Women are beginning to build a presence not just in their respective gender sports, but in male leagues as well. They have filled roles in coaching staffs in the NBA and NFL. There are even female referees in both sports as well.
But never has a woman played in men’s leagues in any sport, until Tuesday.
And this soccer player might become the first ever female to play in the NFL
Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis sent shockwaves around the NFL when he hired Amy Trask.
The epitome of a pioneer of women’s power in sports is the first female president of a sports organization, Amy Trask, who ran the Oakland Raiders under owner Al Davis’ last years and wrote a book called “You Negotiate Like a Girl: Reflections on a Career in the National Football League.”
Trask joined the organization as an intern during law school and moved all the way up to the highest position in the organization as a female and in the most competitive male-dominated sport in America. How did she do it? By taking her gender completely out of the equation.
More and more players, coaches and owners are beginning to align with those views. Although there isn’t a female head coach in a men’s league yet, we may be right around the corner from the first ever.
But we’ve never had a female player in a men’s league yet.
Remember that movie from 1991 called “Necessary Roughness,” starring Scott Bakula, Hector Elizondo and Robert Loggia? It’s about the players on the Texas State University Fightin Armadillos, mostly made up players who are way past their prime but are still eligible by NCAA rules. In the movie, Lucy Draper (Kathy Ireland) a member of the school’s soccer team joins the Armadillos as their field goal kicker.
As they say, art imitates life and vice versa.
Now it has finally happened because United States women’s national team star Carli Lloyd just became the first woman to kick in an NFL game after she drilled a 55-yard field goal at the Philadelphia Eagles training camp in a video that went viral.
For all you NFL teams looking for a kicker😉(via @CarliLloyd) pic.twitter.com/AJOgDeKwBT
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) August 21, 2019
Lloyd’s trainer, James Galanis, noted that several NFL teams to play for them in a preseason game have approached Lloyd.
Galanis told Fox Sports, “The one that called today, I don’t want to say who it is, was willing to put her on the roster for their next (game). They were willing to put her on the roster.”
But she has a scheduling conflict with the USWNT and there’s only one preseason game left.
Galanis added, “Knowing Carli, I don’t think she would just hop on and do it. She would need a couple of weeks training just to get comfortable and acclimatized. But things have escalated, and it is real.”
But as Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) says in “Jurassic Park,” “Your scientists were too busy figuring out of if they could, they didn’t stop to think whether they should.”
What happens if the play breaks down? What are the opposing teams supposed to do? What if she gets violently injured on the field? If Lloyd is the field goal kicker then that means she does kickoffs too. Is she going to be expected to tackle?
This seems more like NFL teams trying to be “woke” than actually being serious about wanting Lloyd’s amazing kicking services.