Let’s go back to 2006.
I was obsessed with the Florida Gators men’s basketball team that won the national championship that year and went on to repeat, winning the title again in 2007. I would sit on the couch for the games that were televised, and I would take notes about who was doing what on offense and on defense.
Lee Humphrey, the shooting guard for the Gators at the time, grew up beside my late Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill in Maryville, Tennessee. I thought that I was so cool because one summer as a little girl, I got to shoot with a male college basketball player on the same hoop he did before he became a national champion.
The walls of the living room in my home in Salisbury are covered with various forms of sports memorabilia. Situated behind the couch is a picture of Florida’s 2006 national championship team that I cut out of a Sports Illustrated magazine and taped to the wall over ten years ago.
Let’s go forward to October 2017.
If I were a female sports reporter covering an NFL team, I would hope that I would be given the same amount of respect as the male sports reporters in the room. I would hope that if I were to ask any NFL player a legitimate question, they would not respond with a laugh and a sexist remark.
At the very least, I would hope that my childhood heroes, the 2006 and 2007 Florida Gators men's basketball team, would’ve shown me the respect that I deserve if I had been a reporter in one of their post-game press conferences.
In light of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton’s recent comments to Charlotte Observer reporter Jourdan Rodrigue, I am disappointed as a female sports journalist. I’m disappointed in Cam — a father of two daughters and a quarterback with a powerful platform on and off of the field — as well as those who completely missed the sexism in his comment. I have scrolled through social media and read comments where people did not understand what was wrong with what Newton said.
Because it was, after all, funny.