Things are changing fast in the NFL. Only a year after the league saw its first openly gay player, Michael Sam, drafted, it's also seen its first female coach hired. The Arizona Cardinals brought in psychologist, former pro football player and one-time Texas Revolution running back, Jen Welter, to be a coaching intern with the inside linebackers during this summer's training camp.
While the two groundbreaking moves seem only tenuously connected in that Sam and Welter both represent demographics formerly without representation within the league, Welter may actually have Sam partially to thank for her opportunity with Arizona and the NFL.
"It really started at the league meeting in March," Cardinals team owner Michael Bidwill said recently, via NFL.com. "It was here in Arizona actually at the Biltmore and we were having a discussion about the way the league had developed and whether it was time. Last year there was a lot of talk about Michael Sam and the impact he was going to make on our game and then the next step was; are there roles for women in non-traditional areas? Coach just started talking, he leaned over to me and said, 'I know we can go out and bring some folks in.'"
There's already been talk that Welter's hiring could lead to more women in positions of power, either as a member of the coaching staff, in the scouting department, within the front office, in the NFL. Some owners are said to be intrigued by the notion and are simply waiting for qualified candidates to make themselves known.
While Sam wasn't quite able to latch on with the St. Louis Rams and bounced around to the Dallas Cowboys practice squad before landing in the CFL this year and Welter's stay with Arizona is set to last just six weeks, the value of the historical work these two are doing is incalculable.
Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians is gruff and hard-nosed, but he's also forward-thinking. So is Rams head coach Jeff Fisher. As the league changes and attitudes shift, expect more coaches and owners to offer opportunities to women and homosexual men. And while the road may not be easy for these folks, they'll at least know that the bumps and bruises they suffer now will benefit others later on and that they'll be the forebears of a new generation of athletes.
