressive behavior. We need to demand leagues, coaches, and managers use healthier ways to create competitive teams, and open up the game to girls and women as players, coaches, and managers. Like many sports, the game of football can be exciting and fun. The hype around a game:  the crowds, the bands, the cheers, the drum core, and the half-time show can also add to the excitement. Let’s make these needed changes and give our athletic kids the opportunity to strive, execute strategy, and surmount obstacles together. Only then can they learn to rely on each other as capable teammates, friends, and allies.

* I realize some teams have girls as kickers and, more rarely, in other positions. This is great progress, though definitely not enough to stop the toxic culture. Open, full participation of girls and women is needed.

1 Page 106, Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D.