As much of the sports world is praising the NFL for hiring Sarah Thomas as its first female official, Jacksonville Jaguars lineman Sen’Derrick Marks has a different take. Marks started off well with “For women, it’s great. Ain’t nothing wrong with it, especially as long as she knows what she’s doing.”
According to TMZ Sports, Marks continued by comparing the hiring of Thomas to the drafting of the openly gay Michael Sam last year, saying it was mostly for publicity:
“It’s just like the Michael Sam situation — if he wasn’t gay, he would’ve gone undrafted. Instead the league drafts him because I think they are trying to monopolize on every aspect of the world … the same thing with hiring a female ref.
“For the league it’s great publicity. The NFL is all about monopolizing every opportunity.”
Marks probably isn’t the only player to think this, but he’s the first as far as we know to make his feelings public. Give him credit, he did say he hopes that the hiring works out.
