CNN Sends Curious Message to Girls Who Are Interested in Football

I was watching CNN Newsroom this afternoon and caught a great story about a high school football team in South Carolina that has two girls on the varsity squad. Both are placekickers (pictured), and both have put points on the scoreboard this season. (You can read more about Kaci Poole and Elizabeth Mitchum here.) As the father of a daughter who often talks about how much she loves football, I was like, "Hey, Resha Kate, check this out!" (Granted, while Resha Kate talks about football, she never seems that interested in watching it and still can't always distinguish between football and baseball. She's two.)

Resha Kate paid no attention to the story, which was fortunate, because the segment that followed was a different kind of story about women in football. It was about the Lingerie Football League. (I can't locate the transcript for these segments, so you'll have to take my word for it.) Placing the stories back-to-back seemed to say, "Hey girls, in high school you can work hard to make it and earn the respect of your teammates in a sport where girls traditionally have not been welcome; then, a few years later, you can continue your football career by stripping down to your underwear so that depraved men can gawk at you." That ain't right. That's horrible.