November 9, 2021 • 36 mins
In the premiere episode of Earnin’ It: The NFL’s Forward Progress, host Sam Rapoport sits down with Commissioner Roger Goodell. They discuss the pipeline that’s bringing more women into NFL coaching and scouting positions, the evolution of The Women’s Forum, and the extreme measures they both took to land their first job with the league. Sam even manages to make the Commissioner cry.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
High commissioner. How are you? Are you ready? I'm ready?
Are you ready? I was fortunate growing up in Canada
where I played flag football and touch football. Growing up,
it was offered at my high school from the two
yard line but about seconds left. It was a very
competitive sport. The guys would come watch us, and we
would go watch them. I'm on the paper or a
(00:23):
And when women's tackle football started in in two thousand,
I raised my hand and said, I want to do this.
I've been playing non contact for so long for my
whole life. I want to see what it's like to
put on the pads and and learn how to take
a hit. And so, uh do you remember your first hit?
Oh god, I remember my first hit. I remember my
(00:43):
coach teaching me that I need to learn how to
take a hit. And I think as I progressed in
my career, I learned really how to take a hit.
I'm I'm five five and was one thirty at the time.
So for me to take a hit from you know,
a three town woman was something I needed to learn
at a at a young age in my career. It
I loved it. Hi, I'm Sam Rappaport and this is
(01:04):
earning it the NFL's Forward Progress. It's a podcast about
football and so much more. I had this idea to
create a pipeline to give women with smart, talented football
minds a shot at football jobs in the NFL. In
just five years, we've created almost two hundred opportunities for women.
(01:24):
We'll be talking to some of them on this show,
along with many other great football minds, NFL head coaches,
general managers, owners, incredible female trailblazers who happened to be
passionate NFL fans like Billy gene King. Every generation has
their trailblazers, Every generation has their first and it's really,
really hard. I'm living my lifelong dream and I can't
(01:45):
wait to take you along for this ride. As Senior
Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the NFL, I've
made up my mission to bring more women into the
fold so we can continue to move the needle for
future generations. So let's start at the beginning, which in
this case happens to be on a high school football
field in the suburbs of New York City. That's where
I met my producer, Jane. She's a veteran journalist and
(02:08):
a fan. I thought I knew a lot about football.
I grew up as a huge fan all Brothers season
tickets to the Chicago var since nineteen seventy two. I've
been to a lot of football games in my life.
I also happened to be married to Roger she means
Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, my boss, actually my boss's
boss's boss. They've been married for twenty four years and
have twin daughters who seem to have inherited this passion
(02:30):
for football. The way they understand the game. It's not
just as a fan. They really understand the game from
a football perspective, and it amazes me. The three of
us sat down in the Commissioner's office right next to
the Lombardi Trophy to talk about the important role women
are now playing in this sport and how we can
create more opportunities for them. I grew up my parents
(02:51):
put me in ballet and tap dance and jazz dance.
And if you know me right now, that's really funny,
because you know, really, when when I became a teenager,
I kind of flipped and and and really football was
was my love, and so my parents really fostered it
they It was never I never got asked, you know, like, oh,
you're a girl, how are you going to play? Or
how is this going to be a challenge? And I
(03:11):
remember the first time I played tackle though, my mom said, Abby,
I just need you to go with her the first time,
like I need to know that she's not gonna you
know that nothing bad will happen to her. And he
came to my first tryout with the Montreal Blitz in
two thousand and one, and I remember he came back saying,
it's fantastic, right, Like she got rocked a few times,
but it's fantastic. A lot of listeners may not know this,
but they're very vibrant female professional tackle football leagues in
(03:35):
North America. I played quarterback for two years for the
Montreal Blitz in the i WFL, and he got to
see you play. He did. Yeah. He Um My dad
passed away about seven years ago, but um, he got
He traveled to all of my away games in the
United States. So he would leave work at five pm,
he would drive thirteen hours straight, watch my game for
(03:56):
three hours, drive thirteen hours back and he never missed
an away games. Um and so he would he would
film my games as well, and he did the play
by play, So if you watch all my game tape,
it's Rappaporn with a bootleg to the last. He was
his best job. Michaels those play by play calls earlier
in the episode employ, Yeah, that was him. And he
(04:25):
was so into the sport and so into my involvement,
and he was an orthodonist and his patients would get
really annoyed with him that he would talk about my
playing career so much. Hey, Sam, I've never been able
to ask you this question, but you're comments here. Was
it the contact that you loved about the game? Was
it the strategy? What was it about the game of
(04:45):
football that you loved playing? I think there are two things.
The first for me was, you know, I work in diversity, equity, inclusion. Now,
when you look at a football team, it takes so
many different types of people and athletic abilities to win.
You look at other sports like basketball, they're all tall
and skinny. Right. If you look at um every other sport,
there's a traditional makeup of a person. And when I
(05:07):
started playing football, there were girls of all shapes and sizes,
every athletic ability. You don't have to be fast or
you could be fast. You don't have to be tall,
or you could be tall. And I loved how it
brought people together from such different athletic backgrounds and backgrounds
together on one field. That was something I loved about it.
The other thing, which is why I'm so passionate about
getting girls to play, is because I was pretty average
(05:27):
at most sports, and I felt really good at football.
And so as a young girl growing up who's developing
her confidence, having something that defined me and that made
me feel like I was good at something, that's what
made me fall in love. And I think every kid
really should find that thing that makes them tick and
that they love. It strikes me. So we know you're
as a competitive person. We love to compete, and I
(05:50):
know that came out in you in sports. You could
see it when you walked on the football field, even
competing against yours Truly, you got really competitive, and I
am too. I see that in you. But I also
see that you use that in what you do every
day for the NFL. The way you compete, you're competing,
you're making us better, You're trying to win, You're trying
to accomplish something, and you do it really with what
(06:13):
I call a lot of values about football, which our
teamwork and perseverance and going through adversity. All these things
you've had to deal with to build the pipeline that
you've built. That's all about football, right. You probably learned
a lot of those lessons on the football field, and
that's what I that's where I'm really interested. Do you
use what you've learned on the football field in business,
(06:34):
because I know I do, no question. As a quarterback,
sometimes you need to have a game phase on when
you know things aren't going well, but the other ten
people on the field you have to show them that
you got it. And I talked about this sometimes is
when I'm very nervous and I'm leading something, I will
appear as if I got it because that is what
I had to do in the sport of football. And
(06:54):
people buy into that and they believe that. And I'll
rag on you later. So don't in this compliment that
I'm gonna give you. But one of my favorite things
about your leadership here is that you set the bar
so high, and so for me that's almost like a
coach mentality. You're telling me what you expect of me
and everyone else who works here. I want to get there.
I want to be at that level. But that's part
(07:15):
of what you do to get better. Right. The objective
is not for you to play alone. You're playing with
teammates and your objective is to win. And it's a
team sport. So the lessons I learned on the football
field are completely relatable to everything I do as a commissioner.
It's all those values of teamwork and adversity and perseverance
(07:36):
and diversity in the sense of everybody has a role,
everybody has a way to contribute to a bigger purpose
of winning and competing is something I love. I love
people who compete. Can I tell you one more thing
I love about this sport. There's no other sport where
every single person on the field is responsible for the
success of a play. It's never just the wide receiver
(07:58):
who caught the touchdown. It's never just the rebact. It
has to be all eleven people working in unison to
make it happen. And basketball, you can steal a ball
and fast breakdown and lay up and that was all you. Right,
there's nothing that's all you. And I know that's important
to you as a leader as well. Is you never
make anything about you. I'm gonna try to make this
about you, but you never want to make anything about you.
So that high school football field I mentioned at the top,
(08:21):
it's where Roger Goodell played football and where my lifelong
dream became a reality. Not in an instant, mind you.
This is no overnight success story, but it is a
great story. Like me, the Commissioner has been football obsessed
(08:42):
for as long as he can remember. He used to
sleep with a leather football instead of a Teddy bear.
He says. The person who drove him to get better
was his mom, Jeanie Goodell. They were very close and
the Commissioner lived with her until the day she died
of breast cancer. Asked him to talk about their relationship.
