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Aidan Hutchinson combined football and dance in the new State Farm campaign
Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson discusses his new partnership with State Farm and how he brought his past dance career into play.
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NEW YORK – The NFL Players Association on Friday called for limits on locker room interviews, saying they are an invasion of player privacy and urging members to seek interviews outside the locker room during the week.
Reporters regularly mingle with players in the locker room on game day and on practice days, putting members of the media in close contact with the athletes thanks to media policies that the players’ association called “outdated.”
“Players feel that locker room interviews violate their privacy and make them feel uncomfortable. This is not about limiting access to the media, but about respecting the privacy and dignity of players,” the NFLPA said in a statement .
“We, the NFLPA Executive Committee, urge the NFL to make immediate changes to promote a more respectful and safer workplace for all players.”
The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pro Football Writers of America said in a statement: “NFL players asking to speak outside the locker room has always been part of the league’s media access policy.”
“We are continuing discussions with NFLPA executives regarding media access policies,” the statement said. “The goal is to make everyone feel comfortable in the locker room and for players and clubs to follow the NFL’s media policy.”
NFLPA player representative Ted Karras, a center for the Cincinnati Bengals, told reporters this week that player discomfort during locker room interviews is a long-standing problem.
The topic came back to the fore, he said, after “a few guys (were) naked on camera this year.”
Karras said the hope was that each team could come up with a plan to conduct interviews outside the locker room during the week on practice days, to “take cameras off guys during private moments.”
“This has been a topic of discussion since COVID — with the COVID protocol of no one being in the locker room — and it’s been brought up several times since,” Karras said. “And now we think it’s time to do it.”
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