God love Don Cherry. You can think what you want about his taste in clothing, or his opinions on Europeans, or good ol' Ontario boys, but you have to admit that you would love to spend one day having his total lack of a filter. He just says whatever he wants to, Ron MacLean sits and grimaces, and then the second period of that evening's Hockey Night In Canada game starts.
I, for one, would love to go about saying whatever I want while being labeled a national treasure.
Cherry's comments begin around the 2:22 mark of the video below.
Cherry might have stepped in it tonight judging from the Twitter outrage with his Coach's Corner commentary:
"I don't feel women are equal, I think they are above us," Cherry said. "I think they're on a pedestal, and they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in."
I honestly think that this is being blown out of proportion. Cherry isn't saying he thinks women shouldn't be reporting on sports, or that they're less than men, or anything else. He's not saying that women shouldn't interview players after the game. He's saying that maybe women shouldn't be there when guys are wandering about with their junk hanging out. He has a point. Most of the guys would feel uncomfortable, most women would feel uncomfortable… this isn't about equal rights; this is about modesty.
I've had experience in the locker room after a prospect camp session before. Trust me – the guys were uncomfortable. Part of that is because they're 18-year-old boys. The other part of that is that there was a woman in there while the door to the sauna was wide open.
I'd like to one-up Don here. I don't think women OR men should be in the locker room when the guys are walking around in towels. Give them a chance to take a shower and get dressed before you corner them in their stalls and ask questions. Is it a necessity that you interview someone while they're dripping sweat in some salt-crusted ballcap? Do they give better answers when they're like that? Less milquetoast?
I'm not offended by Cherry's statement. We've been having this discussion for years. But maybe I'm reading too little into Cherry's comments. Maybe Don's scared of something like this happening:
NSFW for a lot of man butt.