Why are you're not hitting me hard? Um? You know,
(09:03):
everybody talks about my family, which a huge influence on me. Um.
My dad was a public figure. So people talk about
your dad was the United States Center and our congressman,
and what did you learn from him? But you know,
I always say the person I learned the most from
is my mom, and I think my brothers would all
say the same. She Uh, Roger needed a beat. I
(09:26):
didn't intend to do it, but I made the Commissioner
of the NFL cry. My mom was a real fighter
and a competitive person, someone who expected people to to
to not let others down. She never did, and she
would always, um make everyone better about her. And so
(09:47):
probably a lot of things you've talked about before, that's
where I got it, you know. She she had that strength, UM,
and that courage and nothing scared of her. She actually
talked about running for Congress UM at one point in
her herself, which was unheard of at that time. UM.
And unfortunately she got sick and that never came to fruition.
(10:10):
But she could have been a great congress person. UM.
But she taught us so much about life and and
frankly sports. She was always there and so is my dad.
By the way, my dad was similar in yours wherever
he was, and he lived in Washington a large part
of his career and we were in New York. He
never missed a game. And I'll never forget it. And
(10:31):
I always think we have to be there. Jane and
I talked about be there for our kids at the
time that are important, and they know we're there when
it's important, UM. And they were always supported and I
had that from my family, but my mom in particular.
If you ever want to go out in the backyard
and throw football, she was the first one to sign up.
And by the way, she was the artist coach I've
(10:52):
ever had because she I could hear her voice when
I was playing sports. I could hear a voice on
the football field from fifty yards away. And by the way,
she wasn't necessarily in a positive way. She would get
after me, and you know, she would always go to
the coaches afterwards and say, what's he not doing right?
What you know, get after him, make sure he's doing it.
(11:13):
And so we got we got a lot from my
mother's relationship. You played three positions on the football field,
right quarterback, tight end, a little defensive back, defensive back.
So um, I probably played anything they told me to.
I mean, I was a running back going into my
senior year and they told me I had to switch
the tight end because we had a great running back
(11:34):
who switched over from another school and he was better
running back. And I said, that's where I should go.
A great story about your mom from someone who watched
you play high school football that I met, was saying
that your older brother, Timmy played old line and your
mom would be in the stands watching and people would
go up to her after and say, hey, Jeanie, you
know Tim had a great game, and she'd say, what
do you mean he missed five blocks? And that would
(11:56):
be her response to them, right, And but I you know,
I think that so reflective somewhat of your leadership here
where it's certainly not that you focus on the negative,
but it's your expectation of us and what you expect
from your folks is as close to amazing as we
can get, right, and you feel that all over three
four or five part, Well, I like to say, you've
heard me say I believe in better and you know,
(12:17):
the NFL can always get better. And I think that's
what my mom was saying, is that, yeah, maybe he
played well, maybe he did a lot of great things
in the field, but he missed five blocks. It's what
I say. You have to be your own harshest critic,
and the people around you have to be there. That's
not that's not being negative in my view, that's trying
to be constructive and trying to be helpful of saying
(12:39):
you have more potential to reach. And that's what I
think My mom wanted for us is to reach your potential.
She didn't think I had a lot of potential, by
the way, for a long time, but hopefully I surprised
you a little bit. The commissioner and I both knew
at a very young age we wanted to work in football.
My mom recently found something I wrote in ninth grade
these It was to write about my passion. I wrote quote,
(13:03):
if I'm not praying for my favorite team to crush
their biggest rivals, then I'm dreaming of playing football, making
the winning catch, running thirty yards with the ball in
my arms, and winning the game. So, Sam, you have
this incredible passion for the game, your parents are supportive,
and you're going in your early twenties to apply for
an NFL internships. So listen up, kids, if you're applying
(13:23):
for a job, this is a good tip on how
to get a job. Tell me what your application was like.
So I was a young woman in Canada, no connections
to the NFL whatsoever. Just knew that I would I
would still be trying to this day to get into
this building. So I decided that I had to do
something gimmicky to stand out, something that would you know,
separate me from the thousands of resumes that apply for that.
(13:44):
So I sent a picture of myself in my tackle
football gear with my resume, and with that I sent
a football, and on the football, I wrote in a
sharpie what other quarterback could accurately deliver a ball three
and eighty six miles, which was the distance between my
college in Montreal and New York City. And you know,
(14:05):
I sent it and I was like, you know, you know,
I don't give this a high chance of working, but
you know it worked. It made me stand out, and
I started my first NFL internship in two thousand and three.
And Roger, that's when you met Sam. Yeah, but I'm
relating to her story because I'm also an intern and
to your point, you know, you have to find ways
to stand out. But Roger didn't mail a football to
(14:28):
get his first job. He mailed letters, a lot of letters. Yeah,
I wrote over fifty I think he's fifty three. I
haven't actually over in that desk over there, And I
got rejected by every single one of them. And some
of them are my bosses today, by the way, and
I've showed that letter to many of them. Your boss
is being the Owners Owners Executives. Um, you know, I
(14:50):
was turned down to the Commissioner's office many times, but
eventually someone made a mistake of returning a phone call
to me and said, yeah, sure, you know, if you
ever knew ORC, let me know. And I said, I'm
in New York. He said, okay, what can you come
buy at eight? And I said sure. The problem I
was in Pittsburgh and it was about six o'clock at night,
so I had to drive all night to get there
(15:11):
and showed up at the door, and I think he
was a little surprised, and Um, I just kept after him,
and I said, there's always a fine line between being
persistent and being a pain in the ass, and I'm
sure I was both, but I think you have to
demonstrate that when you want something so badly, when you're
(15:31):
passionate about something, and Sam, you are like passionate. I
put number one, two, and three on your list. When
you're passionate about something, you make it happen. And that's that,
to me, is the difference between winners and losers. Sam.
So fast forward after you do your internship, several years later,
you're working for in youth football for USA Football. Um,
(15:53):
I'm not sure we were trying to remember. I don't
think you and I had ever met, but we belong
Roger and I belonged to a church and there was
this really nice youth minister who came in, nice young guy,
who said, I, Hi, I'm brand new and I'm trying
to get middle school kids to come to church, but
they all want to play sports. So if anybody here
has an idea about how to get kids to come
to church, please let me know. And so I felt
for him, and so I walked off to him afterwards
(16:14):
and said, Hi, um, my husband works in football and
maybe you could do a flag football tournament and maybe
he could come. And he said great, what does he do?
And I said, well, he's a commissioner of the NFL
and he said, oh, okay, I'm a soccer guy, but
that sounds fun. And so I went home and I said, um, hey, Roger,
I think I volunteered you to run a flag football
clinic because the youth minister isn't really a football guy,
(16:37):
so could you do that for the church and it
might be nice? And he said, uh, okay, sure. Two things. One,
I have no idea how to run a flag football tournament,
and too, I'll only do it if girls can come to.
Our daughters will be there, their middle schoolers, so I
want to make sure it's for boys and girls. So
he's a few weeks later, said um, okay, yes, we've
(16:58):
got some flags, We've got some jersey. Is how many
kids are coming? I said, I think about forty five.
And he said, okay, I'm bringing in a ringer because
I don't know how to run this. I'm bringing in Sam,
who is a former quarterback who can do it. And
I said, great, Sam. Sam will be there to do it.
I don't have to worry about anything but bringing snacks
and making sure the flags work right, the velcro is good.
(17:19):
And so we get down to the field and Roger
goes like tearing across his high school football field, which
I say, is like where all the greatness happened. That's
what he tells me. We're down there on this field.
