Va-Jay-Jays Love Football, Too.

Va-Jay-Jays Love Football, Too.

Jaclynn Hanson

It’s a Saturday night and I’m alerted to a blue light blinking on my phone signaling a new e-mail has arrived.  I quickly snag my phone and enter my passcode and as I tap enter an image of Clay Matthews in all his beefy, vein-bulging glory is the first thing I see as my home-screen appears.  I briefly pause to admire his beautiful body nearly bursting through his skin tight jersey and make my way up to his sexy chiseled jaw clenched in intensity…sorry, I got distracted.  Did I make you uncomfortable reading that?  While my talk of Clay Matthews may be pretty mild compared to some of the commentary about the females involved in the National Football League – from the sideline reporters to the cheerleaders to the NFL wives – there is never a shortage of drooling and vivid sexual descriptors on either end of the male-female spectrum.  This makes me question whether or not this is just an ever present facet of professional sports that is universal to both men and women.  If so, maybe men and women sports fans have more in common than either are willing to admit.  And furthermore, is there an audience for masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and everything in between under bold & the beautiful letters of the NFL?  I think we are moving in that direction, and we are moving quickly.  Over the course of the past few decades, women have been leaving their mark on professional sports, particularly football, in fantasy leagues, in stadiums, and in organized play nationwide leaving behind the stigma of the female fan being just the girl in the stands with the pink jersey on just as Clay Matthews is much more than just the hot bod to look at on the field.

In 1996, an avid football enthusiast & commentator Dougie Brimson once wrote, “women like football, they don’t love or worship it” (Toffoletti, Mewett Foreword).  That, Mr. Self-Proclaimed “football hooligan” is pure bullshit.  Women are natural lovers.  Women are passionate.  And women will be your most loyal fans.  It is not a new idea that women enjoy lively competition, physical interaction, and comradery, so it should come as no surprise the NFL is the favorite sport of women making up 43% of its fan base (Smith).  I believe that makes you sir, a hooligan indeed. 

Most of the leading female NFL correspondents began as that girl passionate about her team going back and forth with her male counterparts over the intricacies last Sunday’s game.  These women face added scrutiny over not only their knowledge or coverage of the game but also in what they choose to wear any given day.  These same women who report the game often times have a vested interest in the sport that goes far beyond flirting with the quarterback or using the sidelines as a fashion runway.  Popular sports reporter Erin Andrews recounts, “So I’m having a hot dog on the sideline, and people are taking photos and submitting them to sports blogs.  And it’s like ‘how does she look eating a hot dog’?  It wasn’t about my reporting, it was, ‘What is she wearing, who is she dating?” (Female).  Many of the women reporting for the NFL share similar stories & experiences, yet almost every single one of them also touts an impressive resume not only in their academic careers but also in their professional experience within the realm of sports.   

            In the past ten years, the NFL has seen an influx in women emerging on the sidelines and beyond.  Women own and co-own teams.  Women maintain executive front office roles.  One woman, Shannon Eastin, officiates for the NFL.  Even if they are there in small numbers, they are there doing the work and to the shock of many men – doing it well.  We are moving past the days of cameras panning to the immaculately dressed, aloof wife of the quarterback sitting in her private suite above the stadium to the camera being placed directly on the woman grilling a receiver on a dropped pass in a bulky parka during a Green Bay blizzard.  While these women may have to do double the work to prove their worth within the sport, they are still there maneuvering through every aspect of the game in tandem with men and bringing football to its fans of both genders.  Women know the details, and love the game so much some are able to make their living within it. 

