Why It's Time For The NFL To Hire Some Lady Referees (And Maybe Announcers And Coaches, Too) →

“Challenges are about to get real emotional,” said one commenter on NBC’s ProFootballTalk.com; “But… but… but… there’s no crying in football!” another said, quoting a movie directed by a woman; “This just seems like a bad idea. Some player is going to say something that a guy would shrug off, but the female ref is going to take it to the league office as harassment,” still another predicted; “We all know most women base decisions on there[sic] emotions” seemed to be the summation of the viewpoints. It goes on like this for at least half of the 136 comments (as of Saturday night) on the post at PFT.

It’s a weird outrage, seemingly borne out of the same urge that Calvin had when he declared himself Dictator-For-Life of G.R.O.S.S. – like, can’t we have one thing that yucky girls aren’t allowed into? And most of the griping is a search for after-the-fact justification. Some of the comments on PFT hide behind a smokescreen of “what if a woman ref gets clobbered by a linebacker by mistake,” a concern that seems oddly placed, given that the current average age for a male NFL official is about 93. But mostly, it’s this declaration that women are too emotional, and will thus screw up the great game of football.

And that’s weird for a couple of reasons: First, we insist upon emotion when it comes to sports. At least half of the league, and the people who follow it, are still snickering at Jay Cutler for failing to make an appropriate frowny-face while sitting on the sideline after suffering a grade II MCL tear in the NFC Championship Game; meanwhile, when the U.S. Women’s soccer team lost a heartbreaking World Cup final to Japan in July, Hope Solo and Abby Wambach shed no tears, unlike Tim Tebow and LeBron James did after losing their respective championships.

There’s nothing shameful about LeBron or Tebow having a powerful emotional response to coming up short on something they’d dedicated their lives to achieving, but it betrays a basic hypocrisy: Not only do we demand that men in sports respond to things emotionally, but the available evidence suggests that there’s no reason to believe that women respond more emotionally on the field than men do. So what the hell, guys?

As promised, this week’s Down And Distance column is live at CultureMap. It’s about the NFL’s plan to hire some lady refs in the near future, the reaction to it, and why it’s past time for all major American sports to re-assess the roles they have available to women.

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