He goes tearing across a football field to embrace this person, Sam,
and I said, my mind has been blown. Sam is
(17:40):
a girl with a long blonde ponytail. And my daughter's
eyes were as big as saucers. By the way out
of the forty five I think we had like thirty
nine boys and six girls, and you came over, you
took and then they split them up into Giants and
Jets with the little flag jerseys. You took Jets, he
took Giants. He was quarterbacking the their team, and Roger
(18:01):
you can find then is this accurate or not? She
kicked your ass all over that. No, now you're off
the base, but no, but that we were competing. We
were permanent quarterbacks. Right. Sam is an incredible athlete. We
can't agree on that Sam can really playing it. Let's
just put it that way. So I like to tease
(18:22):
her that I'm better, but I know I'm not, but
it's okay. I would just like to tease her. You
can imagine, though, those six girls, to your point, not
just start twin girls, when they saw Sam running this
event and throwing the football like that. Talk about opening
your eyes to the world, and I want to say
the boys eyes were as big saucers too, Like it's
(18:43):
just as important of the messages I think for young
men to see as well. Right, I was going to
go to that point, You're ahead of me, But I
agree with that because I do think they saw something saying, Wow,
she can throw a football like that. UM, I do agree.
It opened her eyes. I heard one of them say
she's kicking that old and asked, no, I'm kidding. It's
our biggest to date, nineteen years and running on the
(19:05):
flag football game. I'm a journalist, I know the facts recollections.
In any case, the reason I'm telling this story is
because as the game ended and Sam's team one, I
walked up to her and said, I think we should
be friends. That was amazing. And Roger came up and said, Sam,
(19:28):
what's going on, how's your football? How's your job? We
miss you at the league. What are you thinking? And
Sam rapp report said, was brave enough to say to
the commissioner, well, you know what, I'm glad you asked.
I have a dream. I have a dream because I
know all these smart, talented women who have great football
minds and there is no way for them to get
(19:50):
into the National Football League. There's no entrance. I would
love to build a pipeline. Is that accurate? It's accurate?
And I told him I'd call him on my day
and the rest is history. But yeah, you know, shot
my shot and went up to commissioner Goodell at the
time and said, you know, I see, I see a
way that we can be better, and you always challenge
(20:10):
us to be better, So let me present this idea
to you. And what he doesn't know is it was
already fully baked. I had the entire strategic plan ready
to go because I know this guy, right, I'm not
he doesn't want to hear I have this crazy idea,
and I really had a full strategic plan baked because
I saw something that I felt could make us better,
and that was the gates needed to be open for
these thousands of women that are either playing football or
(20:32):
enjoying football in this country to get in the game
because previously they were disenfranchised. Not anyone's fault, they weren't applying.
No one was thinking that women belong in these positions.
But everything changed when we were able to open the
gates and create a pipeline for women to be involved
in the sport that they love just as much as
guys do. So I've said it out loud, this seemingly
(20:54):
crazy but not so crazy idea of hiring women as
coaches and scouts and other football positions in the NFL,
the most male sport on the planet. I'm not afraid
of challenges, and we're not going to shy away from
talking about them here. It's never been easy to land
(21:17):
a job as a coach in the NFL. But if
a young man wanted to coach and he had the
talent to do so, he had a path. Many of
them played in college and moved on to work with
their friends. Whenever an opening came up, someone would say,
I know a guy, let's interview him. If a young
woman wanted to coach in the NFL, it was much
more difficult, nearly impossible. She might have played women's tackle
(21:39):
football after work and coached high school kids to keep
her passion alive, but she didn't have the same contacts
and didn't have anything close to a direct path. So
we created a pipeline to get her in front of
the right people. So Roger says, call me Monday. You say,
I'm calling you Monday. My first question was gonna be
did you have a plan or where you were like,
holy cow, this my my dream actually might happen for
(22:02):
some people. It's an overnight thing. You auditioned for a
Broadway musical and suddenly you're a big star. This process
obviously was not going to be an overnight success, and
it was gonna take time and a lot of thinking
and they're gonna be a lot of challenges. When you
guys first met on it, how did it go? And Roger,
that's a big leap for you, right to make a
significant change to the game. Well, it really wasn't that
(22:25):
big leap because, um, I believe that in Sam's passion
and her courage and and her plan frankly, and that
there were was a lot of talent out there that
had the same passion for the game that we had
just frankly overlooked. I don't think people saw women in
(22:46):
that position, and we had to change that perception. I
always talk about it when people come into the NFL,
how do you create value? And there's a lot of
values that people of different genders, different ookers, different you know,
diversity is what makes us stronger. And that's really a
core belief of the NFL and mind personally. And I
(23:09):
think we were just on tapping talent that was going
to make the NFL better. It's analogous to why coaches
like to go to internationally defined players, right, It's like
all the best football talent is not in the United States, right,
it's everywhere. And if you consider everywhere, you're going to
have the best players. Coaches like Ron Rivera, Sean McDermott,
Bruce Arians, they look at this and they say, we
have not considered half the population when we're hiring talent,
(23:32):
and if we consider everyone, the criminal rise to the top.
It's about winning. It's about getting the best people in
the job. And if you're forgetting half of the population,
any half of any population, there's no question that you're
not getting the best talent. I think we're the NFL
hadn't is really looked at the fact that there are
people that we just overlooked, that they weren't part of
(23:54):
the game. They weren't either playing it or people looked
at as a male dominant sport. And when people really said, listen,
there's really passionate, talented people that can make our game
better and help us win. All we had to do
is give them a chance to actually go through the
meritocracy and earn it. And I think that's what Sam's created.
(24:15):
If we build it, they will come. We created what
we call the Women's Forum. Each year, my colleague Vanessa
Hutchinson and I invite forty women with college football experience
to spend time listening to and talking to NFL head coaches,
general managers and owners. So, Sam, how do you get
buy in? Was there a moment where a head coach
(24:36):
raised his hand and said I'll show up. So the
first year we got Kim Pagoula, owner of the Buffalo Bills,
and Ron rivera head coach of the Carolina Panthers at
the time now the Washington football team, and both of
them took a shot on this, and I give them
a lot of credit for that because they didn't know
who I was. I cold emailed them and asked them
(24:56):
if they would participate, and they both said yes. They
both flew down to Florida we host did a Pro
Bowl at the time, and they said, I want to
be a part of this. And they really helped lend
credibility to this effort because since then, both of them
have said, we're involved every year for this count on
us every year, And like Roger said, these are two
incredibly busy people who are very busy at that time
(25:17):
of year too, but say we will always lend you know,
our time to this effort. And they've been involved in
the program for five years. Vanessa, who's a senior manager
in the football operations department, has been my secret weapon.
You had said at one point, I believe on a
phone call when we were going back and forth planning, like,
wouldn't it be great if we could get you know,
Bill Belichick to be in a breakout session, and I said,
(25:38):
I think we can maybe do it. And we were
very strategic about it though. The way we went about it.
We got Coach of Abel on board. First. We had
emailed Coach of Abel and of course, like five minutes
later he responds and says, I'm totally in. We said,
what we want to do is pitch to Coach Belichick, uh,
you and him doing a breakout session with no more
than you know, seven women, you know, no media, super intimate,
just talking ball, and he said, I'm in. Keep me
(26:00):
posted on what Coach Belichick says. And so we draft
this email to Bears, explained to him the importance of
this program, the history of it, and ultimately here's what
we want from Coach Belichick is he's willing to do it,
and not even twenty minutes later he said, coach is
all in. So that was really you know how it
happened and I called you, and you know there are
there's a lot of screaming and all that, but you know,
I think one having him there, just watching him in
(26:22):
a breakout session, super relaxed, super laid back, literally just
doing what he loves, which is talking ball and developing coaches. Uh.
That was tremendous to see. And then the other thing
to point out is coach Belichick comes from an era
of the old Boys Club, not saying he is in
that club, and he's shown and us hiring that he's not.
But to have a coach like that that comes from
(26:43):
that kind of generation, um, you know, to kind of
show other head coaches and other people that come from
that generation as well that he's embracing a program like this,
I think was tremendously important. And anyone who was, you know,
maybe teetering on embracing diversity, equity, inclusion, he's an example
for that to them is and I think that's why
it means so much to have him be a part
of him to have him, you know, say, you know
(27:04):
that it's important to him in his organization, and he
didn't blink an eye when he was in that zoom, right.
I mean, we didn't let anyone in that zoom. So
I'm gonna give a little peek behind the curtain of
what it was like. He was like, all right, let's go,
who wants to learn football? Right? There was no mention
of oh, your female coaches, kind of like what you
were saying, there's still mention about you know, your gender.
