On October 8, Jessica Campbell coached her first game as an assistant coach for the Seattle Kraken. Campbell is the first female coach in the NHL.
When asked about the decision to hire Campbell, head coach Dan Bylsma reportedly insisted he was simply hiring the best coach and that Campbell fit the bill.
Her list of accolades is long and impressive. Campbell played college hockey at Cornell University, won numerous medals with the Canadian national team, and also played professionally in Canada and Sweden.
Is this really a situation where women are the best candidates? Or is this simply a woke agenda disguised as meritocracy?
Jason Whitlock and Steve Kim discuss a unique situation.
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Jason points to the reality that Campbell is 32 years old, attractive, and surrounded by male athletes in his own age group, and says, “There's no way it's going to end this badly.''
“I don’t want to be HR in Seattle,” he tells Steve.
However, Steve believes the bigger problem is the fact that women gain authority over men.
“At the highest level of professional sports, no man wants to be coached by a woman,” he tells Jason, no matter what women have been conditioned to say.
“If you're going to be yelled at and pointed at, if you're going to be disciplined at that level of athletics, then men are going to be disciplined by other men,” he said. claims.
But Jason thinks there's a bigger problem.
Given the amount of money NHL players make, he believes they would be more willing to “get on board” with inviting women into the league. However, in their private lives, they would probably resent it, saying, “This is not a competition in the true sense of the word,'' and that they are being made to “part of a social experiment.''
According to Jason, behind the scenes the players are probably thinking: This is a TV show, not a competition. ”
“I think it undermines the integrity of the game and makes players more cynical about the actual sport they're competing in,” he explains.
Steve then pointed out that men's hockey is still a “white man's sport that draws a lot of players from different parts of the world where things like DEI don't really happen.”
“I actually wonder how these people are going to perceive female leadership,” he says.
“DEI stuff is global,” counters Jason. “But as it pertains to athletes at home…as you say, this is not the structure they were raised in.”
“I think most of these white athletes come from two-parent family structures that are probably more patriarchal than matrilineal,” he adds, adding that this “furthers the cynicism” of athletes forced into submission. To Campbell's authority, he pointed out that only “does.''
When Jason returns to reality that Campbell is young and attractive, he is convinced that things won't work out this way.
“Any woman that's there during training camp is like that. Let's say in real life she's 6 years old. During training camp she's 8 1/2, almost 9,” he said at Ball State. He says this, citing his own experience playing soccer. .
“Female trainers became the most attractive people on the planet,” he recalled, adding that Campbell “would be attacked in that environment.”
If you want to hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.