Women are also participating outside the viewer, fan and professional realms of football and into the participatory side as well.  In his article arguing for the inauguration of women’s collegiate teams, Rodney Smith discusses how the addition of women’s collegiate football teams would not only help women’s equity in the sport, but it would also be a step towards equality in collegiate sports for men and women alike when faced with what he refers to as the “Title IX Conundrum” of funding for student-athletes across the board.  Smith states, “Adding sports like badminton and synchronized swimming, rather than women’s football, may compound prevalent stereotypes about women athletes and deprive women athletes of the opportunity to participate in a popular sport that is more likely to attract spectators than are sports that are less well known (Smith).  He also goes on to argue that women’s football has the capacity to render much more interest therefore having the ability to contribute “significant revenue than other proposed women’s sports” (Smith).  Let’s be real.  Is anyone, male or female, really that interested in synchronized swimming on a collegiate level?  Wouldn’t we all better suited for sought after collegiate funding to go towards a sport both men and women alike are interested in?  The idea of women’s collegiate football is not as radical as it may seem.  The NFL and other organizations have begun sponsoring clinics and camps for women when they saw a rise in female interest (Clark 170) and more importantly women have been suiting up to play football by joining teams at local high schools, colleges, semi-pro leagues, and women’s leagues nationwide.  Women have a love for the game and know it so well they are making moves on almost every level of the game. 

Although the inclusion of women in the sport of football can be seen as a relatively unifying experience, the rise in female fandom within the NFL has generated somewhat of a division between the woman who loves to shop and host football parties and the woman who really loves the game itself.  In 2010, the NFL created a specific site for women, nfl.com/women said to feature “robust content and a deeper look into the campaign” (NFL).  When directed to this site, all I could find was where a woman can go to get a bikini in her team’s logo and colors.  It is strictly a shopping website.  In 2011, the NFL announced their “gameday party” campaign where women buy a sandwich press or collaborate on recipes and tips for a “homegating” experience.  Lindsey Mean discusses the division of female fans saying, “some women fans are ‘turned off’ by sites or texts that trivialize the seriousness and traditional forms of their sport fandom by failing to offer them the sorts of content they expect as sports fans” (Toffoletti, Mewett 171).  While I’m not trying to devalue these women as they do, indeed, contribute to the popularity of the NFL and the sport, I think there’s much more to female fandom than social gatherings and shopping sprees. Many women who have a real love for the sport are lounging in sweat pants drinking beer and actively engaging in their Sunday afternoon routine of back-to-back game coverage.  Women don’t need to wear revealing team apparel and serve spinach dip to show their love for football.   

Now, back to the e-mail I was going to check my lurid fantasies of Clay Matthews without his shirt on distracted me from my main intention when picking up my phone.  As I click on my e-mail, I am giddy to see it’s a reminder to re-join my Fantasy Football league where once again I can trash talk my older brother and his friends on our league’s message board and shock them all with bold pick-ups and drops every week.  I may not know everything about football, but I know enough to beat my brother last year and that is all that matters going into my second season.  Because last year was my first year doing fantasy football, I felt as if I was in a unique position as the only girl in our league of twelve teams to choose a really strong name.  After many hours of research and debate, I chose Va-Jay-Jay Cutler originally out of its pure comedic value.  Now, looking at it from a different frame I’m slightly offended that slang for my lady parts is paired with a crappy quarterback so I’ve relented to keep it for now only this year I will be dropping Cutler from the title.  The way I see it, va-jay-jays should be paired with terms of power and affirmation because va-jay-jays love football and the more va-jay-jays out there the better.  Did I make you uncomfortable again with the use of va-jay-jay talk mixed in with football?  I hope so, Va-jay-jay football!

Works Cited

Clark, John S., Artemisia Apostolopoulou, and James M. Gladden. "Real Women Watch Football: Gender Differences in the Consumption of the NFL Super Bowl Broadcast." Journal of Promotion Management 15.1-2 (2009): 165-83. EBSCO. Web. 24 July 2014.

"Female Sports Reporters." The Hollywood Reporter. The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Aug. 2013. Web. 24 July 2014.

"NFL Announces New Women’s Apparel and Gameday Party Campaign." NFL Communications. NFL Enterprises, 15 Sept. 2011. Web. 24 July 2014.

Smith, Rodney K. "Solving the Title IX Conundrum With Women's Football." South Texas Law Review 38 (1997): 1057-080. EBSCO. Web. 24 July 2014.

Toffoletti, Kim, and Peter Mewett. Sport and Its Female Fans. New York: Routledge, 2012. University of Iowa Libraries. 2012. Web. 24 July 2014.