It was like, who wants to talk ball? And I
remember alex Hannah raised her hand, She's like, I want
(27:25):
to talk ball, and she pulled up a power point
and broke down a cover three defense for him and
asked him specific questions about what the cornerbacks should do
in a certain situation. And then they just started talking
ball for an hour, right, And then other people started
asking him strategic questions and just the opportunity to speak
to a genius in the game like that, you know,
and then him giving out his email address to them after.
It was just the icing on the cake. But it
(27:47):
really struck me how he didn't care who was in
the room. He wanted to develop young coaches and that's
why he got involved, right. I mean, I remember just
being amazed he was referring to everyone who was calling
them coach coach to the women in the room, you know,
whether they were at the high school level where they're
at the college. Well, he was addressing them in that sense,
and like you said, we had participant sharing screens and
asking questions to him, and you know, he lit up
when Alex uploaded her screen on zoom to show on
(28:10):
the play and he was like, this is great. And
then him and Coach Rabel just took it from there.
And you know, they had their prior relationships, but they
were working off of each other and it created just
such a great environment in that breakout session for them
all to be a part of. As I mentioned at
the top of the pod, almost two hundred opportunities for
women have come out of this forum in just five years.
Several women were so impressive that they got their jobs
(28:30):
on the spot. One question that I get asked all
the time as I'm working on you know, some of
this content podcast and and TV series, is people are
so curious about, well, what's the reaction from an NFL
player when he's told that a woman is going to
be coaching him. I can imagine people assume they might
(28:50):
not like that, But what have you found when these
women get into those positions and what have you heard?
You guys are on the front lines of this, from
the coaches themselves, from the players themselves. My response to
that typically is ask any player and they will tell
you that they want their coaching staff to reflect their family,
the fans, their normal life outside of football. Right. And
(29:11):
as Roger said, and coach Arian's has said this many times,
a coach is a teacher and if you can teach,
you can teach. And there's no gender to teaching, right.
So if you talk to the guys, they love it. Right.
A lot of them have daughters. It's inspirational for their daughters.
A lot of them have sons. It's inspirational for their
sons to see women in these positions teaching men football.
And it's remarkable to see. I've never heard of players
(29:31):
say anything other than we need more female coaches. One
of the other big questions is you put these women
the majority of them are young. We have a couple
examples like Low Locust, who is on the Super Bowl
winning Buccaneers in one. You put them in these positions
as trail blazers and being first, that is a heck
of a lot of pressure. How do you prepare them
(29:51):
for that, and how do you help them through that
process as the season goes on. So there's no perfect blueprint,
you know, and there's mistakes along the way. But I
think what I'm sure appreciative of is how honest they are,
whether it's you know us always, you know, people like
low Jennifer King, Sally, with all all of them. If
we have someone we want to connect them with who's
on that pathway to wanting to be like them, they'll
(30:12):
take that phone call and they will be completely transparent
with them and they will be completely honest with them
about what this road is, what it entails, what's been tough,
um and that I think just their transparent transparency in
itself and willingness to share that actual experience and not
be afraid to make mistakes but try and just you know,
be leaders in that for the other woman around. That's
what I appreciate the most for them, Vanessa, I know
(30:33):
it seems to me my conversations with these coaches, none
of them want to be first. That's not why they're
doing it. They're doing it because they love the game.
They think they can make the game better, they think
they can help teams win and it's become their passion.
It's like Sam, So how do you distinguish that? And
and the good news is there not first anymore and
(30:56):
the doors open and the opportunities there. So how do
you get to finding their true motivation of how they're
going to succeed in the most competitive sport in the world,
one of the most successful businesses and leagues in the world.
They're going to have to compete against the best. And
when they walk in that room, they don't care whether
(31:18):
they're a woman or a man, or as I always say,
players can smell a coach he doesn't know what he's
talking about in about five minutes. It takes that long
and they'll know. And that's what they respect. And ultimately,
it's about the respect that you know how to coach
and make them better. One of the things we ask
when we're talking to these women, who are you know,
in preparation for the forum, is you know what your
(31:39):
why why do you wake up and want to work
these endless hours in this industry and sacrifice so many
different things to be in it? And you know a
lot of those answers are a lot of reason why
some of the women are in the forum itself. UM,
you know, we stray away from the answers that say
I want to be the first, this, that, or the next.
We really embrace the answers that say, I just want
to help a team be better and wherever I'm needed
(32:00):
for that, that's what I want to do. Here's where
I think I have my strengths, Here's what I think
I have my weaknesses. But what I really want to
do is be a part of a team and be
a part of helping them have success. And so I
think that's in a way that that shows you know,
ultimately what leadership means to them, and it gives us
a really good look at the type of candidates we're
looking for and how they'll fit within the league. How
do you advise them on what to do with pushback
(32:23):
that would come from outside a team organization, from social media,
from fans. Um. Talking to the women coaches who are
currently working in the league, they all will tell you, oh, yeah,
it's brutal. If you go on social media or sometimes
things fans will say to you, it is nasty or
even than your wildest imagination. And they all have strategies
(32:45):
kind of for where they put it. So when you're
looking at young women coming in, how how do you
advise them on what to do with what? With what
can become really bad noise. My biggest piece of advice
is always to keep your head down and grind mentality
whether and you have to figure out what that means
for you, whether that means you're not on social media
or you're not paying attention to that you know, that's
one way to do it. But obviously you can't ignore
(33:05):
all the noise. But one thing I've always been taught
and I've always tried to use in my career in itself,
is that you need to worry about the people who matter,
the person that hired you, the person you're reporting to,
the people who rely on you, and as long as
they think you're doing a great job and you're doing well,
that's what matters. And the person on Twitter who is,
you know, ranting does not. And so it really has
(33:26):
to be a deep, you know, belief in yourself. And
as cliche as that may sound, that's what keeps a
lot of people's heads above ground in this industry is
just knowing who you are and knowing what you're good
at and letting that pave your way for you. And
we talk about Rogers sometimes like that. We're like, do
you think Roger's on Twitter is saying like f you two? Right? Like,
if you're in the rain, you have to take the
blows right, And we all know that there are responsibilities
(33:48):
that you have in being the first. So what we
tell them is, imagine you're Roger, right, and you're sitting
there and these people are criticizing him. He is not
sitting there on social media telling these people like will
you suck or you whatever? Right, He's doing his job,
And that's really what we tell the women is don't
worry about people who are not in the ring with you,
and don't take criticism from someone who you wouldn't go
to for advice and so blinded out, have your blinders
(34:11):
on social media because we're going to hear that no
matter how long we continue to do this, which hopefully
is forever, people will criticize because they have bad things
to say, but if they're not in the ring with you,
it doesn't matter. You know. My trick always with that
is one is I don't pay much attention to it.
But second, and probably more important, I use as motivation.
You know, I just want to prove those people wrong.
(34:31):
And what I see from most of our great coaches,
everyone's doubted, everyone's challenged. Everyone you know, they make the
wrong call in the game, and everyone says you're a loser.
You have to use that as your motivation to get
better and to prove people wrong. And to me, those
are the people who have real grit ultimately, or the
(34:52):
competitive ones that are going to be able to go
through those difficult times, which every coach does, every commissioner does,
every person in pulp with life and in personal life.
You're going to have those moments of adversity and challenge.
You have to be able to compete and grind through it.
To use the term you use, that's grit. In my view,
(35:12):
that's the people I want to round me. It's not
a business for a thin skin, absolutely not. I think
you know that too. This season unearned it. I want
to said Darcy and said, look, I like to hire
two coaches who happened to be female. She said, heck, yeah,
go for it. And you gotta be kidding me. I mean,
I played sports my whole life from five and because
(35:34):
I'm a girl, I can't why It's not like I'm
doing this to bust up the good old voice book.
Just listen to your story, I mean quarterback and your
thoughts and your wants and your goals. I'm like, oh wow,
this is a live one. You know, Sam's a live one.
