NFL Combine: Female Kicker Lauren Silberman is Blazing a Trail in a Sexist Sports World

We’ve heard of female kickers trying to make it in college football and no one is trying to make it as close to the pros as possible. New York native Lauren Silberman will make history on March 2nd when she becomes the first female to ever participate in a regional NFL Draft Combine. Silberman said she wasn’t aware that she was the first female to ever apply and try out at an NFL combine but she’s more than thrilled to be doing so.

Unfortunately, even if she ends up being the best kicking prospect since Sebastian Janikowski, an NFL team is not going to pick her and it’s a crying shame. Distraction, sideshow and publicity stunt are likely all descriptions that will be used to describe a team that drafts or even signs Silberman if she impresses at the combine.

The prospect of a female playing in the NFL is something that excites a lot of people as the gender barrier is something that has yet to be broken through. For years the defense has been that keeping women off the gridiron is “for their own good” which is a ridiculously sexist thing to even think. Women are not timid, fragile creatures — have you ever watched an episode of Mob Wives or any of those Real Housewives shows?

Keeping women away from any type of football that requires them to prance around in their underwear for the amusement of lazy, fat and drunken men is one of the black eyes on professional sports and it needs to change. Should we open up the flood gates and let every women who wants to try out: why the hell not?

Think about the sports where women are allowed to be featured as prominently as men. When it comes down to it, people apparently are only comfortable with allowing women to plays pro sports if it’s a niche sport like soccer or any of the extreme sports like snowboarding or skiing as when it comes to every popular sport in America, women are forced into leagues of their own.

When does the segregation end; segregation kept Josh Gibson, perhaps the greatest ballplayer to ever live, out of the majors and therefore out of the running for all the records he holds. Who’s to say we’ve had generations of women come and go who could have held their own against the greats of our past, but we’ll never know since the idea of women playing with men is still for some reason unorthodox.

[READ: Lauren Silberman will Become First Female Kicker to Participate in NFL Combine]

So a woman gets chop-blocked or she gets flattened on an illegal hit, who cares? Have you seen these women during bridal sales, Ray Lewis couldn’t even stop one of them from getting what they want.

Women deserved to be cuddled, not coddled like they can’t watch out for themselves. We have women in political power in this country, so why can’t we have them on the gridiron or on the diamond or even on the hardwood.

If a woman isn’t cut out for a sport, she’s not going to rise up high enough to get an opportunity. They shouldn’t be cut any breaks but they also shouldn’t be blocked either.

It’s incredibly liberal and politically correct to want women to play in sports with men and some people will always be uncomfortable with it. But people were uncomfortable with African-American’s playing major league baseball and look how stupid of a notion that turned out to be. Basically, it’s 2013 but a woman can bake a pie, run a company, be a politician or even an NFL owner but she can’t play professional sports with men.

Silberman has a chance to bring this issue into the forefront of people’s minds and it’s about time that it’s been done. Before Silberman, even the most talented female athlete saw her potential realized at the collegiate level. She might not make a team and she might not even make it to the super-regionals, but we have a woman trying out for the NFL next month and the only laughable thing about it is that it took until 2013 to have it be done.