NFL breaks gender barriers

editorial cartoon by Jacob Bogdanoff and Des Delgadillo
editorial cartoon by Jacob Bogdanoff and Des Delgadillo

Sarah Thomas will soon be on football fields alongside six other referees as the National Football League’s first full-time female official, but some doubt her ability to participate in a historically male-dominated sport simply because she is a woman.

Thomas was one of 21 finalists in the NFL officiating development program and was hired as an official April 8.

She will begin officiating games for the 2015 season, but some people have already let preconceived stereotypes affect their opinions about Thomas.

Social media sites were riddled with misogynistic comments including, “I use football to escape my wife, now I’ll have a woman nagging during the game too,” and “If they bump into her, they’re going to be arrested and charged for assault.”

The people who are questioning her ability are judging her without any consideration for her officiating experience. There is no reason why the NFL should not have hired Thomas as she has plenty of qualifications, especially at the NCAA level.

She has more than 15 years of officiating experience and began her career at a varsity high school game in 1999. Since then, she has also officiated college games, bowl games and NFL scrimmages.

Thomas was the first woman to officiate a major college football game, a bowl game, a game in a Big Ten stadium and soon, she can add a NFL game to her lists of accomplishments.

“I know a lot of females are maybe inspired that there’s a gender barrier about to be broken,” Thomas said in a CBS interview. “But I never set out to shatter the glass ceiling.”

American football has often been associated with masculinity because of the lack of women representation in the game, both on and off the field. However, the sport is becoming more popular with women, surpassing both baseball and basketball with about 33 percent female viewership, according to a Nielsen measurement report.

Though Thomas never thought about her achievements as breaking the gender barrier, she definitely made impact in the sports community.

With the increase in female fans and now a female official in American football, perhaps we will soon see more women representation in other sports too.

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Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Campus Times Editorial Board.

Jacob Bogdanoff

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