When you're looking to hire the best people, maybe if
you're opening up the pool to everybody, you're getting even
more exceptional people. Be sure to watch for Earning It,
(35:54):
the five part TV series from NBC and NFL Films,
coming to nb C and Peacock in January. H
High commissioner. How are you? Are you ready? I'm ready?
Are you ready? I was fortunate growing up in Canada
where I played flag football and touch football. Growing up,
it was offered at my high school from the two
yard line but about seconds left. It was a very
competitive sport. The guys would come watch us, and we
would go watch them. I'm on the paper or a
(00:23):
And when women's tackle football started in in two thousand,
I raised my hand and said, I want to do this.
I've been playing non contact for so long for my
whole life. I want to see what it's like to
put on the pads and and learn how to take
a hit. And so, uh do you remember your first hit?
Oh god, I remember my first hit. I remember my
(00:43):
coach teaching me that I need to learn how to
take a hit. And I think as I progressed in
my career, I learned really how to take a hit.
I'm I'm five five and was one thirty at the time.
So for me to take a hit from you know,
a three town woman was something I needed to learn
at a at a young age in my career. It
I loved it. Hi, I'm Sam Rappaport and this is
(01:04):
earning it the NFL's Forward Progress. It's a podcast about
football and so much more. I had this idea to
create a pipeline to give women with smart, talented football
minds a shot at football jobs in the NFL. In
just five years, we've created almost two hundred opportunities for women.
(01:24):
We'll be talking to some of them on this show,
along with many other great football minds, NFL head coaches,
general managers, owners, incredible female trailblazers who happened to be
passionate NFL fans like Billy gene King. Every generation has
their trailblazers, Every generation has their first and it's really,
really hard. I'm living my lifelong dream and I can't
(01:45):
wait to take you along for this ride. As Senior
Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the NFL, I've
made up my mission to bring more women into the
fold so we can continue to move the needle for
future generations. So let's start at the beginning, which in
this case happens to be on a high school football
field in the suburbs of New York City. That's where
I met my producer, Jane. She's a veteran journalist and
(02:08):
a fan. I thought I knew a lot about football.
I grew up as a huge fan all Brothers season
tickets to the Chicago var since nineteen seventy two. I've
been to a lot of football games in my life.
I also happened to be married to Roger she means
Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, my boss, actually my boss's
boss's boss. They've been married for twenty four years and
have twin daughters who seem to have inherited this passion
(02:30):
for football. The way they understand the game. It's not
just as a fan. They really understand the game from
a football perspective, and it amazes me. The three of
us sat down in the Commissioner's office right next to
the Lombardi Trophy to talk about the important role women
are now playing in this sport and how we can
create more opportunities for them. I grew up my parents
(02:51):
put me in ballet and tap dance and jazz dance.
And if you know me right now, that's really funny,
because you know, really, when when I became a teenager,
I kind of flipped and and and really football was
was my love, and so my parents really fostered it
they It was never I never got asked, you know, like, oh,
you're a girl, how are you going to play? Or
how is this going to be a challenge? And I
(03:11):
remember the first time I played tackle though, my mom said, Abby,
I just need you to go with her the first time,
like I need to know that she's not gonna you
know that nothing bad will happen to her. And he
came to my first tryout with the Montreal Blitz in
two thousand and one, and I remember he came back saying,
it's fantastic, right, Like she got rocked a few times,
but it's fantastic. A lot of listeners may not know this,
but they're very vibrant female professional tackle football leagues in
(03:35):
North America. I played quarterback for two years for the
Montreal Blitz in the i WFL, and he got to
see you play. He did. Yeah. He Um My dad
passed away about seven years ago, but um, he got
He traveled to all of my away games in the
United States. So he would leave work at five pm,
he would drive thirteen hours straight, watch my game for
(03:56):
three hours, drive thirteen hours back and he never missed
an away games. Um and so he would he would
film my games as well, and he did the play
by play, So if you watch all my game tape,
it's Rappaporn with a bootleg to the last. He was
his best job. Michaels those play by play calls earlier
in the episode employ, Yeah, that was him. And he
(04:25):
was so into the sport and so into my involvement,
and he was an orthodonist and his patients would get
really annoyed with him that he would talk about my
playing career so much. Hey, Sam, I've never been able
to ask you this question, but you're comments here. Was
it the contact that you loved about the game? Was
it the strategy? What was it about the game of
(04:45):
football that you loved playing? I think there are two things.
The first for me was, you know, I work in diversity, equity, inclusion. Now,
when you look at a football team, it takes so
many different types of people and athletic abilities to win.
You look at other sports like basketball, they're all tall
and skinny. Right. If you look at um every other sport,
there's a traditional makeup of a person. And when I
(05:07):
started playing football, there were girls of all shapes and sizes,
every athletic ability. You don't have to be fast or
you could be fast. You don't have to be tall,
or you could be tall. And I loved how it
brought people together from such different athletic backgrounds and backgrounds
together on one field. That was something I loved about it.
The other thing, which is why I'm so passionate about
getting girls to play, is because I was pretty average
(05:27):
at most sports, and I felt really good at football.
And so as a young girl growing up who's developing
her confidence, having something that defined me and that made
me feel like I was good at something, that's what
made me fall in love. And I think every kid
really should find that thing that makes them tick and
that they love. It strikes me. So we know you're
as a competitive person. We love to compete, and I
(05:50):
know that came out in you in sports. You could
see it when you walked on the football field, even
competing against yours Truly, you got really competitive, and I
am too. I see that in you. But I also
see that you use that in what you do every
day for the NFL. The way you compete, you're competing,
you're making us better, You're trying to win, You're trying
to accomplish something, and you do it really with what
(06:13):
I call a lot of values about football, which our
teamwork and perseverance and going through adversity. All these things
you've had to deal with to build the pipeline that
you've built. That's all about football, right. You probably learned
a lot of those lessons on the football field, and
that's what I that's where I'm really interested. Do you
use what you've learned on the football field in business,
(06:34):
because I know I do, no question. As a quarterback,
sometimes you need to have a game phase on when
you know things aren't going well, but the other ten
people on the field you have to show them that
you got it. And I talked about this sometimes is
when I'm very nervous and I'm leading something, I will
appear as if I got it because that is what
I had to do in the sport of football. And
(06:54):
people buy into that and they believe that. And I'll
rag on you later. So don't in this compliment that
I'm gonna give you. But one of my favorite things
about your leadership here is that you set the bar
so high, and so for me that's almost like a
coach mentality. You're telling me what you expect of me
and everyone else who works here. I want to get there.
I want to be at that level. But that's part
(07:15):
of what you do to get better. Right. The objective
is not for you to play alone. You're playing with
teammates and your objective is to win. And it's a
team sport. So the lessons I learned on the football
field are completely relatable to everything I do as a commissioner.
It's all those values of teamwork and adversity and perseverance
(07:36):
and diversity in the sense of everybody has a role,
everybody has a way to contribute to a bigger purpose
of winning and competing is something I love. I love
people who compete. Can I tell you one more thing
I love about this sport. There's no other sport where
every single person on the field is responsible for the
success of a play. It's never just the wide receiver
(07:58):
who caught the touchdown. It's never just the rebact. It
has to be all eleven people working in unison to
make it happen. And basketball, you can steal a ball
and fast breakdown and lay up and that was all you. Right,
there's nothing that's all you. And I know that's important
to you as a leader as well. Is you never
make anything about you. I'm gonna try to make this
about you, but you never want to make anything about you.
So that high school football field I mentioned at the top,
(08:21):
it's where Roger Goodell played football and where my lifelong
dream became a reality. Not in an instant, mind you.
This is no overnight success story, but it is a
great story. Like me, the Commissioner has been football obsessed
(08:42):
for as long as he can remember. He used to
sleep with a leather football instead of a Teddy bear.
He says. The person who drove him to get better
was his mom, Jeanie Goodell. They were very close and
the Commissioner lived with her until the day she died
of breast cancer. Asked him to talk about their relationship.
Why are you're not hitting me hard? Um? You know,
(09:03):
everybody talks about my family, which a huge influence on me. Um.
