Torrey Smith

Beware of the straight meat watchers.

That’s the advice of former NFL receiver Torrey Smith, who posted Friday about the players’ efforts to change the league’s media policy, and kick reporters out of the locker room during the week.

Currently, players are required to be available during an open locker room period on practice days, which lasts for 45 minutes.The players’ union says the tradition is outdated, as well as invasive.

“We, the NFLPA Executive Committee, urge the NFL to make immediate changes to foster a more respectful and safer workplace for all players,” writes the players’ association in a statement. “In the meantime, we encourage each player to ask for interviews outside of the locker room during the week.”

The players’ push to bar media members from the locker room is probably two-fold. For one, it is a play to further control coverage.

With access increasingly curtailed–reporters used to be allowed on the team plane, for example–the locker room is the last place where journalists can converse with players in a non-controlled environment. When it comes to building relationships, free-wheeling interactions are crucial.

Of course, players aren’t all that interested in building relationships with reporters anymore. Thanks to social media, they can communicate with fans directly, and bypass the objective middle man.

With those concerns in mind, there are legitimate journalistic arguments for keeping the locker room open. But that doesn’t mean the set up–reporters roaming around while players are in various states of undress–isn’t awkward.

That’s true for both sides, by the way.

Think of the arrangement this way: would you be comfortable asking strangers for comment in the gym locker room, as they emerge from the showers? Conversely, how would you feel about a cameraman approaching you in a vulnerable moment, with nothing but a dainty white towel covering your nether regions?

Smith alludes to the former scenario in his post.

“If only y’all knew how awkward some of the male reporters act,” he writes. “Straight meat watchers.”

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There are a few parts of Smith’s remark to unpack. It’s true that unfounded concerns about gay athletes sneaking peeks at their teammates have long been used as a homophobic trope in sports.

ESPN lended credence to the asinine fear 10 years ago, when a reporter used her locker room access to ask players about Michael Sam’s showering habits. (Los Angeles Rams Pro Bowler Chris Long had the perfect response, telling ESPN that everyone but them was “over it.”)

As gay players themselves will tell you, the locker room is not a stimulating setting. It is a work place. Plain and simple. Straight people who are worried about gay people peeping on them should get over themselves.

But Smith… isn’t talking about gay people. He specifically calls out “straight” meat watchers.

Now we’re talking! We know straight dudes are weird about the male body, hence why some of them are concerned with gay people standing near them while they apply deodorant after a workout.

Long-time sports journalist Jemele Hill alluded to that reality in her reply. It’s worth noting that female reporters are confronted with the same nonsense about peeping, too…

“This doesn’t surprise me at all. Most women I know who had to go in men’s locker rooms are terrified of the idea of being caught doing something like that,” she wrote. “We’re just trying to get in, get out and go relatively unnoticed. Put it this way, I’ve never heard a female reporter describe what they’ve seen, but I have heard male reporters do that 😂.”

Though Hill mentioned male reporters, she could also be referring to male owners–or at least one of them. Recently resurfaced footage shows Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones boasting to Jamie Foxx about how much one player was, ahem, packing. (We’d expect nothing less from a man who once talked about his desire for “some glory hole…”)

It makes sense that women would be more comfortable being around bare men than straight guys. That’s because… they’re used to it!

The same can be said for gay guys.

To prove Smith’s point, Cleveland Browns tight end David Njoku conducted an interview Friday in nothing but tight athletic shorts. And one guy standing to his right kept glancing at something… while the woman standing next to him was not.

We would expect nothing less.

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