Mike Ditka wants women (and everyone else) out of the Locker Room

"If the NFL had any guts, they'd bar all women from locker rooms after the game..."

The quote on its own sounds like something that could get the hair on the back of a feminist's leg to stand up and take notice.

Following the Ines Sainz debacle, Mike Ditka on the Kevin Calabro radio show in Seattle talks about the policy of allowing women in the locker room:

"If the NFL had any guts, they'd bar all women from locker rooms after the game. Period. And it would be a grace period of 20 minutes before you could talk to the players. And it would be in a media room.

Listen, I played for Coach Landry for a long time. There was no women in our locker room ever. So it was very simple. He had a rule. All the players would come to the media room, and they were required to go, and they went. They took their shower, they went to the media room about 20 minutes later. Fine. That was it. You interviewed them.

Now, why do they want to come to the locker room? I have never figured that out yet anyways?"

Ditka was quickly asked to clarify if he would allow male media members in the locker room but not women.

"No men. No women. Nobody."

And with that, a public denouncement from NOW was averted.

Ditka does bring up an interesting point about locker room access for media members. If given a choice, I'd take a media room environment over the locker room for interviewing players any day of the week.

However, there are a few complicating factors.

Organizations don't always have a suitable room outside the locker room to take players to for interviews.

The path between the locker room and the media room can, at times, be like the Bermuda Triangle. Some athletes tend to disappear before making it over to the microphones and cameras.

I'm also reminded of situations like Mark McGwire's. If media members didn't eventually notice the bottle of androstenedione in the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse, how would that have effected the trajectory of the story and the progress made on the issue in the present day?