ESPN’s Mina Kimes Targeted with Dumb Jock Take

By Tom Jones, writing for Poynter…

As a former sports columnist who never played sports at a professional level, I heard it all the time.

“Who are you” fans would ask, “to criticize anyone? You never played the game.”

It wasn’t just fans. A few athletes even said that to me from time to time.

The irony lost in those moments was people who had never been sports columnists were telling me I was lousy at being a sports columnist. But I digress, and besides, everyone had a right to tell me I was a bum or that they didn’t like my columns.

I just never bought into the idea that you had to have played a sport to be able to criticize someone who does. After all, I’ve never been a chef, but I can tell the difference between a good juicy steak and one that tastes like the bottom of a sweaty tennis shoe.

That “you-never-played-the-game” take was always among the laziest and lamest forms of criticism. And while all sports journalists get their fair share of that knock, there’s little doubt that female sports journalists get it way worse than men.

That brings me to what happened in the past couple of days involving one of ESPN’s top NFL analysts.

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