Fantasy football and the NFL divide the sexes (and races), but women are creating space for themselves

OPINION: Women are growing in football’s highly masculine domain that remains wildly popular and extremely controversial. Explanations are unnecessary.

Facebook gives users 11 options for describing their relationship status with choices that include married, single and engaged. We must select the eighth alternative to honestly describe our relationship with the NFL.

It’s complicated.

For every element we might love, there’s an equally strong aspect to hate. Players’ speed and power versus teams’ racist and sexist hiring practices. Deep passes and long runs against denials of health risks and compensation for injuries. Social justice messages on helmets versus keeping Colin Kaepernick off rosters. The controlled and orchestrated violence during games against the sexual and domestic violence in-between.

A pet peeve percolates when it’s time for the national anthem. Oh, say can we stop? The game undeniably fosters unity on the field and camaraderie in the stands – regardless of class, creed or color. But current events and history prove such togetherness is fiction, despite the obsessive flag-wrapping and militaristic faux patriotism meant  to whitewash our polarized nation.

So, no, it’s not a cut-and-dried relationship. But I’m right there every Sunday (and most Mondays and Thursdays), like the majority of Americans who gather to watch NFL games and create TV ratings gold. I’ve been a fan since early childhood, too young to discern problematic issues. 

Other fans are relative newcomers, with waves flooding in from mobile betting and NFL fantasy football. The latter attracted Kenya Philips, , a financial analyst in New York who’s using a pseudonym for this article. Philips couldn’t care less about football until 2014, when she broke a barrier in her office’s fantasy league. 

“It all stemmed from my sense of gender equality,” she says. 

Philips learned about the league by chance – during draft night! – and was upset that women weren’t included. “I didn’t think that was very fair,” she says, noting company wide pools for March Madness and the Super Bowl are co-ed. “I thought they should open fantasy football to women.”  When a team became available the following season, she and a like-minded co-worker became co-owners. The two women knew not much about football, neither the fantasy version nor real life.

“I knew there was something called the Super Bowl and something called the quarterback,” Philips says. “I had zero interest.” But she and her partner dove headfirst into research, studying websites while asking pals for strategy and tips. The women avoided finishing last in their rookie campaign and reached the playoffs in their third season. Then they made history, in 2017-18, as the company’s  first back-to-back champions.

“When we won the second year, that really shut down all the haters who said the first year was luck,” Philips says. “It wasn’t luck. We knew what we were doing.”

She’s not the only woman who found football useful for fantasy after a lifetime of ignoring the sport. A 2018 study in the Journal of Sport Management found that “women represent the fastest growing demographic for the fantasy sports industry, making up approximately 38% of fantasy football participants.” The study found that men and women players share three similar motives – enjoy, enhance and socialize – but two factors were deemed unique to female participants – challenge and connect.

“It’s become fun because it’s another way to bond with the people I work with,” says Philips, who now spends NFL Sundays like tens of millions of Americans. “It’s a nice way to make friends, maintain friendships and participate in the national pastime. I enjoy going out with people and seeing the look of surprise when I tell guys I’m into fantasy football.”

Women have a growing presence in football’s highly masculine domain, but still are outnumbered. According to Statista, 51% of males consider themselves avid NFL fans and 30% are casual fans; among females, 24% are avid NFL fans while 42% aren’t fans at all. The league seeks to close that gap by making women feel welcome with more options to play, work or just be fans. 

Of course, the NFL wants to keep growing. It’s a capitalistic beast with an insatiable appetite for money. That’s another reason it’s such a turnoff to some, including former fans. But other folks have been indifferent forever, like Philips was nine years ago. She still has girlfriends in that camp.

“I have women friends in my different tribes – work tribe, church tribe, book club,” says. “There’s no football in any of those other circles. But I was happy to read that women’s interest in football and fantasy football is growing significantly. And when I’m reading news and doing my research, I enjoy when the authors are women.”

The NFL fantasy league in USA Today’s sports department had women in the ‘90s, when my Rapid Fire team won a title. The NFL editor was a woman. I have female friends who are hardcore fans, particularly a Floridian who dons a Philadelphia Eagles jersey for post game commentaries behind a podium. I also have sisters-in-law who have played fantasy and won suicide pools. 

Yet, plenty of women (and men) still don’t watch a lick of football, no explanations needed. “You can be not interested because you never developed an interest for a number of legitimate reasons,” Philips says. “You’re just not interested because it does nothing for you.”

Or, you can stoke a passionate love-hate relationship with the NFL despite your reservations, summing the difficult decision in two simple words:

It’s complicated.

Deron Snyder, from Brooklyn, is an award-winning columnist who lives near D.C. and pledged Alpha at HU-You Know! He’s reaching high, lying low, moving on, pushing off, keeping up, and throwing down. Got it? Get more at blackdoorventures.com/deron.

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