The Article below was published in Vol. 136, Issue 8 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on April 30, 2021.
By Paityn Tabor ’23
Staff Writer
It is 2021, and there are eight female coaches in the NFL. This is progress from 2015, when Jen Welter became the first woman to hold a coaching position in the league. Still, the numbers are low.
Women have garnered attention in recent months due to the record number of women making appearances in Super Bowl LV. Referee Sarah Thomas helped officiate the game, while the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had two female coaches on their sidelines: Lori Locust and Maral Javadifar.
Super Bowl LV showed fans the remarkable progress women have made in this league, but the reality remains that there are very few women who hold coaching and front office positions. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only team in the league with two female coaches on staff.
The Buccaneers’ assistant defensive line coach, Lori Locust, was hired in 2019. As she began her coaching career, she attended numerous Glazier Football Coaching Clinics, which are educational sessions for football coaches that provide the opportunity to learn and develop a deeper knowledge of the game. Locust recalled a unique experience she once had while in attendance at a clinic a few years ago.
“One of my first years there, we were up on the second level of this really nice hotel,” she shared. “I wanted to go to the bathroom, but they had taken over the women’s bathroom at that level of the clinic and made them into men’s rooms. I had to go down to the first floor and then had to come back up and go to my clinic. My biggest concern at that moment was being late for my program.”
While a bit of an inconvenience to Locust at the time, she reminded herself to have perspective. This was not a situation worth dwelling on. “If I am going to disrupt the fabric of this game, I am going to do it respectfully,” Locust added.
While describing her journey, Locust explained that one cannot be afraid to take action within their life and follow their passion, even if that means they need to pivot.
She expressed that one should aspire to live a “why not?” kind of life, as opposed to a “what if?” type of life. Locust has applied this attitude to her own life and, as a result, found her own way to make an impact within the Buccaneers organization by striving to constantly be authentic and transparent with her players.
“I never tried to present myself as something I’m not,” Locust explained. “If I don’t know something, I don’t know. And I will tell the guys, ‘I don’t know, but I will get the answer for you’. I think it’s important to be authentic and not afraid to admit that you don’t know something.”
This notion of authenticity among women staff in the league is not uncommon. Katie Blackburn, executive vice president of the Cincinnati Bengals, feels the same as Locust in how she approaches her work in a predominantly male-prevalent field. Blackburn was the first female chief contract negotiator in the NFL and remains a major decision-maker within the Bengals organization. As a woman who holds power in the league, Blackburn says that the best way to reach success is to simply be yourself.
“It is important to be yourself and not try to be something that you feel like you are expected to be because being yourself is usually good enough to actually achieve everything you want to achieve,” Blackburn explained.
Football in America is perceived as a man’s sport. But this conception is changing and influential figures around the league are coming to realize the indispensable and intangible effects that diversity can have upon a team’s success.
“I always thought that racial and gender diversity was primarily numbers,” George McCaskey, Chicago Bears chairman and member of the NFL’s Workplace and Diversity Committee, explained. “For example, if you have 10 people on your staff with a diverse background and wound up with 16 at a certain point, then that was progress. But I am learning that representation and the numbers are only part of it. Beyond that is culture. Having the best of intentions isn’t enough, you need to be proactive and make the results you want occur,” he added.
McCaskey is aware of his role to help attain results and is not alone in his desire to help create change around the league. Achieving a truly diverse and inclusive environment within the NFL will require hard work from each team, but these organizations are eager to rise to the challenge in order to achieve this.
“We have so many head coaches and general managers who really want their coaching staff to reflect that of society,” Sam Rapoport, senior director of diversity and inclusion in the NFL, described. “No jobs should be 100 percent any gender and we are heading in that direction. I believe that the closer we get to women being ubiquitous in the sport, the closer we will get to people truly believing that this sport is for everyone.”
One way this progress toward gender diversity has been accomplished is through the Women’s Careers in Football Forum that is hosted at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.
“The idea of this program is to connect women who currently work in college football programs and have an interest in getting into the NFL and working on the football side but do not have any connections or entry points,” Rapoport said. “We have worked to create that entry point for women by introducing them to general managers, head coaches, owners, and allowing them to impress people who could potentially hire them or put them on a short list for hiring.”
This forum gives women the opportunity to follow their passion for football and pursue a career in the sport like never before. It allows them the chance to network with prominent figures throughout the league, develop their coaching skills, make their presence known.
During the 2020 season, six of the eight female coaches in the league coached for a playoff team. Women can bring something refreshing to the table within this league and can add a perspective to the conversation that can tremendously aid a team’s success.
When given the opportunity, women have risen to the occasion and proved that they are part of the team just as much as their male colleagues. As the conversation of gender diversity continues to pick up steam, hopefully forward progress will continue to transpire.
