Matt Walsh Says Female Sports Reporters Want to 'Feminize' Football

Matt Walsh claimed on Tuesday that female sports reporters were seeking to "feminize" football, which he said is a "mostly male space," and said at least one woman journalist was failing to "assimilate."

Walsh made the remarks on The Matt Walsh Show, while discussing Lindsey Gough, sports director with southeast Georgia's WOTC 11 TV station. Gough had tweeted on September 5 about the behavior of fans after Georgia defeated Clemson.

Gough posted a video of football fans apparently engaging in harassing behavior and even some men touching her without her consent as they passed her broadcast.

Walsh discussed Gough's experience on Tuesday and took the opportunity to say he preferred male sports reporters.

"I must say, this situation only demonstrates why I, personally, prefer for sports broadcasts, especially football broadcasts, to be handled mostly by men," Walsh said.

"Lindsey, though worse than the average—even as far as female sports reporters go—is definitely not the only female to enter into this mostly male space and seek to feminize it."

"She wants the football stadium to be quiet and gentle, considerate, respectful of personal space. She wants it to be a more feminine environment. She's not trying to assimilate herself into the culture of football fans, she is rather hoping that they assimilate themselves to her," he said.

Walsh went on to talk about female sports reporters in broader terms, saying that this was a "problem" across society.

"This is a problem across our culture," Walsh said. "Sports just happen to be an area where the problem is especially pronounced and obvious. Females enter into areas that have typically catered and mostly belong to men and then, often quite successfully, they try to change them, to emasculate them and thereby destroy the primary reason for their existence in the first place."

"This phenomenon is so far-reaching in football especially that they're even changing the rules now to make the game itself more gentle and feminine," Walsh went on.

"Football, you know, is still violent, but it's less violent than it used to be. This year they're even focusing on penalizing players who say mean or rude things to each other on the football field. They've been doing this during the pre-season in the NFL," he said.

"All of this, along with the token female sideline reporters and the female analysts at half-time—it's an effort to make the game less appealing to the people the game was invented for to begin with," he said.

Walsh took to Twitter early on Wednesday and acknowledged that his comments had garnered negative reaction.

"People are really mad about what I said about female football analysts but I didn't even advocate for a legal ban on the practice, so really I was being pretty tolerant and generous. You'd think these people would appreciate that. But I never get any credit," Walsh wrote.