Congratulations to Simone Biles, as she was named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for the third time in her career.
After taking time off to deal with her mental and physical health, Biles returned to competition in Chicago in August. Within two months she would win an eighth U.S. national championship and a sixth world all-around gold medal. Biles is the sixth woman to claim the AP honor for a third time.
Simone Biles was followed by Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark and Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmatí of the World Cup champion Spanish soccer team in voting.
Simone Biles married St. Louis native Jonathan Owens in the spring, and he is now a member of the Green Bay Packers. Without all the self-sought fanfare of Taylor Swift in Kansas City and other stadiums, Biles has attended several Packers games.
In the AP story announcing the award, Biles shared she recently posted an Instagram story in which followers were asked to post their best moment of 2023.
Her photo was not of a gold-medal winning gymnastics routine or Biles standing on the medal podium. She selected a photo of she and Owens dancing at their wedding reception
“At the end of the day I did worlds and all that stuff, but I did get married, I got to support him,” she said. “It’s just like, it’s kind of nice that gymnastics isn’t the main revolving piece.”
NFL improves racial/gender hiring grades
The National Football League is making progress in hiring of minorities and women, but the door remains closed when it comes to the respective owner’s suites.
The 2023 NFL Racial and Gender Report Card was released by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida last week and the league received a B+ for racial hiring practices and a B for gender hiring. The combined grade of a B+ is the best the NFL has achieved in the history of the report card.
“The report card shows the NFL has continued to make progress with their hiring practices within the League Office and across their teams,” said Adrien Bouchet, TIDES director and primary author of the report.
“However, there is still room for improvement in the disparities in the racial and gender hiring practices between the NFL League Office and the 32 teams.”
The NFL received a C for “Racial Hiring of Head Coaches.” Coaches of color make up 18.8% of the NFL’s head coaches. However, I think the grade should be lower because only two – Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers and DeMeco Ryans of the Houston Texans – identify as Black. Until the Las Vegas Raiders name Antonio Pierce head coach – he is the current interim head coach – I would not count him.
A 43% increase over last year led to the NFL receiving an A+ for Racial Hiring of Assistant Coaches.
The NFL received a glaring F for Racial Diversity of Team Owners, with just 3.1% being people of color. Obviously, there is no Black person who is majority owner of a franchise.
Because 21.9% of NFL owners are women, the league received a D+ for Gender Hiring.
Respective grades of C+ and C were given for Racial and Gender Hiring of Team Vice Presidents.
At the start of the 2023 season, there were nine people of color in a general manager position, representing 30% of all general managers. This was an increase of five percentage points from 2022 and 14.4% points in 2021.
Even with the F and other mediocre grades, the NFL’s score for race increased to 86.2%, 1.2 percentage points above last year’s score of 85%. The score for gender increased to 84%, 2.6 percentage points higher.
