Saturday night, after the Texas Longhorns stormed back to score 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points to beat the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, 24-23, ESPN’s Holly Rowe attempted to get a standard postgame interview with Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian on the field. But instead of speaking with her, Sarkisian yelled into the mic, flashed the “hook ‘em horns” sign and stormed off, leaving Rowe looking understandably perplexed and frustrated.
Sarkisian snubbing Rowe, who is universally respected in the industry, was enough by itself to spark a conversation about disrespect toward women sports journalists. But then came an artificial intelligence-generated video of Sarkisian not snubbing Rowe but slapping her so hard she hit the ground. At Monday’s media availability, when Texas quarterback Arch Manning was asked if he had seen any of the AI edits, he responded excitedly: “That’s a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? That’s hilarious.”
At Monday’s media availability, when Texas quarterback Arch Manning was asked if he had seen any of the AI edits, he responded excitedly: “That’s a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? That’s hilarious.”
The room, mostly full of men reporters and football admins, appeared to laugh along with Manning. Fans and commentators responded almost immediately with understandable anger that a star quarterback and a group of ostensibly professional men thought the image of a woman being slapped simply for doing her job was, to use Manning’s word, “hilarious.” On Tuesday, Manning issued an apology on Instagram.
“In my press conference yesterday, I made an insensitive comment about an AI video,” he wrote. “There is nothing funny about it. It’s easy to say I didn’t mean it, but I know my words and actions were hurtful to a lot of people. I do not take that lightly and am deeply sorry for that.”
He apologized specifically “to Holly Rowe for what she has personally had to deal with because of my comments,” writing, “I have a ton of respect for her and appreciate her showing me grace in this moment.”
To her credit, Rowe graciously accepted. She’s been in this industry long enough to have the thick skin every woman in sports needs to survive.
I worked with Rowe at ESPN, and I know her well enough to know she doesn’t need me, or anyone else, defending her. But the AI video and a room of men laughing about it is the latest in a string of events in which many men have shown themselves all too comfortable with misogyny, including outright depictions of violence against women.
Last month, an ad promoting a collaboration between Good Good Golf and Callaway on Callaway’s Quantum Driver showed Garrett Clark, a co-founder of Good Good Golf, pushing golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground when she reaches for a club, standing over her and saying, “Do not touch my new driver.” Clark later apologized, calling it “the worst ad known to man.” Callaway cut ties with Good Good Golf and pledged $1 million to organizations that work to prevent violence against women. Multiple retailers reported removing Good Good Golf’s items from its shelves. Also last month, a male fan at a WNBA game in Los Angeles attempted to revive last season’s despicable trend of throwing sex toys on the court during games.
Taken together, it seems that the most juvenile among us have taken over the discourse.
Predictably, those of us who find fault with this misogynistic behavior are being accused of having no sense of humor, of not understanding comedy. But what is the comedy in a football coach slapping a woman reporter doing her job? What’s the punchline in a woman being violently stopped from touching a man’s driver? What are we to find funny about dildos being tossed on a court where women are playing basketball?
The collective response among most of my peers when they heard about the Manning comments was some form of, “This again? We’re really still doing this?” The most generous interpretation of these events is that the men involved might not be actively promoting violence against women — but that they sure find it funny. That’s not very generous at all.
What is the comedy in a football coach slapping a woman reporter doing her job? What’s the punchline in a woman being violently stopped from touching a man’s driver?
The fact is that these incidents reignite old debates about “locker room talk,” a debate that at its core is really about whether sports are spaces for men only. The underlying message when someone laughs at a fake video of a coach slapping a woman reporter, or when an ad shows a golfer pushing a woman to the ground and threatening her over a golf club, or when a bunch of crypto bros throw dildos onto a court full of women athletes is the same: You don’t belong here. And the laughter by those surrounding these bros serves to condone this behavior.
I’m not here to litigate “comedy,” if that’s what you think this is, and I should hope by now most people would understand that certain jokes and videos can be materially harmful. Study after study has shown that laughing about violence can reinforce violent behavior. It discourages victims from speaking out, collectively desensitizes us and emboldens abusers.
These dynamics are amplified in sports, which, despite the vast strides women have made in the last two decades, are still dominated by men. I’ve been a part of conversations in certain sports circles about men “scaring the hoes,” a misogynistic hip-hop phrase used to describe men who unwittingly come across as threatening to women. Men laughing at an AI video of Sarkisian slapping Rowe would fall into this category.
We talk a lot about the male loneliness crisis, and sports can both help and hurt in that regard. They help by fostering community, healthy relationships and actual, real-life interaction in a world that increasingly distills our humanity through a screen. They exacerbate the problem when they exist in insular spaces in which men don’t check other men’s behavior or attitudes. That doesn’t mean getting rid of predominantly male spaces entirely. But it does mean that it’s largely on other men to make sure their friends know how to act, so a room full of male reporters isn’t encouraging a player to laugh at violence against one of their colleagues.
The problem isn’t that we women can’t take a joke. It’s that violence against women isn’t one, and we have reason to be wary around those who think it is.
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