Women are making increasing inroads when it comes to the world of male-dominated sports. From Ronda Rousey being one of the best athletes in the world, period, to Dr. Jen Welter serving as a linebackers coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals this summer, the “boys’ clubs” and “mens’ worlds” of professional sports are slowly being chipped away at by talented women. It’s a great thing.
This also includes the world of NFL officiating. Sarah Thomas was named by the league in April as its first full-time female official. She served as a line judge in Thursday’s preseason finale between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, and we’ll see her on a weekly basis once the regular season kicks off next week. It’s going to be tempting for the misogynistic sports fans of the world to decry the hiring, claiming that the NFL is no place for a woman. And beyond that sentiment being personally offensive, it’s off the mark.
Gender or sex has nothing to do with being qualified to officiate a football game. This is Thomas’ 20th year of doing this, after all, and spent the previous eight years as an NCAA official with Conference USA. That makes her exactly the same as her male counterparts in the NFL—experienced and qualified and yet still unable to determine what is or is not a catch approximately 30 percent of the time. Don’t invoke Thomas’ gender when she gets it wrong—invoke her profession, as we routinely do with all other NFL officials. We don’t call Jeff Triplette an idiot because he’s a man. He’s an idiot because he’s a referee who made a call we disagree with.
Inevitably, Thomas is going to be involved with an officiating decision that fans will take issue with. And perhaps her gender will also be used as a weapon against her when fans make complaints. But gender doesn’t matter here. All that matters is that she’s an NFL official, and NFL officials regularly get things wrong. Dislike her calls based on her calls, just as we all do Triplette and Ed Hochuli, and not for any other reason.
Thomas herself brought this point up in a 2013 profile by ABC News, saying, “I don’t feel that it’s been harder for me because I’m a female. I think that we are just out here working as officials… I think just on our credentials, just as officials, I think that’s what moves us along, not because of our gender or our race.”
So judge Thomas not as a female NFL official, but as an NFL official, the same as any other she works alongside or came before her. When you inevitably yell “she’s an idiot!” at a call you don’t agree with, don’t put the emphasis on the “she,” put it on the “idiot,” which is a trait every NFL official shares at some point in their careers.