Female owners encourage young women to pursue football path

It took Sheila Ford Hamp about one second to respond when asked about the potential for women in key roles in the NFL.

“The sky is the limit for anything females want to do,” said Hamp, the principal owner of the Detroit Lions.

Echoing that statement was Dee Haslam, the Cleveland Browns' co-owner:

“We’re seeing more and more women that love the sport and who want a career in sports. The door has swung wide open and I am so excited. I look forward to the moment when we don’t have to talk about how we get the door open for women and people of color, that the door is wide open.”

Those words were embraced by the 40 young women — and potential pro football employees — attending the league's fifth annual Women's Careers in Football Forum late last month. Although it was held virtually for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the forum's message came through loud and clear.

No more so than when listening to Hamp, who took over running the Lions before last season from her mother, Martha Ford, and Haslam, who owns the Browns with her husband, Jimmy.

Hamp related a telling story about women's opportunities decades ago.

“When I graduated from college all I wanted to do was go work for the NFL. I loved football and grew up with it,” she said. "I actually knew the commissioner, Pete Rozelle. My dad had taken me to league meetings and I had an opportunity to sit next to him at dinner and we kind of became friends and he was impressed about how much a girl new about football.

“When I graduated, I went to see him, and he really tried and he liked me, but he couldn’t think of one thing a woman could do in the NFL.”

That, of course, was decades ago. Now, as Haslam emphasized, there are women making impacts at every level of the league — from...