My dad was a public figure. So people talk about
your dad was the United States Center and our congressman,
and what did you learn from him? But you know,
I always say the person I learned the most from
is my mom, and I think my brothers would all
say the same. She Uh, Roger needed a beat. I
(09:26):
didn't intend to do it, but I made the Commissioner
of the NFL cry. My mom was a real fighter
and a competitive person, someone who expected people to to
to not let others down. She never did, and she
would always, um make everyone better about her. And so
(09:47):
probably a lot of things you've talked about before, that's
where I got it, you know. She she had that strength, UM,
and that courage and nothing scared of her. She actually
talked about running for Congress UM at one point in
her herself, which was unheard of at that time. UM.
And unfortunately she got sick and that never came to fruition.
(10:10):
But she could have been a great congress person. UM.
But she taught us so much about life and and
frankly sports. She was always there and so is my dad.
By the way, my dad was similar in yours wherever
he was, and he lived in Washington a large part
of his career and we were in New York. He
never missed a game. And I'll never forget it. And
(10:31):
I always think we have to be there. Jane and
I talked about be there for our kids at the
time that are important, and they know we're there when
it's important, UM. And they were always supported and I
had that from my family, but my mom in particular.
If you ever want to go out in the backyard
and throw football, she was the first one to sign up.
And by the way, she was the artist coach I've
(10:52):
ever had because she I could hear her voice when
I was playing sports. I could hear a voice on
the football field from fifty yards away. And by the way,
she wasn't necessarily in a positive way. She would get
after me, and you know, she would always go to
the coaches afterwards and say, what's he not doing right?
What you know, get after him, make sure he's doing it.
(11:13):
And so we got we got a lot from my
mother's relationship. You played three positions on the football field,
right quarterback, tight end, a little defensive back, defensive back.
So um, I probably played anything they told me to.
I mean, I was a running back going into my
senior year and they told me I had to switch
the tight end because we had a great running back
(11:34):
who switched over from another school and he was better
running back. And I said, that's where I should go.
A great story about your mom from someone who watched
you play high school football that I met, was saying
that your older brother, Timmy played old line and your
mom would be in the stands watching and people would
go up to her after and say, hey, Jeanie, you
know Tim had a great game, and she'd say, what
do you mean he missed five blocks? And that would
(11:56):
be her response to them, right, And but I you know,
I think that so reflective somewhat of your leadership here
where it's certainly not that you focus on the negative,
but it's your expectation of us and what you expect
from your folks is as close to amazing as we
can get, right, and you feel that all over three
four or five part, Well, I like to say, you've
heard me say I believe in better and you know,
(12:17):
the NFL can always get better. And I think that's
what my mom was saying, is that, yeah, maybe he
played well, maybe he did a lot of great things
in the field, but he missed five blocks. It's what
I say. You have to be your own harshest critic,
and the people around you have to be there. That's
not that's not being negative in my view, that's trying
to be constructive and trying to be helpful of saying
(12:39):
you have more potential to reach. And that's what I
think My mom wanted for us is to reach your potential.
She didn't think I had a lot of potential, by
the way, for a long time, but hopefully I surprised
you a little bit. The commissioner and I both knew
at a very young age we wanted to work in football.
My mom recently found something I wrote in ninth grade
these It was to write about my passion. I wrote quote,
(13:03):
if I'm not praying for my favorite team to crush
their biggest rivals, then I'm dreaming of playing football, making
the winning catch, running thirty yards with the ball in
my arms, and winning the game. So, Sam, you have
this incredible passion for the game, your parents are supportive,
and you're going in your early twenties to apply for
an NFL internships. So listen up, kids, if you're applying
(13:23):
for a job, this is a good tip on how
to get a job. Tell me what your application was like.
So I was a young woman in Canada, no connections
to the NFL whatsoever. Just knew that I would I
would still be trying to this day to get into
this building. So I decided that I had to do
something gimmicky to stand out, something that would you know,
separate me from the thousands of resumes that apply for that.
(13:44):
So I sent a picture of myself in my tackle
football gear with my resume, and with that I sent
a football, and on the football, I wrote in a
sharpie what other quarterback could accurately deliver a ball three
and eighty six miles, which was the distance between my
college in Montreal and New York City. And you know,
(14:05):
I sent it and I was like, you know, you know,
I don't give this a high chance of working, but
you know it worked. It made me stand out, and
I started my first NFL internship in two thousand and three.
And Roger, that's when you met Sam. Yeah, but I'm
relating to her story because I'm also an intern and
to your point, you know, you have to find ways
to stand out. But Roger didn't mail a football to
(14:28):
get his first job. He mailed letters, a lot of letters. Yeah,
I wrote over fifty I think he's fifty three. I
haven't actually over in that desk over there, And I
got rejected by every single one of them. And some
of them are my bosses today, by the way, and
I've showed that letter to many of them. Your boss
is being the Owners Owners Executives. Um, you know, I
(14:50):
was turned down to the Commissioner's office many times, but
eventually someone made a mistake of returning a phone call
to me and said, yeah, sure, you know, if you
ever knew ORC, let me know. And I said, I'm
in New York. He said, okay, what can you come
buy at eight? And I said sure. The problem I
was in Pittsburgh and it was about six o'clock at night,
so I had to drive all night to get there
(15:11):
and showed up at the door, and I think he
was a little surprised, and Um, I just kept after him,
and I said, there's always a fine line between being
persistent and being a pain in the ass, and I'm
sure I was both, but I think you have to
demonstrate that when you want something so badly, when you're
(15:31):
passionate about something, and Sam, you are like passionate. I
put number one, two, and three on your list. When
you're passionate about something, you make it happen. And that's that,
to me, is the difference between winners and losers. Sam.
So fast forward after you do your internship, several years later,
you're working for in youth football for USA Football. Um,
(15:53):
I'm not sure we were trying to remember. I don't
think you and I had ever met, but we belong
Roger and I belonged to a church and there was
this really nice youth minister who came in, nice young guy,
who said, I, Hi, I'm brand new and I'm trying
to get middle school kids to come to church, but
they all want to play sports. So if anybody here
has an idea about how to get kids to come
to church, please let me know. And so I felt
for him, and so I walked off to him afterwards
(16:14):
and said, Hi, um, my husband works in football and
maybe you could do a flag football tournament and maybe
he could come. And he said great, what does he do?
And I said, well, he's a commissioner of the NFL
and he said, oh, okay, I'm a soccer guy, but
that sounds fun. And so I went home and I said, um, hey, Roger,
I think I volunteered you to run a flag football
clinic because the youth minister isn't really a football guy,
(16:37):
so could you do that for the church and it
might be nice? And he said, uh, okay, sure. Two things. One,
I have no idea how to run a flag football tournament,
and too, I'll only do it if girls can come to.
Our daughters will be there, their middle schoolers, so I
want to make sure it's for boys and girls. So
he's a few weeks later, said um, okay, yes, we've
(16:58):
got some flags, We've got some jersey. Is how many
kids are coming? I said, I think about forty five.
And he said, okay, I'm bringing in a ringer because
I don't know how to run this. I'm bringing in Sam,
who is a former quarterback who can do it. And
I said, great, Sam. Sam will be there to do it.
I don't have to worry about anything but bringing snacks
and making sure the flags work right, the velcro is good.
(17:19):
And so we get down to the field and Roger
goes like tearing across his high school football field, which
I say, is like where all the greatness happened. That's
what he tells me. We're down there on this field.
He goes tearing across a football field to embrace this person, Sam,
and I said, my mind has been blown. Sam is
(17:40):
a girl with a long blonde ponytail. And my daughter's
eyes were as big as saucers. By the way out
of the forty five I think we had like thirty
nine boys and six girls, and you came over, you
took and then they split them up into Giants and
Jets with the little flag jerseys. You took Jets, he
took Giants. He was quarterbacking the their team, and Roger
(18:01):
you can find then is this accurate or not? She
kicked your ass all over that. No, now you're off
the base, but no, but that we were competing. We
were permanent quarterbacks. Right. Sam is an incredible athlete. We
can't agree on that Sam can really playing it. Let's
just put it that way. So I like to tease
(18:22):
her that I'm better, but I know I'm not, but
it's okay. I would just like to tease her. You
can imagine, though, those six girls, to your point, not
just start twin girls, when they saw Sam running this
event and throwing the football like that. Talk about opening
your eyes to the world, and I want to say
the boys eyes were as big saucers too, Like it's
(18:43):
just as important of the messages I think for young
men to see as well. Right, I was going to
go to that point, You're ahead of me, But I
agree with that because I do think they saw something saying, Wow,
she can throw a football like that. UM, I do agree.
