Sarah Thomas knows exactly what she’s in for. This isn’t going to be her first rodeo, or football game as it were. As the first female full-time NFL official, Thomas’ face has been all over sports, non-sports and social media since the NFL announced they were considering adding her to the 2015 roster of NFL game referees. Wednesday, they made it official. Thomas, already a vanguard in her profession, was the first woman to officiate a major college football game, the first woman to officiate a bowl game and the first one to officiate inside a Big Ten stadium. She’s experienced this before.
But you, you probably haven’t. Because you’re about to be shocked at how Thomas is treated at NFL games. You’ll hit social media, you’ll talk about it on your news shows and you’ll fill up your blogs with all the sexist, misogynistic and horrible things Thomas is about to be called.
Or, as comedian Matt McCarthy said on his Facebook page last Saturday.
Make no mistake, Thomas will not be shocked by any of it nor should she be. As a working official in the United States of America, she’s likely already heard and read it all. Just because you haven’t doesn’t make her situation special or unique. The fact that an NFL referee will be called names and harangued is not a new development. Yes, Thomas will hear some gender-specific epithets, but do you think other officials don’t get harassed on the field and on Twitter based on their size, weight, race, voice, amount of hair or whatever? No. The very idea that they don’t is stupid.
“Go and do something because you love it.” – First full-time female NFL official to @JeffGlor http://t.co/WS0HKeblen pic.twitter.com/e7KgYSYmXy
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) April 9, 2015
Thomas has been a rising star in the NFL’s official development program. The 42-year-old mother of three was a former college point guard. She’s been an NCAA official since 2007. She was a high school official in Mississippi for 10 years before that. She’s earned this. Thomas will serve as a line judge on a nine-person NFL crew this season.
“I’m a female, and I can’t change that,” Thomas said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. “Just because I love the game of football and officiating, I do honor the fact that a lot of people consider me a trailblazer. But as far as being forced into a trailblazer role, I don’t feel that way. I’ve just been doing it truly because I love it. When you’re out there officiating, the guys don’t think of me as a female. They want me to be just like them, just be an official. And that’s what I’ve always set out to do.”
And it’s what she’s done. Do you think Sunday, Sept. 13 will be the first time she’s been called a “bitch?” Or have someone in the stands or on Twitter question her sexuality, her intelligence or her moral character?
How are you going to feel when Tom Brady curses into Thomas’ face all the way back to the locker room?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51UhTM2Wiyw
How are you going to react when she is rightly criticized for blowing a call, as all referees do? Are you going to write long thought pieces on your blogs about how she’s being treated differently or singled out as a woman?
What about when she screws up and another referee gets angry at her?
When former NFL referee Gerry Austin, now Conference USA’s officials coordinator was on hand before Thomas’ first NCAA football game between Memphis and Jacksonville State, he said, “She (Thomas) came highly recommended by two NFL scouts. She has a good presence and demeanor. I feel like she has the ability and courage to make a call, and the guts to not make one too.”
So now the question comes to you. Do you have the guts to not make the call? To not make the fact that Thomas has successfully achieved a life goal that automatically comes with verbal abuse further your own agenda, drive hits to your website or fill time on your talking heads news program? Do you have the courage to let her face the abuse that all officials face, even though hers might be unique and gender-specific, without making it tie into a “broader conversation” about the ills of society? Will you, like the men she’s worked with and the fans that have called her names for last eight years, allow her to be a football official?
"@ESPNNFL NFL is set to hire it's first female official, Sarah Thomas (via Baltimore Sun) pic.twitter.com/TXdp3J1VxX" BITCH! BACK TU THE KITCHEN
— Strange Fruit …. (@tu_freedom) April 3, 2015
https://twitter.com/richard_astro/status/364261033113690112
Because she’s not going to be the last one. More ladies are coming and each of them just as brave, just as thick-skinned, just as capable and just as courageous as Sarah Thomas. Will you do them the service of being courageous too?
