The Most Dangerous Game

The intrinsic relationship between football and misogyny

By Kylie Heider

By now, the misogyny of football culture has been written and talked about ad nauseum. Still, it is always good to start with a primer. Football is a sport made exclusively for men. Unlike other popular sports like soccer, hockey, or basketball, there is no practice of football that involves women as players in a substantial setting. Though this can be attributed to the nature of the game itself—a linebacker, for example, has to be heavy-set and giant-like in stature in order to fulfill his role, effectively excluding most female-identifying bodies—it still stands as a fact. Like so many other spaces, football is a man’s space: a space where ideals of masculinity are not only maintained but magnified into toxicity, a space where fraternity—the well being of a team of brothers—is placed above all else. And it is no coincidence that such a space has reached the level of cultural significance that football has. 

At the University of Minnesota, as is the case at many other colleges, the Gopher football team is a cornerstone of the University’s identity. It should be explicitly stated that there is nothing inherently wrong with this fact. The Gophers provide a rallying cry for current and former students alike, a community built in the stadium and the parking lots and the University Avenue B-Dubs. However, it is also important to acknowledge that the extent to which American football is preserved and proliferated within a national cultural identity is a product of a value system based in male superiority. It seems a futile task to criticize something on this basis, for the same can be said for the majority of American institutions. But football is not subtle in its sexism. The game is a microcosm wherein the masculine standard is celebrated and the presence of women is, quite literally, on the sidelines, cheering them on. Under such conditions, harm and injustice towards the non-male seems to be a natural progression of the sport, permeating into the society that celebrates and congregates around it.  

The environment of misogyny in which football exists translates into an ideal space for the acceptance of physical violence against women. In 2014, Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice was famously caught on tape beating and dragging his girlfriend in an elevator. In a 2014 FiveThirtyEight analysis, analyst Benjamin Morris claims that though the 55.4% relative arrest rate for domestic violence in NFL player aged 25-29 was less than the national average for men of the same age group, “domestic violence accounts for 48 percent of arrests for violent crimes among NFL players, compared to our estimated 21 percent nationally,” and it was “extremely high relative to expectations . . . 55.4 percent is more than four times worse than the league’s arrest rate for all offenses (13 percent).” Since 2014, there have been numerous accounts of domestic violence and sexual assault among both NFL and NCAA players, such as NFL runningback Kareem Hunt or Florida State’s Jameis Winston, both of whom face domestic abuse or sexual assault charges. In 2016, 10 Gopher football players were suspended after allegations of sexual assault, in which the team responded by “announc[ing] . . . that they would boycott all football activity until the 10 suspended players were reinstated and until [then] university President Eric Kaler and [then] athletics director Mark Coyle apologized for the suspensions.” The fact that, just three years ago, the University of Minnesota football team felt this was the appropriate response to their teammates possibly being rapists perfectly illustrates the systemic misogyny that exists within the institution of American football: the prioritization of the masucline ideal over the wellbeing of women. 

Football is, and will likely continue to be, a ceremony of men and manliness. It is impossible for such a ceremony to be neutral to women. It is impossible for such a ceremony to exist outside the bounds of patriarchy. And yet, football will continue to exist as it does. What’s more, plenty of women love football. Perhaps the solution lies in the direct inclusion of women within the processes of the game: as refs, as owners, as coaches, as individuals, which dislodge the cogs of misogyny and turn the wheels of the game. Couldn’t hurt to try.