It opened her eyes. I heard one of them say
she's kicking that old and asked, no, I'm kidding. It's
our biggest to date, nineteen years and running on the
(19:05):
flag football game. I'm a journalist, I know the facts recollections.
In any case, the reason I'm telling this story is
because as the game ended and Sam's team one, I
walked up to her and said, I think we should
be friends. That was amazing. And Roger came up and said, Sam,
(19:28):
what's going on, how's your football? How's your job? We
miss you at the league. What are you thinking? And
Sam rapp report said, was brave enough to say to
the commissioner, well, you know what, I'm glad you asked.
I have a dream. I have a dream because I
know all these smart, talented women who have great football
minds and there is no way for them to get
(19:50):
into the National Football League. There's no entrance. I would
love to build a pipeline. Is that accurate? It's accurate?
And I told him I'd call him on my day
and the rest is history. But yeah, you know, shot
my shot and went up to commissioner Goodell at the
time and said, you know, I see, I see a
way that we can be better, and you always challenge
(20:10):
us to be better, So let me present this idea
to you. And what he doesn't know is it was
already fully baked. I had the entire strategic plan ready
to go because I know this guy, right, I'm not
he doesn't want to hear I have this crazy idea,
and I really had a full strategic plan baked because
I saw something that I felt could make us better,
and that was the gates needed to be open for
these thousands of women that are either playing football or
(20:32):
enjoying football in this country to get in the game
because previously they were disenfranchised. Not anyone's fault, they weren't applying.
No one was thinking that women belong in these positions.
But everything changed when we were able to open the
gates and create a pipeline for women to be involved
in the sport that they love just as much as
guys do. So I've said it out loud, this seemingly
(20:54):
crazy but not so crazy idea of hiring women as
coaches and scouts and other football positions in the NFL,
the most male sport on the planet. I'm not afraid
of challenges, and we're not going to shy away from
talking about them here. It's never been easy to land
(21:17):
a job as a coach in the NFL. But if
a young man wanted to coach and he had the
talent to do so, he had a path. Many of
them played in college and moved on to work with
their friends. Whenever an opening came up, someone would say,
I know a guy, let's interview him. If a young
woman wanted to coach in the NFL, it was much
more difficult, nearly impossible. She might have played women's tackle
(21:39):
football after work and coached high school kids to keep
her passion alive, but she didn't have the same contacts
and didn't have anything close to a direct path. So
we created a pipeline to get her in front of
the right people. So Roger says, call me Monday. You say,
I'm calling you Monday. My first question was gonna be
did you have a plan or where you were like,
holy cow, this my my dream actually might happen for
(22:02):
some people. It's an overnight thing. You auditioned for a
Broadway musical and suddenly you're a big star. This process
obviously was not going to be an overnight success, and
it was gonna take time and a lot of thinking
and they're gonna be a lot of challenges. When you
guys first met on it, how did it go? And Roger,
that's a big leap for you, right to make a
significant change to the game. Well, it really wasn't that
(22:25):
big leap because, um, I believe that in Sam's passion
and her courage and and her plan frankly, and that
there were was a lot of talent out there that
had the same passion for the game that we had
just frankly overlooked. I don't think people saw women in
(22:46):
that position, and we had to change that perception. I
always talk about it when people come into the NFL,
how do you create value? And there's a lot of
values that people of different genders, different ookers, different you know,
diversity is what makes us stronger. And that's really a
core belief of the NFL and mind personally. And I
(23:09):
think we were just on tapping talent that was going
to make the NFL better. It's analogous to why coaches
like to go to internationally defined players, right, It's like
all the best football talent is not in the United States, right,
it's everywhere. And if you consider everywhere, you're going to
have the best players. Coaches like Ron Rivera, Sean McDermott,
Bruce Arians, they look at this and they say, we
have not considered half the population when we're hiring talent,
(23:32):
and if we consider everyone, the criminal rise to the top.
It's about winning. It's about getting the best people in
the job. And if you're forgetting half of the population,
any half of any population, there's no question that you're
not getting the best talent. I think we're the NFL
hadn't is really looked at the fact that there are
people that we just overlooked, that they weren't part of
(23:54):
the game. They weren't either playing it or people looked
at as a male dominant sport. And when people really said, listen,
there's really passionate, talented people that can make our game
better and help us win. All we had to do
is give them a chance to actually go through the
meritocracy and earn it. And I think that's what Sam's created.
(24:15):
If we build it, they will come. We created what
we call the Women's Forum. Each year, my colleague Vanessa
Hutchinson and I invite forty women with college football experience
to spend time listening to and talking to NFL head coaches,
general managers and owners. So, Sam, how do you get
buy in? Was there a moment where a head coach
(24:36):
raised his hand and said I'll show up. So the
first year we got Kim Pagoula, owner of the Buffalo Bills,
and Ron rivera head coach of the Carolina Panthers at
the time now the Washington football team, and both of
them took a shot on this, and I give them
a lot of credit for that because they didn't know
who I was. I cold emailed them and asked them
(24:56):
if they would participate, and they both said yes. They
both flew down to Florida we host did a Pro
Bowl at the time, and they said, I want to
be a part of this. And they really helped lend
credibility to this effort because since then, both of them
have said, we're involved every year for this count on
us every year, And like Roger said, these are two
incredibly busy people who are very busy at that time
(25:17):
of year too, but say we will always lend you know,
our time to this effort. And they've been involved in
the program for five years. Vanessa, who's a senior manager
in the football operations department, has been my secret weapon.
You had said at one point, I believe on a
phone call when we were going back and forth planning, like,
wouldn't it be great if we could get you know,
Bill Belichick to be in a breakout session, and I said,
(25:38):
I think we can maybe do it. And we were
very strategic about it though. The way we went about it.
We got Coach of Abel on board. First. We had
emailed Coach of Abel and of course, like five minutes
later he responds and says, I'm totally in. We said,
what we want to do is pitch to Coach Belichick, uh,
you and him doing a breakout session with no more
than you know, seven women, you know, no media, super intimate,
just talking ball, and he said, I'm in. Keep me
(26:00):
posted on what Coach Belichick says. And so we draft
this email to Bears, explained to him the importance of
this program, the history of it, and ultimately here's what
we want from Coach Belichick is he's willing to do it,
and not even twenty minutes later he said, coach is
all in. So that was really you know how it
happened and I called you, and you know there are
there's a lot of screaming and all that, but you know,
I think one having him there, just watching him in
(26:22):
a breakout session, super relaxed, super laid back, literally just
doing what he loves, which is talking ball and developing coaches. Uh.
That was tremendous to see. And then the other thing
to point out is coach Belichick comes from an era
of the old Boys Club, not saying he is in
that club, and he's shown and us hiring that he's not.
But to have a coach like that that comes from
(26:43):
that kind of generation, um, you know, to kind of
show other head coaches and other people that come from
that generation as well that he's embracing a program like this,
I think was tremendously important. And anyone who was, you know,
maybe teetering on embracing diversity, equity, inclusion, he's an example
for that to them is and I think that's why
it means so much to have him be a part
of him to have him, you know, say, you know
(27:04):
that it's important to him in his organization, and he
didn't blink an eye when he was in that zoom, right.
I mean, we didn't let anyone in that zoom. So
I'm gonna give a little peek behind the curtain of
what it was like. He was like, all right, let's go,
who wants to learn football? Right? There was no mention
of oh, your female coaches, kind of like what you
were saying, there's still mention about you know, your gender.
