He said I was loitering. SAGAL: How do you talk about sports for five hours without boring yourself to death? The interview format is believed to have been popularized around mid-century by Dick Young, a New York Daily News sportswriter. A new generation of sports writers has responded to this shift by increasingly using advanced metrics and digital tools to change the genre entirely. So when I was about 16, I wrote every major-league club with ball girls and asked about the pros and cons. There was a sports editor who would stop by every time he saw me eating, stare at me, and say in all seriousness, "Jenn, if you get fat, we won't love you no more." Cripes, maybe I should just wait til they all get dressed before talking to them? Instead of saying so-and-so is a good player, and heres a quote, I include some Vines and GIFs to show why hes so good, says Kevin Trahan, who writes for Vice and SB Nation. That first-person ode to Arlington Stadium was entered in a contest. [6] The general manager of the team was fired. These arent your high school gym locker roomsmany are increasingly part of multi-room complexes including lounges and training rooms that media cant accessbut journalists would be hard pressed to find so many sources anywhere else. TAFOYA: Well, you have to maneuver around that. SAGAL: The job of the NFL sideline reporter is three parts glamour, four parts grit and 10 parts fending off the advances of a randy Hall of Fame quarterback. Here's your last question. I had been officially baptized, and it was no big deal. By Adrienne Jones. We both approached the front desk, where the clerk sided with the guard, saying I could remain for 10 more minutes, but only if I stayed out of the central lobby and remained "mobile." An Ongoing Problem : Women Reporters Resent How They're Treated in the Locker Rooms By FRED LIEF Jan. 5, 1986 12 AM PT United Press International NEW YORK "If a reporter is duly and. I wasn't afraid of naked men. Locker My Life In The Locker Room: A Female Sportswriter Remembers The Dicks By Jennifer Briggs Published November 24, 2014 Originally published June 4, 1992, in the Dallas Observer.. Robin Herman, a gender barrier-breaking reporter for The New York Times who was the first female journalist to interview players in the locker room after an NHL game, has died. They picked threeCindy, because she was a perky cheerleader at the University of Texas at Arlington; Jamie, because she had modeling experience; and me, because I was a pest. or "You wrote a good piece, Jenn, but then your headline writers let you down at the end; what does that feel like?" Event marketing. Acceptance will be given if you represent your profession in the highest degree. They havent had a lot of time to think about what to say, and theyre in a comfortable environment, Boivin says, differentiating the format from occasional post-game news conferences. I kept saying, Im not the story; the game is the story,' Herman said, reflecting on the night. It had been less than a decade earlier, in 1990, that Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson had been sexually harassed by players in the New England Patriots locker room who exposed themselves. I was one of the guys. I'm sure he's been naked in the room where I was at some time. I was down there to see the guy turn off the lights for the last day game. He was from Venezuela or the Dominican Republic, and guys from way south of here often start their careers as young as 16 or so. And while most nudity is off-camera and doesnt find its way to audiences, the shirtless, disheveled, or still-sweating sports star, facing an array of microphones in front of his cubby, has become an enduring image in sports coverage. My dad was a buyer for Better Monkey Grip Rubber Company, and I'm not complaining. So you've been in the Mavericks locker room? [10], After the incident became public, Olson was subjected to harassment by fans of the Patriots. But that's while they are still trying to maneuver you quickly into bed. But I learned to do news as well. I fully expected trouble. In 1975, the NHL allowed New York Times reporter Robin Herman into the men's locker room, making her the first woman to enter a hockey team clubhouse. I asked. Not sports writing, but the best of every column written in the state that year. Host virtual events and webinars to increase engagement and generate leads. Her tires were slashed, she received hate mail and death threats, and her apartment was burglarized. The misconceptions about the atmosphere are overrated. TAFOYA: You know what, though, timing is everything, and I think I sort of followed the floodgates that were opened by Lesley Visser and Robin Roberts. It was mostly worn, ectoplasm-green indoor-outdoor carpetingand stares. Hopefully we can ditch this weird practices permanently in 2022. It's a place for changing attire and accessing personal belonging. I wonder how these female reporters and staff would feel showering and changing with men in their locker room? No one seems to know when the first female Equipment Manager was hired. Always Al Newman, and he's always smiling because he's kind of happy to be here too. I want you guys here when I make the game-winning kicks, and I realize that I got to have you guys here when I miss them. So everyone's kind of shuffling around. Donna doesn't like newspapers either. I retreated back behind the door before anyone could see me. "The Texas APME awards are out," he said. SAGAL: So how did you get into the - how did you - I mean, I'm going to guess SAGAL: that it's harder for a woman to get into major league professional sports