It has been an old custom that after every game the reporters all go into the locker room to interview the players for the post game for TV or to get quotes for their articles on the game. But bad camera work during a Cincinnati post game interview showed several players nude on live TV on the previous Sunday. This has sparked a national debate on whether it’s time to change the post game interviewing process. While Pacman Jones was being interviewed the camera angle was so bad you could see on the left side at least seven players in various forms of undress, ranging from the partially-clothed, to those using the old towel-covering-the-assets ploy, to the kind of thing that’ll give you nightmares.
One of the players for the Bengals, Andrew Withworth was very upset about it, “This is my office space, I shouldn’t have to change in it,” Whitworth said. “Every single day I have to change clothes and be naked, or not, in front of the media. It’s just not right.”
I agree 100% it is not right. It was a one-time occurrence but it brings on a bigger issue. Women in the locker room, I am not a woman but I understand how uncomfortable it is for them to do their job trying. Even though I’m a man it is very uncomfortable to be around naked people/half naked people. Many female reporters say players purposely drop their towels to get them to look down there so that they are uncomfortable. They do this so they leave them alone so they don’t get interviewed which is workplace sexual harassment.
There has to be a way for both sides to coexist so that the players can shower and change after the game but the reporters can also get their quotes. One suggestion I would agree with came from Tim Cowlishaw of ESPN and the Dallas Morning News. When he covered the Cowboys in the 1980s the locker room was closed to the media because there was the issue of women coming in. The players were required to show up in a large room directly across the hall from their locker room, where some came in robes, some came in football gear, while some had already dressed.
In a perfect world the owners would all agree on having a separate room with podiums for the players to answer questions. At the end of the day no matter if you’re a woman or man we don’t care whether we are interviewing you in front of your steamy locker or at a podium, all we want is access and a few minutes. We just need a solution to change the issue that is occurring and develop a system to organize which players come in and when.