It was like, who wants to talk ball? And I
remember alex Hannah raised her hand, She's like, I want
(27:25):
to talk ball, and she pulled up a power point
and broke down a cover three defense for him and
asked him specific questions about what the cornerbacks should do
in a certain situation. And then they just started talking
ball for an hour, right, And then other people started
asking him strategic questions and just the opportunity to speak
to a genius in the game like that, you know,
and then him giving out his email address to them after.
It was just the icing on the cake. But it
(27:47):
really struck me how he didn't care who was in
the room. He wanted to develop young coaches and that's
why he got involved, right. I mean, I remember just
being amazed he was referring to everyone who was calling
them coach coach to the women in the room, you know,
whether they were at the high school level where they're
at the college. Well, he was addressing them in that sense,
and like you said, we had participant sharing screens and
asking questions to him, and you know, he lit up
when Alex uploaded her screen on zoom to show on
(28:10):
the play and he was like, this is great. And
then him and Coach Rabel just took it from there.
And you know, they had their prior relationships, but they
were working off of each other and it created just
such a great environment in that breakout session for them
all to be a part of. As I mentioned at
the top of the pod, almost two hundred opportunities for
women have come out of this forum in just five years.
Several women were so impressive that they got their jobs
(28:30):
on the spot. One question that I get asked all
the time as I'm working on you know, some of
this content podcast and and TV series, is people are
so curious about, well, what's the reaction from an NFL
player when he's told that a woman is going to
be coaching him. I can imagine people assume they might
(28:50):
not like that, But what have you found when these
women get into those positions and what have you heard?
You guys are on the front lines of this, from
the coaches themselves, from the players themselves. My response to
that typically is ask any player and they will tell
you that they want their coaching staff to reflect their family,
the fans, their normal life outside of football. Right. And
(29:11):
as Roger said, and coach Arian's has said this many times,
a coach is a teacher and if you can teach,
you can teach. And there's no gender to teaching, right.
So if you talk to the guys, they love it. Right.
A lot of them have daughters. It's inspirational for their daughters.
A lot of them have sons. It's inspirational for their
sons to see women in these positions teaching men football.
And it's remarkable to see. I've never heard of players
(29:31):
say anything other than we need more female coaches. One
of the other big questions is you put these women
the majority of them are young. We have a couple
examples like Low Locust, who is on the Super Bowl
winning Buccaneers in one. You put them in these positions
as trail blazers and being first, that is a heck
of a lot of pressure. How do you prepare them
(29:51):
for that, and how do you help them through that
process as the season goes on. So there's no perfect blueprint,
you know, and there's mistakes along the way. But I
think what I'm sure appreciative of is how honest they are,
whether it's you know us always, you know, people like
low Jennifer King, Sally, with all all of them. If
we have someone we want to connect them with who's
on that pathway to wanting to be like them, they'll
(30:12):
take that phone call and they will be completely transparent
with them and they will be completely honest with them
about what this road is, what it entails, what's been tough,
um and that I think just their transparent transparency in
itself and willingness to share that actual experience and not
be afraid to make mistakes but try and just you know,
be leaders in that for the other woman around. That's
what I appreciate the most for them, Vanessa, I know
(30:33):
it seems to me my conversations with these coaches, none
of them want to be first. That's not why they're
doing it. They're doing it because they love the game.
They think they can make the game better, they think
they can help teams win and it's become their passion.
It's like Sam, So how do you distinguish that? And
and the good news is there not first anymore and
(30:56):
the doors open and the opportunities there. So how do
you get to finding their true motivation of how they're
going to succeed in the most competitive sport in the world,
one of the most successful businesses and leagues in the world.
They're going to have to compete against the best. And
when they walk in that room, they don't care whether
(31:18):
they're a woman or a man, or as I always say,
players can smell a coach he doesn't know what he's
talking about in about five minutes. It takes that long
and they'll know. And that's what they respect. And ultimately,
it's about the respect that you know how to coach
and make them better. One of the things we ask
when we're talking to these women, who are you know,
in preparation for the forum, is you know what your
(31:39):
why why do you wake up and want to work
these endless hours in this industry and sacrifice so many
different things to be in it? And you know a
lot of those answers are a lot of reason why
some of the women are in the forum itself. UM,
you know, we stray away from the answers that say
I want to be the first, this, that, or the next.
We really embrace the answers that say, I just want
to help a team be better and wherever I'm needed
(32:00):
for that, that's what I want to do. Here's where
I think I have my strengths, Here's what I think
I have my weaknesses. But what I really want to
do is be a part of a team and be
a part of helping them have success. And so I
think that's in a way that that shows you know,
ultimately what leadership means to them, and it gives us
a really good look at the type of candidates we're
looking for and how they'll fit within the league. How
do you advise them on what to do with pushback
(32:23):
that would come from outside a team organization, from social media,
from fans. Um. Talking to the women coaches who are
currently working in the league, they all will tell you, oh, yeah,
it's brutal. If you go on social media or sometimes
things fans will say to you, it is nasty or
even than your wildest imagination. And they all have strategies
(32:45):
kind of for where they put it. So when you're
looking at young women coming in, how how do you
advise them on what to do with what? With what
can become really bad noise. My biggest piece of advice
is always to keep your head down and grind mentality
whether and you have to figure out what that means
for you, whether that means you're not on social media
or you're not paying attention to that you know, that's
one way to do it. But obviously you can't ignore
(33:05):
all the noise. But one thing I've always been taught
and I've always tried to use in my career in itself,
is that you need to worry about the people who matter,
the person that hired you, the person you're reporting to,
the people who rely on you, and as long as
they think you're doing a great job and you're doing well,
that's what matters. And the person on Twitter who is,
you know, ranting does not. And so it really has
(33:26):
to be a deep, you know, belief in yourself. And
as cliche as that may sound, that's what keeps a
lot of people's heads above ground in this industry is
just knowing who you are and knowing what you're good
at and letting that pave your way for you. And
we talk about Rogers sometimes like that. We're like, do
you think Roger's on Twitter is saying like f you two? Right? Like,
if you're in the rain, you have to take the
blows right, And we all know that there are responsibilities
(33:48):
that you have in being the first. So what we
tell them is, imagine you're Roger, right, and you're sitting
there and these people are criticizing him. He is not
sitting there on social media telling these people like will
you suck or you whatever? Right, He's doing his job,
And that's really what we tell the women is don't
worry about people who are not in the ring with you,
and don't take criticism from someone who you wouldn't go
to for advice and so blinded out, have your blinders
(34:11):
on social media because we're going to hear that no
matter how long we continue to do this, which hopefully
is forever, people will criticize because they have bad things
to say, but if they're not in the ring with you,
it doesn't matter. You know. My trick always with that
is one is I don't pay much attention to it.
But second, and probably more important, I use as motivation.
You know, I just want to prove those people wrong.
(34:31):
And what I see from most of our great coaches,
everyone's doubted, everyone's challenged. Everyone you know, they make the
wrong call in the game, and everyone says you're a loser.
You have to use that as your motivation to get
better and to prove people wrong. And to me, those
are the people who have real grit ultimately, or the
(34:52):
competitive ones that are going to be able to go
through those difficult times, which every coach does, every commissioner does,
every person in pulp with life and in personal life.
You're going to have those moments of adversity and challenge.
You have to be able to compete and grind through it.
To use the term you use, that's grit. In my view,
(35:12):
that's the people I want to round me. It's not
a business for a thin skin, absolutely not. I think
you know that too. This season unearned it. I want
to said Darcy and said, look, I like to hire
two coaches who happened to be female. She said, heck, yeah,
go for it. And you gotta be kidding me. I mean,
I played sports my whole life from five and because
(35:34):
I'm a girl, I can't why It's not like I'm
doing this to bust up the good old voice book.
Just listen to your story, I mean quarterback and your
thoughts and your wants and your goals. I'm like, oh wow,
this is a live one. You know, Sam's a live one.
When you're looking to hire the best people, maybe if
you're opening up the pool to everybody, you're getting even
more exceptional people. Be sure to watch for Earning It,
(35:54):
the five part TV series from NBC and NFL Films,
coming to nb C and Peacock in January. H
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