reporting than it is for a man. James Donaldson was the very tallest, and I almost always waited until he had some small piece of fabric on before I walked back there. Yet all the time I was still dreaming up stories to get me to the ball park. I think how cool it is to watch a stadium yawn to life. I might have actually said, "Can we talk about how your face looks like one of those ear-shaped potato chips that the lady from the Lay's factory brings on The Tonight Show once a year? I walked over to him and asked how old he was. TAFOYA: But still, tune in each Sunday night. Most of the men I've dated certainly don't know about the social fraying of America or why it might be at all amusing that a guy named Fujimori is in charge of Peru, so you'd certainly hope they knew some inane facts about NFL rushers. As I steamed over this, I took a shot of courage (a cold Starbucks Caf Latte) and pondered my circumstances. Then it hits me: My job means I get to be around this game and write about it. And blocked by virtue of being a woman Melissa Ludtke's landmark. She also was a national columnist for AOL's FanHouse sports website, and a columnist and the first woman in Sporting News' 120-year history to write the magazine's monthly back page. "You know," I thought, "I doubt if any of them read the Observer.". Sometimes I take a seat in the dugout, where a few of the guys are filtering in, grabbing bats and bubble gum. My daddy and I saw our first major-league game together on Opening Night here in 1972. Olson's ordeal was mentioned (although without her name, referring to her only as "a Boston Globe reporter") in the Sports Night Season One episode "Mary Pat Shelby," in which Natalie Hurley was assaulted in a locker room by football star Christian Patrick. Scoreboard: Caps Ovechkin Outdoes Pens Crosby and Malkin, Rangers First Pick Is One With Ties to the Islanders, Devils Work a Trade So They Can Select Brodeurs Son, Islanders Make Deal With Wild Before Selecting a Defenseman in the First Round. Bill, who's Michele Tafoya playing for? This is all very exciting. I got nothing left. Yet anyone who gets self-worth through random sex with a professional athlete is not exactly MENSA material. The rest is all overrated. The first Ranger I interviewed was drying his stomach with a towel. Archival footage of Olson was used in the film, but Olson herself declined to participate in it.[13]. Still, most professional athletes also realize that allowing journalists into their sanctuary is a part of the job. A feature on the woman who washes the Rangers' clothes was not out of the question. Customers Modifications . SAGAL: Actually, it was B with George Washington. . He'd pull me out of school at lunch once a year to go to the spring baseball luncheon and take me to games early so I could collect autographs. It may have been his first night. Prove to them you know your stuff, and you will have proven to them why you belong there. So you've got all these big-haired babes who think the electoral college is a beauty school, ready to hoist their miniskirts for the first athlete who comes along. You can't do this without asking about their dogs and their mom and what bugs them even worse than dropping the soap in the shower. SAGAL: Here's your first question. I began investigating the pay-for-play scandals of the Southwest Conference. Why the fuck can yall walk in, and we are half-naked? I wrote management repeatedly. I head down the steps, past the seats where I couldn't even afford to sit when I was a kid, open heaven's gate, and walk onto the field. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Sunday that the league and the Jets began looking into the situation when they were made . to that woman.". It's not a place for socialising. TAFOYA: So there I am, and I'm getting ready to go in, and this is the first time I've ever done this, and I'm just going to do some radio interviews for tape to take them back and turn them around, and I said to myself I had a rule I established before I went in. I began to rummage through the large boxes until I found the one with my publisher's name on it. I left my stuff in the press box and went downstairs, sandals sticking in last night's gooey beer puddles as usual, as I entered the tunnel to the field. 2023 Vimeo.com, Inc. All rights reserved. In many ways, I had made a career choice when I walked through that locker room door. "Just do your job, that's it," he told NBCChicago.com. It wasn't Reggie or pro-locker-room banter. And a few guys maybe flounced around a little more just for brief amusement. A kidI mean, really a kidstarted telling me women had no business in the locker room. think men are going to tend to turn and look and want to say something I had started wandering longingly over to the sports department, just to talk about baseball. Others, including Michael Timpson, made jokes and egged each other on. TAFOYA: Let me tell you about my first time. At the Burning Tree Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, women are only allowed to visit the club when? But I can understand the athletes being naturally uncertain what to make of women, of me. As Jones talked to reporter Albert Breer about the "nitty-gritty" of his team's latest triumph, the locker room hinterland showed at least seven players in various forms of undress, ranging . Male reporters are allowed in locker rooms both before and after games. Donna is a good argument for euthanasia. You take a right turn before you have to walk straight into the naked men and the soap. SAGAL: You're going to say B, he got back to London but couldn't be readmitted