Andrew Whitworth on naked Bengals being filmed: ‘This is a big issue for me’
Cincinnati Bengals cornerback and return man Adam “Pacman” Jones was interviewed by NFL Network on Sunday after their victory over the Buffalo Bills, and it was notable for what it revealed.
It was nothing the sometimes outspoken Jones said; instead it was the fact that several Bengals players were shown without clothes as they dressed in the locker room behind Jones.
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The segment was taped and then shown on a live show, which seemed to surprise the network’s hosts, who clearly saw the nudity on display.
This led to Bengals offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth, one of the team’s NFLPA representatives and one of the players displayed on the Jones video, to speak out against what happened.
“This is a big issue for me,” Whitworth said, per ESPN.com. “I’ve pressed this issue before with our union and the fact I think it’s wrong.”
Whitworth said he doesn’t believe media should be present in locker rooms after games.
“This is my office space,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to change in it and be in front of people I don’t know or really don’t have any purpose of being near me other than the fact they are interviewing other people.”
Media covering NFL games typically are allowed into the locker room about 10 minutes after the end of games. Sometimes that length of time is longer based on different interpretations of the rules outlined by the NFL and NFLPA, or if the head coach speaks with his team longer than normal.
Whitworth believes there’s a sexual double standard that exists here.
“If I was a woman, this would be a completely different subject, and it would be a complete firestorm,” he said. “We can’t always just serve women and everyone else. Men deserve a right, too. We have rights. We have privacy. We deserve all the things we want, as well. As a man, I think it’s right the policy is changed.”
NFL Network vice president of communications Alex Riethmiller issued an apology on behalf of the network and regretted the error.
“[We apologize] to everybody that was affected: to the players, to the organization, to the viewing public, first and foremost,” Riethmiller said to Cincinnati-area media. “It was a regrettable mistake by our production team. … We’ve already done a pretty thorough review of the procedures and processes that were dropped along the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Whitworth believes the process should be changed. Colleges often will bring multiple players to podiums for postgame interviews, but in the NFL typically only quarterbacks and head coaches do that. Locker rooms then open up after the desginated cooling-off period.
Should the process be changed? Whitworth thinks there’s a better way to coordinate and handle postgame media obligations.
“It’s not like it bothers me personally,” Whitworth said. “[But] you can’t judge us off who we will and won’t accept into our locker room and then say all these things we have to do, but then also put us in a situation where every single day I have to change clothes and be naked or not in front of media. It’s just not right. There’s no office. There’s no other situation in America where you have to do that. It’s dated, it’s old, and it needs to change.”
To play devil’s advocate, media members always are going to fight for their rights for as much access as possible, and most outlets — including NFL Network — do a good job of protecting the players’ rights. The unspoken rule in locker rooms is to wait for players to get fully dressed before they are approached for interviews, and in the case of the Jones interview it’s uncommon to have a camera pointed back toward the locker room at large and rather toward the locker itself so that no other clothed or unclothed players appear in the shot.
Would PR staff provide all the players the media members sought to speak with? It likely would create a logistical mess. Media could request a player, but it’s a lot easier for him to shirk his media duties — and players evading the media chronically can be subject to fines, a la Marshawn Lynch — if approached by a friendly PR official who works for a team than by media members who have questions after games.
We understand Whitworth’s argument, and he has a point in that his rights were essentially violated — and that there should be no double standard for men or women. But we also know that bringing players to a podium would create a difficult scenario for media members on deadline and perhaps force players to have to answer for their teammates’ actions, which is a situation everyone prefers to avoid.
Example: If the Indianapolis Colts failed to open the locker room Sunday night and only brought out one player from the punt team, that player could inadvertanly throw either Griff Whalen or Colt Anderson — the two key figures in the failed fake punt — by not allowing them to explain what they were thinking when the ball was snapped in a key play against the New England Patriots.
Perhaps there’s room for revised player access. But we believe that the Bengals accident is far more the exception than the norm based on our own experiences covering NFL locker rooms for more than a decade.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
