Why I Won't Support Women's Football For Now

I like American Football. I played offensive guard through high school, and I was proud to see my son play the same position in 7th Grade.

There’s something about women playing football that bothers me, and it’s not the fact that women are playing football. It’s how we have women playing football.

Problem #1 - Women’s Football is Over-Sexualized

Legends Football League rose from the Lingerie Football League where women play the full-contact sport clad in shoulder pads, their jerseys are large enough to just cover the pads themselves. What’s available for all to see? Cleavage, midriffs and legs!

When reviewing the Home Page for LFL team L.A. Temptation, it’s easy to see that just the name alone is innuendo and the Home Page looks like a line up.

Homepage of LA Temptation, July 30, 2014

Compare this to the Oakland Raiders Home Page, and the focus is on understanding the players and their abilities. Know their stats, their skills, their accomplishments on and off the field. Meanwhile, the L.A. Temptation page is all about “LOOK at us!” They are faces without names. The team roster headshots are more like model agency headshots. You don’t see that kind of headshot for an NFL roster. With an NFL roster, you get names and no faces.

Oakland Raiders homepage, July 30, 2014

The way women’s football is presented does not say, “We respect your ability to play the sport.” Rather, it is a reinforcement of the notion that men only respect women’s breasts. “Respect” isn’t even the right word to use. This is demeaning to both men and women. 

Women are more than a pair of breasts. Men have more dynamic and depth than boob-seeking radars!

Problem #2 - Women’s Football is Not Equitable

I won’t even dive into pay equity scales because I’m sure that a women’s football league is not profitable enough in the first place to garner the kind of salaries we see from a typical NFL player.

I will talk about player safety.

Equipment & uniform comparison
between men and women.

There are some standard gear items that every full-contact football player can count on using without question:

• Helmet with a metal face mask and mouth guard,
• Shoulder pads sometimes with added rib and neck protection
• Girdle protection (hip & tail bone pads)
• Thigh pads and knee pads integrated into pants, knee-high socks.

Jerry, women don’t hit each other as hard as men do, therefore they don’t need the padding, right?

If that is the case, then why do we dress up our middle school and Pop Warner football players in full NFL-type gear? They do not hit as hard as NFL players do. They do not even hit as hard as high school players do, but they are afforded a full spread of protective equipment.

7th Graders playing football, October 2013.

A player is covered from head-to-toe to protect them even from scrapes against grass and artificial turf. Either women possess skin that is tougher than men, or we as a society value seeing women’s skin over protecting it. We will protect our boys and men playing a full-contact sport, however we will expose our women in the same game. 

It's not just in football where we see this discrepancy. Compare uniforms of boys baseball and girls softball, volleyball, tennis, and more. Yes, you can rebut with basketball, golf, and water polo, however I can still contend that women's football today is nothing more than a repackaged mud wrestling match.

That’s food for thought. In the meantime, for the sake of my son and daughter, and out of respect for both men and women, #NotBuyingIt.