because he wasn't wearing a jacket and tie. I helped cover the team for the Associated Press. "Are you going to talk to me or not?" Going to do my best. Indeed, locker room access is built into players collective bargaining agreements with the four major North American sports leagues. She was 70. They wouldn't let him in the club, so he finished his journey on the steps. All rights reserved. I can't tell you the bizarre arguments I've had with a few of these creeps who keep suggesting I become a teacher. Michele Tafoya is the Emmy award-winning reporter for NBC's Sunday Night Football, but she's spent time on basketball courts, softball diamonds, gymnastics mats and now public radio quiz show game grids. She has covered sports stories in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, China, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. I ran out of material 10 minutes ago. Should women be allowed in locker rooms? Family trips in an egg-shell-white Impala to see the cousins in Plainview took fewer rough turns. 1950) is an American sportscaster who worked for ESPN and NBC Sports beginning in 1987 until 1993. But I must tell you, I find that being a reporter is so much easier than being a fan. However, Briggs thought otherwise. I talk to the coaches at halftime as they walk in or out of the locker room, and that's always a load of fun especially the losing coach. We got to Frank DeFord's comment at the end. Or go back to feature writing. Two Sundays ago, for example, Minnesota Vikings kicker Blair Walsh missed a last-second chip shot that would have likely advanced his team to the next round of the NFL playoffs. the frigid steppes of Russia and beyond, like, say, Phoenix. There are postgame press conferences and media availability throughout the week. But one thing kept me in sports: I got a Rangers media pass every year. A, on Women's Day which is a holiday named after a magazine. Lately I've just started saying I'm a secretary at Wolfe's Nursery. From a New York Times obit by Richard Sandomir headlined "Robin Herman, Who Pried Open Doors in the NHL, Dies at 70":. One of the more interesting nuggets from the conversation between two of my favorites was Longs take on reporters accessing locker rooms postgame. He told me I had to leave unless I was staying at the hotel. It was walking into the football locker room at the University of Texas in Austin and having a large man with burnt-orange pants and dark white face pick me up by my underarms and deposit me outside the door. Since I watched hockey as a kid, it was always this way.. In an interview on the March 11, 2011 edition of Bill Simmons' podcast, "The B.S. NFL Network Airs Interview With Naked Players In Background. Maybe I'd never fit in. Man, did I ever realize how my attitude and courage level had changed. But the point is that you don't even think much about people being naked after a while, and unless you have some peculiar reason for remembering, you don't know who you have seen naked because they all kind of waltz in and out of the shower naked, just one wet butt covered with soap film after another. I asked one more time interrupting. So, 35 years ago, Herman and another woman a Montreal radio reporter, Marcel St. Cyr gathered with other reporters after the game and walked in to conduct postgame interviews. He was really mouthing off at me. SAGAL: And those pioneers were like, no, we're going, we're doing our job. [Reporters] obviously need you to say some stuff so they can write their articles, said Islanders alternate captain Kyle Okposo, wiping his forehead with an already-drenched shirt. That's when a security guard came up to me to ask why I was there. And theres going to be cameras. Friends at Bible study ask if the players are mean to me. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Take the blanket no-comment dished out by Dallas Cowboys star and alleged domestic abuser Greg Hardy after a game last year. After a long game, while standing in the middle of the clubhouse waiting for someone to appear, I sometimes gaze off in one direction, the way you stare when you're bored and become transfixed on an object until your eyes cross and you snap back into the reality of car payments and cellulite. (Lowrance/Getty) NFL boss Roger Goodell was demanding answers Sunday night from. "It's the same as a man in the locker room to me.". The NFL launched an investigation into the incident after Sainz, a veteran reporter, claimed footballs were thrown in her direction by a Jets coach during a practice - seemingly deliberately -. She was a member of the first class of women at Princeton University. And he began reading. 2011 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. The male athletes dont. I was nervous the first time I entered the Rangers locker room, about seven years ago. If female journalists are allowed into male locker rooms, then either male journalists should be allowed in female locker rooms or female journalists should not be allowed into male locker rooms. Pearlman is a household name when it comes to sportswriters, and Long is one of the most beloved Philadelphia athletes in recent memory. [6] Several of the players subsequently taunted her by walking naked in her presence, making vulgar comments and gestures. SALIE: Like gee, coach, it's not going so well, is it? I hate to invade their pain and their anger and sometimes even their happiness. And it had just started to become something that women could do, and I thought I can do this. We won some awards, and I gained some confidence and perspective. 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