I played football in college. It was brief and intramural, but nonetheless real football with helmets and pads. My roommate and I were the only “girls” on the team. And after the first tackle turned my elbow into a cantaloupe, my roommate bravely soldiered on alone.

   The reason I joined the team was not to make great strides for women’s rights – although we joked that we would file a Title IX lawsuit if we failed to make the team. I joined the team because at the time I had been watching sports, and particularly college football, for almost twenty years. I wanted to know what it felt like to be on the field. Not in hot pants shaking pom-poms but with a helmet and full pads. I knew all the rules of football and had learned a few plays and now I wanted to be in the mix. 

    We met surprisingly little resistance from our baffled teammates. All of us were there out of a similar love of the game; there is little glory in intramural football. But it was around this same time that professional sports’ ugly views about women became apparent to me.

   That same season, the not-so-subtle message that the NFL only wants women as cheerleaders and not players, fans, management or even reporters was played out on the jumbotron. In an incident that made sports history, three New England Patriot’s sexually harassed sports reporter Lisa Olson in the players’ locker room. The Patriot’s owner, Victor Kiam, picked up the ball, adding his own off-color jokes about Ms. Olson, followed by fans who ran with it by molesting a blow-up doll effigy of Ms. Olson that they passed around Boston’s baseball stadium. The NFL Commissioner’s paltry fines against the players looked enlightened in comparison. 

    Sadly this is not just ancient sports history. A recent New York Times expose of the “halftime ritual of harassment” of women at New York Jets football games revealed that pro-sports’ inhospitableness towards women and girls is alive and well. The Jets stadium “ritual” consists of fans shouting obscenities at women in hopes of pressuring them in to lifting up their shirts. This now-infamous “Gate D party” involves about 400-500 male fans, a few women, and a bevy of turn-a-blind-eye security guards. According to the New York Times’ reporter’s recent viewing, the scene “sometimes bordered on hostile” -- an understatement for describing women being groped and pegged with plastic beer bottles and debris, all watchable on YouTube. 

   The harassment is utterly embarrassing for the male fans, and even more shameful for the Jets management. Until the New York Times report, management had generally adopted a laissez faire approach, catering to the ramp mob’s thrills and ignoring any complaints by the victims. When management did take action it compounded the sexism: the few women involved in the rabble were arrested on charges of indecent exposure. Management ignored the fact that many of its paying customers felt threatened and unwelcome in this public space. 

    After the accounts of harassment became increasingly public, and the New Jersey Senate geared up to take action, management beat a hasty retreat, claiming that they would clamp down on the men’s behavior and end the ramp party. 

    Yet the harassment goes on throughout pro sports. Just this season, Anucha Browne Sanders -- one of the few women to make it to Knicks management -- won a legal victory against her employer for sexual harassment at work. Meanwhile the NFL’s swift outrage in response to Atlanta Falcon quarterback Michael Vick’s criminal indictment for dog abuse charges stood in sharp contrast to its usual response to domestic violence charges against players. 

    What lingers in the aftermath of the Gate D ramp events, the Knicks lawsuit and other incidents of harassment is the general sense that sports and sexism go together. Professional and college sports are dominated by male players, management and journalists, leaving little for women to do but cheer on the sidelines. Although many women do find it possible to join the fun and ignore the bawdy bits, it is time for the boys-will-be-boys approach to grow up. Can’t pro sports find a real way to engage and entertain all fans, regardless of their sex?