Bears Blitz

Published by Teddy Mitrosilis on September 16, 2010
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

I’m not going to reiterate what happened or didn’t happened to Ines Sainz in the New York Jets locker room in this space. You’ve surely heard it by now.

If you happened to be in some Kazakhstan shantytown for the last few days, then you can Google it.

But Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs opened up another part of the issue today with his comments to NBCChicago.com. 

“I don’t think women should be in the locker room,” Briggs said. “The locker room is the place where us guys, us football players, we dress, we shower, we’re naked, we’re walking around and we’re bombarded by media.”

There is some validity to Briggs’ point. The latter part of his point, that is. 

Because, of course, you can’t ban just female reporters from the locker room. All reporters, male or female, deserve an equal opportunity to do their work.

So it’s all reporters in the locker room or no reporters.

CBSSports.com’s Gregg Doyel wrote a piece suggesting that locker rooms be closed from all media. 

ESPN’s Amy K. Nelson brought up a good point on Twitter in response to Doyel.

Nelson’s point, basically, was that closing off the locker rooms would make anonymous sourcing nearly impossible for reporters.

In order to have anonymous sources, a reporter must build trust. In order to build trust, a reporter must have access. Access is a necessity, not a luxury.

All of this begs the question: Will any of this change the way players and reporters are able to interact in the future?

 

The Locker Room: Whose domain is it?

To answer that question, we first must define what is a workplace and what is not.

Those who are labeling a locker room as a “workplace” must not understand the nature of a locker room from the players’ perspective.

A locker room is not a place where professionals sit in cubicles, sip coffee, and formulate spreadsheets for the higher ups.

The cliché, “Just another day at the office,” doesn’t apply to professional athletes.

There is no other place of “work” in America—and I mean NO other place—where you can get away with the language, gestures and actions athletes get away with in a locker room.

Do business offices across the country see their fair share of crude comments, gestures and jokes? Of course they do. But they are more than likely said buddy-to-buddy or whispered or text messaged. 

They aren’t yelled across the room with the offender standing on a chair or a sofa while his peers huddle around.

In the real world, that gets you a meeting with your boss, a suspension, fired, or maybe even a harassment lawsuit. Some combination of those.

In a locker room? It gets you a bounty of laughs and backslaps and a (bleeping) snack. (Thanks, Rex.)

I’ve heard and seen things in locker rooms that would get someone arrested if it occurred anywhere in public.

When reporters walk into a locker room, they are walking into a home, for better or worse.

Reporters have a right to access. They don’t have a right to the locker room. There’s a difference.

Many people are bringing up the issue of players showering, dressing, and being naked around the locker room as if that’s the big problem here.

That’s not the big problem. Seeing 320 pounds of exposed lard and lord knows how many inches of whatever else is an inconvenience, but it’s not the main issue here.

If all the Jets players were fully clothed, they still would have made whatever remarks and sounds they did towards Sainz. Clothes on, clothes off, the remarks are the same.

The issue here is how reporters conduct themselves if given that luxury of locker room access.

There’s absolutely no excuse for being disrespectful or making a woman feel uncomfortable because she happens to be working in a male-dominated industry, but Sainz isn’t a victim here.

How you present yourself is who you are in the professional world.

If you are going to play up sexuality to a perverted collection of men with an aggressive, alpha-dog mentality—and I’m sorry, but that’s what many athletes are—then be prepared for the response.

If that’s offensive, then act like the other female reporters who actually represent themselves and their publications with class and professionalism. 

I feel bad for Sainz just like I’d feel bad for anybody put in an uncomfortable situation like she reportedly was in. I wish it didn’t happen, and we wouldn’t be talking about this.

But I’m not about to group Ines Sainz with the Christine Brennans, the Sally Jenkinses, or any of the other great female sportswriters who did a pioneer’s work for this generation of young women who have aspirations of working in sports journalism.

Sainz is more of a publicity stunt for Azteca TV than she is a sports reporter.

It doesn’t take a media ethics class to know you probably shouldn’t ride on top of players’ shoulders and go around feeling biceps.

It takes a little bit of common sense, that’s it.

If journalists want to be taken seriously, then we need to take ourselves seriously first.

 

Who’s Responsible and Will Anything Change?

So, will any solution come of this?

Probably not.

This isn’t the first female-related incident in the media, and it probably won’t be the last.

Personally, I’m not for completely closing off the locker room. 

I think reporters should be able to have some time with athletes in a more informal setting. Reporters should be able to bounce around and ask questions to whomever they please without 20 other microphones sitting in on the interview.

But I would have no problem with closing the locker room after the game is over. When players come off the field, they want to shower, eat and go home. Reporters don’t need to be in the locker room after the game.

If you would like to ask some questions, a media relations official can direct the player to a conference room or tent and interviews can be conducted there.

A fair compromise might be having an allotted time, say 90 minutes or so, before the game where reporters are allowed in the locker room.

If you can’t get what you want in 90 minutes then you can follow up with a phone call or come back tomorrow.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing to respect the players’ privacy and the locker room when the game has ended.

Either way, access must be the same for all. That’s a given.

But we the media need to realize that we have it good by being able to peruse the locker rooms almost at will.

It’s not our right, and those proclaiming it is need to get off the high horse.

Some athletes are going to make stupid mistakes, say stupid things, and act inappropriately.

Reporters, above everyone else, should know this.

Hell, we cover them.

We should know.

But to expect free reign of a locker room while disregarding basic professionalism is nothing short of a joke.

Of course, we’ll probably be having this same conversation a few years down the road when the next “journalist” goes out of his or her way to attract inappropriate attention and then thinks it’s the subject’s fault.

Follow Teddy Mitrosilis on Twitter. You can reach him at tm4000@yahoo.com.

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