The Game-Changing Women of the N.F.L.

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“The guys don’t think of me as a female; they see me as just another official.”
— Sarah Thomas

I am that N.F.L. fan. The one who leads the fight song, takes my fantasy team too seriously and won’t give my father-in-law back his Eagles jersey. I even cemented my team loyalty in my wedding vows.

In recent years, though, my enthusiasm has waned — with each revelation about sexual harassment (most recently by cheerleaders and office workers), domestic abuse and the effect of the sport on players’ brains.

But long before these problems came to light, I found the lack of women in leadership roles in the sport irritating. We often discuss the need for more women in the boardroom, but what about in the locker room, a team’s back office and on the sidelines?

So I was encouraged this weekend to see Sarah Thomas become the first woman to officiate an N.F.L. playoff game. Thomas, a Mississippi native and a mother of three, had already broken plenty of ground in the sport — becoming the first full-time female official in N.F.L. history in 2015. She was also first woman to referee a major college football game, a bowl game and in a Big Ten stadium.

And Thomas wasn’t the only first over the weekend. In a playoff game on Saturday, Terri Valenti became the first female replay official.

The news got me thinking about the women who had already changed football — the ones who have smashed through the gender wall without pads, a helmet or much fanfare. Here are three worth remembering.

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“I might be the first, but I don’t think I’ll be the only one for very long.”
— Kathryn Smith

In 2016, Kathryn Smith was hired by the Buffalo Bills head coach, Rex Ryan, as a quality control special teams coach, making her the N.F.L.’s first full-time female assistant coach.

At the time of her promotion, Smith said the move “shows somebody if you work hard that you can do whatever you set your mind to, and if that’s the message that’s getting across to girls, boys, whoever it is, then I think that’s a good thing.”

“I might be the first, but I don’t think I’ll be the only one for very long,” she said, and she was right.

In August 2017, Katie Sowers of the San Francisco 49ers became the second woman to be hired as a full-time assistant coach. She is also the first openly gay N.F.L. coach.

After Ryan was let go after the 2016 season, Smith was not retained by the Bills’s new head coach, Sean McDermott.

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“It was a tremendous feeling of just satisfaction of all the hard work and all the time spent trying to prepare for that opportunity.”
— Beth Mowins

In September 2017, Beth Mowins became the first woman to call a nationally televised N.F.L. game: a Monday Night Football divisional matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos.

By doing this, she also became the second female play-by-play announcer in N.F.L. regular season history. Gayle Sierens, a sports anchor in Florida, announced a game in 1987.

Mowins was hired by ESPN in 1994. Since 2005, she has called play-by-play games for women’s college sports and for college football. She has also been the voice for the Oakland Raiders’ preseason games in recent years.

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“Work as hard as you can. And when you don’t think you can work any harder, try to find a way to work harder.”
— Amy Trask

In 1997, Amy Trask became the first female chief executive officer of an N.F.L. team, the Oakland Raiders — a position she held until 2013.

Trask is a self-made woman in the industry. In the 1980s, while in college, she cold-called the Raiders and offered to work as an unpaid intern. A few years later, in 1987, the team’s legal department brought her on as a full-time lawyer. She ascended to the top from there.

Trask left the team in 2013, and in 2016, her book, “You Negotiate Like A Girl: Reflections on a Career in the National Football League,” was published.

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ICYMI: Marie Kondo unpacks more than clutter

Donation bins around the country are overflowing thanks to the binge-worthy Netflix reality show “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.” But while some quickly kissed their belongings goodbye, others have noted how the show starkly displayed the persistence of traditional gender roles.

Several episodes feature inept husbands inexplicably surprised by the misery of their overburdened wives.

In an article for Vice about how the show “is inadvertently about women’s invisible labor,” Nicole Clark wrote that it lays bare the ways women are burdened with the management of a family’s stuff. “Things are the dominion of women, and the place where these things are stored are the dominion of women too,” she wrote.

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More from The Times

“Being a woman in power means knowing it’s O.K. to be fierce.” As of this month, a record 131 women are serving in Congress. See their faces here. [The New York Times]

“I spent all my time hoping that no one would remember I was female.” Women economists say sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying derail their success. [The New York Times]

“These findings show it doesn’t have to be this way.” Educators want to know the secret of why the academic gender gap among Asian-Americans is delayed until adolescence. [The New York Times]

The gender politics of fasting. Both Cesar Chavez and Simone Weil starved their bodies for spiritual and political reasons. Why is only one of them remembered as anorexic? [New York Times Opinion]

“An across-the-board cultural icon.” Missy Elliott will become the first hip-hop artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. [The New York Times]

“How you look is part of the message you are communicating.” Our chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, explains why it would be irresponsible not to cover Nancy Pelosi’s style. [New York Times Reader Center]

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From the archives, 1967: ‘It’s Impossible!’

The very first Super Bowl was a real battle — not between Green Bay and Kansas City (the Packers crushed the Chiefs) — but between husbands and wives in and around New York City, evidently. The women shrieked “blah!” while the men were hypnotized, according to a Times article in 1967.

“He’s obsessed with watching all those big lugs on the idiot box, and I’m obsessed in the exact opposite way,” Lucretia Amari said of her husband.

So where were all the female humans during the big game? According to the piece, “Girls — little and big — stormed into kitchens, slammed the door and waited. And waited.”

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