Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 10, 1992 TAG: 9203100186
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"What do you think is going on in that locker room?" she said Monday at, of all places, Washington and Lee University's law school. "It's dirty, it's grimy - it's nowhere you want to be. It's not sexy. I dread it."
It's simply a part of her job. "I don't want to get in the locker room," she said. "I want to get to the athletes. They happen to be in the locker room."
Mo Elewonibi of the Washington Redskins would rather have reporters - male and female - stay out of the locker room, too.
After one game last year, he was toweling off in the noisy locker room when he saw a bright light over his shoulder. He turned around and, to his horror, saw a crowd of TV reporters had cornered coach Joe Gibbs right behind him.
"I dived into my locker," he said.
Roberts and Elewonibi were at W&L for a panel discussion of "Media in the Locker Room: A Question of Access."
It's not the most serious topic with which W&L's law students will grapple, but it's one that involves privacy rights, equal opportunity and the First Amendment.
As a matter of fact, it took a federal court ruling in 1978 for female reporters to get access to locker rooms.
The issue was in the headlines again in 1990, when the NFL fined three New England Patriots players for harassing reporter Lisa Olsen while she was trying to do a locker-room interview. Also that fall, Cincinnati Bengals coach Sam Wyche was fined $27,500 for refusing to let a female reporter into the locker room after a game.
The Bengals had just lost to the Seattle Seahawks, which helps explain Wyche's behavior, former NFL coach Sam Rutigliano said.
"It never happens before a game or at halftime," he said. "It always happens at the end of the game, in the loser's locker room."
Rutigliano, now coaching Liberty University's football team, offered his own locker-room story from 1978, when he was coaching the Cleveland Browns.
"I came out of the shower naked, and there was a female reporter. I was absolutely embarrassed. She wasn't . . . ," he said. "I quickly covered up. I conducted the interview with a towel wrapped around me."
The next season, he said, all the Browns' players and coaches got terry cloth bathrobes.
The NFL allows teams to have a 15-minute "cool-down period" after a game before reporters are allowed into the locker room. When that 15 minutes is up, it's a stampede, Roberts said.
One alternative, she said, would be a separate interview room where players could meet the media. That's the way it's done in professional tennis, for example. "We wouldn't think of going into the locker room" after a tennis match, Roberts said, imagining John McEnroe whacking her on the head with a racket.
But when a football team loses a game, the players might try to avoid reporters by slipping out the back door, Roberts said.
"I know what you mean; I've ducked one or two interviews," Elewonibi said, laughing.
And old hands who have covered teams for years probably wouldn't want to give up the locker-room camaraderie, Roberts said.
by CNB