Kevin Kiley, a morning drive radio host on CBS Cleveland’s 92.3 The Fan, has a problem with women working in professional sports. Kiley made some very stupid comments about the NFL’s first female official in April, saying the job “calls for a lot of ‘man traits,'” and he got even worse Thursday following the Buffalo Bills’ hire of Kathryn Smith as the NFL’s first full-time female assistant coach. Kiley included “There’s no place for a woman in professional sports, in football, coaching men,” and many, many more Neanderthalic hot takes in his rant:
Kiley’s take on how this applies to Hall of Fame voting’s particularly funny, and hypocritical:
This is the old conversation we had about having a woman vote for the Hall of Fame in football. It’s absurd. I mean do you really want your determination, whether you make the Hall of Fame in football, do you want a woman to have a vote on that, who’s never played the game and doesn’t understand the intensity of the game?
Let’s examine just how good Kiley’s own football career was, shall we? From Wikipedia:
Kiley played college football at the University of Wyoming, was cut by the NFL’s New York Jets before the 1974 season without ever playing, and then played one season with the World Football League’s Chicago Fire.
But hey, he says his genitalia make him qualified to evaluate excellence! Because he’s a big, tough man who can physically “impose his will” on others!
When you stand next to a woman are you bigger and stronger? Do you have the ability to impose your will physically on most people? Women don’t have that.
Kiley goes on to say he doesn’t mind equality outside of football, though, which is the equivalent of “I’m not racist, I have many black friends.”
Football is about physical advantage. [Women] are at a loss when it comes to the reference points of football. This is not discrimination against women. I don’t care if a woman is President, that’d be great. I don’t care if a woman runs a corporation, that’d be great. But don’t set people up to fail. …She couldn’t possibly be qualified to the same level that a man could be qualified to do that.
Well, Kathryn Smith has spent seven years as a NFL player personnel assistant, two as an administrative assistant to a NFL head coach, and has also worked as a college scouting intern, so she seems much more qualified from the coaching perspective than your average special teams quality control coach (a position often given to those just starting out). She’s certainly spent much more time in both the Jets’ organization and in the NFL than Kiley did. But hey, Kiley’s son is a WWE wrestler, so perhaps Kiley is just embracing a heel role here. Let’s hope so, because actually holding these opinions would be pretty stupid.
[Deadspin]
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