Asking for some space

Females forced to share locker rooms with males apparently aren’t the only athletes with privacy concerns.

The National Football League’s players union is working with the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) to try to adjust the NFL’s media access policies so reporters can interview players in more public settings.

The reason is simple: “[Players] do not want to be interviewed when they’re naked,” Lloyd Howell, executive director of the NFL Players Association, told The Washington Post.

Pro sports leagues and major college conferences have varying policies concerning media access to players: Some require teams to bring head coaches and key players to postgame press conferences. Others will bring requested players to reporters at spots outside the locker room, be it a media room or just outside the locker room door.

Still, in America’s most high-profile sports leagues, locker rooms are the venues where pregame and postgame interviews most frequently take place. And since public accommodation laws prohibit teams from discriminating on the basis of sex, teams must give female journalists access to spaces populated by men in various states of undress.

In some cases, that has worked both ways—sort of: The Women’s National Basketball Association used to require players to remain in uniform for 20 minutes after games. After a 10-minute “cooling off” period, male and female journalists could enter locker rooms and interview players during the remaining 10 minutes. (The WNBA ended media locker room access last season.)

Current NFL media policy requires teams to provide “wrap-around towels” or robes to players and urges teams to take additional privacy measures, such as giving players shorts to wear under their towels or robes. Team communications staffers must also warn players when their locker rooms are about to be opened to the media.

The NFL has not indicated whether it intends to change its media policy. Some reporters feel no change is needed.

“I don’t think any reporter wants to talk to a butt-naked player,” Dallas Morning News sportswriter Calvin Watkins, the PFWA’s president, told the Post. “There are already rules in place for the player to have privacy before doing the interview. We have reiterated that to the union.”

Rayssa Leal Rodolfo Buhrer/AGIF/AP

Signs of life at the Olympics

Amid a Paris Olympics marred by an opening ceremony that seemed to mock Christians, a Brazilian skateboarder used her platform to declare her faith.

After capturing the bronze medal in the street skateboarding competition, 16-year-old Rayssa Leal used Brazilian sign language to declare, “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.” She did so despite an Olympic ban on religious demonstrations.

Leal told the Brazilian media outlet UOL that she signs John 14:6 after every competition. “For me it is important,” Leal said. “I am Christian. I believe a lot in God.”

While Rule 50 of the International Olympic Committee’s charter calls for the Games to remain free of religious demonstrations, IOC officials insisted that athletes are free to represent themselves, their faiths, and their countries. —R.H.