National Football League

Title IX stories: Sam Gordon's fight for the right to play football

Updated Jun. 24, 2022 3:05 p.m. ET

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By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of FOX Sports' series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which was enacted into law on June 23, 1972. The series tells the stories of significant women in sports today, both celebrating the progress that has been made and recognizing the barriers that still remain.

How’s your day going? Getting much done?

I can happily report from this end that the day is passing by quite productively so far. I’ve taken out the trash, dropped off the kids at their various sports activities, done a few dishes, chatted with my editor and, as of now, written about 5 percent of this daily column.

All of which made me feel quite good until I realized that the subject of today's column, women’s football pioneer Sam Gordon, has already been on a sweltering Salt Lake City field for hours, taking what she hopes will be the latest critical steps in gaining a more established foothold for women in America’s most popular game.

Gordon is a student-athlete at Columbia University, which is like saying that Tom Brady is a resident of Central Florida. It’s true; there’s just a lot more to it than that.

Three years ago, Gordon was a participant in one of the most loved Super Bowl commercials of all time as the NFL commemorated its 100-year anniversary. She featured alongside luminaries such as Brady, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning and many more, picked up the ball late in the clip, faked out Richard Sherman with a devastating spin move and tossed the pigskin to Saquon Barkley.

Seven years before that, she went viral when footage emerged of her 9-year-old self, slicing past boys with incredible speed and sidesteps in a Utah junior football league.

In between, she was the instigator of a Title IX lawsuit that attempted to force Utah legislators to permit girls' tackle football as part of the state's approved sports list. She’s currently on the advisory board for the X League, a new 7-on-7 pro women’s league supported by Mike Ditka.

She’s also 19. Needless to say, her schedule is off-the-charts busy, with all the extracurriculars combined with life as a rising sophomore at Columbia (where she plays on the women’s soccer team) while aiming for a future career in sports broadcasting.

But it’s not all work, no play. Because Gordon has always been about wanting to play.

"That’s the reason behind everything: to just have the right to play," she told me in a recent telephone conversation. "One of the most frustrating things through all this was being told that girls don’t want to play football. I can tell you that we do. We just need the opportunity, nothing more than that.

"That’s what drives me, to see women getting the same sort of opportunities as men to play football, to develop their love of football further and to have it be a big part of their lives. High school football teams for girls, little leagues, a well-established pro league."

With Gordon’s presence in its milestone commercial, the NFL effectively stated that the future of football includes a far more significant role for women. Women coaches have made their way onto NFL staffs and into executive positions. However, Gordon knows that progress can be maximized only if all the girls and women who want to play are able to.

For her part, Gordon was driven to take up football from watching her brother, Max, and she failed to see why her enjoyment of the game should be restricted to watching it.

Despite being first in every drill in practices for a local junior league, she had 80 boys picked ahead of her when the teams were selected. As the viral footage and stats of 13 yards per carry showed, that was a mistake.

Once high school began, though, she had nowhere left to play — hence the lawsuit citing Title IX. The suit did not succeed in forcing Utah to add girls' football as a competitive sport, but it did lead to the implementation of girls' cheer and wrestling programs. So Gordon took matters into her own hands, playing a founding role in a tackle league for girls that has grown to more than 600 players and 36 teams, with title games in Salt Lake City’s Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The 50th anniversary of Title IX was Thursday, and this column is the final part of a FOX Sports series highlighting the seminal legislation’s role in American life. Some stories looked back on the historical aspect of it; this one is meant to look forward. Who more appropriate than a teenager who is trying to make things better? Who is trying to carry Title IX further?

"The biggest obstacle is, and has always been, battling stereotypes," Gordon said. "Girls and women have to prove we want to play despite the evidence. It is hard to break down those barriers."

In some ways, football might be Title IX’s last frontier. It wasn’t a great stretch to persuade the public that women’s basketball was worthy of support. Even boxing and mixed martial arts cleared that obstacle. But football, arguably the most stereotypically male of all sports, remains a hurdle in some minds.

Gordon and the collection of young women she inspires don’t want to change the game from what it is. They just want to be able to join in, with an increase in opportunities for women to play against women.

To that end, this week’s UA Next football camp in conjunction with Under Armour — featuring former NFL players and coaches on the staff list — has brought in more than 150 girls for the chance to improve their skills under elite supervision. Each participant will receive a pair of UA Smoke MC Blur cleats, which Gordon helped launch as the first-ever such product specifically designed for women.

Gordon is doing her thing, which is based on a simple, genuine principle — the love of a sport. The motivation behind her activism has never been to alter the fundamental principles of football or hijack the way things are run.

It is just a wish to move forward and modernize, to usher in a time when instead of "Let us play," the message can simply be, "Let’s play."

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider newsletter. You can subscribe to the daily newsletter here.

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