Saturday, August 8, 2015

Jen Welter: New Arizona Cardinals Coach



Many of you who keep up with sports have probably heard about the first woman to ever be hired in a coaching position for the NFL. Jen Welter was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as a intern coach for the team’s inside linebackers during training camp. This is a huge break for women in NFL, particularly when we are seeing other great breakthroughs in the NBA and in the officiating league to go along with it. This is all great and I’m excited but can we stop for a second and look at a few other things?
First, Welter is not the first woman to hold a position in the NFL, in fact, her position is pretty low on the totem pole as an intern coach. The Cardinals are also well behind on the gender issue in comparison to the Patriots, Bills, Lions, Colts, Dolphins, Seahawks, and seven other teams. Back in 2012, the Patriots had five women in executive roles in their main offices and the other teams listed had at least three women in executive roles. An executive role means they were at least a vice president of a division. So yes, good job Cardinals for finally hiring a female coach, but let’s be honest, other teams didn’t make a big deal about women in leadership positions within their organizations.
Second, Welter is so overqualified for her position it isn’t even funny. This woman has two gold medals for football in the American Football’s Women’s World Championship, a master’s degree in sports psychology and a Ph.D. in psychology from Boston College. She also played fourteen years as a linebacker for the Champions Indoor Football League which is full contact. She coached the Texas Revolution’s linebackers and special teams last season. An article written by Clayton Browne in the Houston Chronicle lists different qualifications needed to become a coach in the NFL. You need to have coached either professionally or collegiately and they would like you to have played the sport a bit. I’m sure this varies based on the program and the coaching level but Welter was only hired as a summer intern. I can only imagine the position she would be in if she were a man.
As for the arguments against her being a coach, let’s handle those one by one. First, people are arguing that since she hasn’t played in the NFL she can’t be a good coach. There are plenty of long time coaches who have never played in the NFL and have led successful organizations. Another argument, the players won’t listen to her because she's a woman. Athletes want to get better, period, they will listen to her so long as she is invested in making them better at what they do.
Unfortunately, it can be hard or near impossible to determine if Welter or any coach is making an athlete a better player. Two academic studies that were published indicate that most NBA and MLB coaches fail to meet the criteria of making players better. There is no evidence that NBA coaches alter productivity in individual players. If that is truly the case then how do we determine how to keep coaches on in programs?
Men and Women are built differently and they have different physical limitations. Those physical limitations do not include passing on information. In fact, women are often thought of as better communicators. Women and men learn and observe in the same ways and there is nothing that would prevent a woman from learning what it takes to be a coach.
The NFL isn’t the only place that we see a disproportionate number of male to female coaches. In fact, most men’s sports have men as coaches whereas most women’s sports have a fairly equal percentage of men to women in coaching positions. If you want to make the argument that only men understand how to coach other men then the same should be said about women coaching women. However, we have plenty of evidence that suggests that men and women can coach equally in other leagues.
Congratulations to Jen Welter, I hope that she is able to pave the way to coaching equality in the NFL along with other men’s sports leagues. I'd love to hear what you think about having female coaches in male dominated sports leagues.

Works Cited
 Berri, David. "First Female NFL Coach Is an Overqualified Intern." Time. Time Inc., 29 July 2015. Web. 30 July 2015. <http://time.com/3977539/jen-welter-nfl-coach/>.
Browne, Clayton. "NFL Career Requirements." Houston Chronicle. Hearst Newspapers LLC. Web. 30 July 2015. <http://work.chron.com/nfl-career-requirements-14121.html>.
O'Shei, Tim. "Bills High in NFL for Women in Top Jobs." Buffalo Business First. 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 30 July 2015. <http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/playbook/2012/09/bills-rank-high-for-women-in-top-jobs.html?page=all>.
Spain, Sarah. "Dear Jen Welter Haters, This Is for You." ESPNW. ESPN, 29 July 2015. Web. 30 July 2015. <http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/13337302/dear-jen-welter-haters-you>

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