With every new football season comes big changes. But when this fall’s season rolls around, the biggest change will have nothing to do with the teams, their players or their coaches. That’s because the NFL recently announced that this year, it would welcome Sarah Thomas as its first female full-time official.

Thomas’ new job won’t have any effect on how football is played; she’ll call the shots just like any other official. However, it does say a lot about football’s transforming culture.

And it’s not just football that’s changing; the entire world of sports is becoming more inclusive than ever before. There may be some negative outliers, but they shouldn’t stop professional sports from continuing this progress.

While Thomas may be the first female official, she wasn’t chosen simply to make history — or to make up for any of the NFL’s recent domestic violence scandals. In fact, she’s well qualified for her position. Getting her start in 1996, Thomas was the first woman to officiate at a college bowl game and has appeared in several preseason NFL games.

Thomas’ hiring might even pave the way for female coaches in the NFL. In an ESPN.com interview, Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians suggested the league would be open to the idea saying, “the minute (women) can prove they can make a player better, they’ll be hired.”

This doesn’t mean teams should hire women just for show, but it does signal openness toward women who can coach just as well as men. Hopefully, seeing Thomas shattering the NFL’s glass ceiling will inspire other women to pursue officiating and even coaching careers.

The NFL should take a page from the NBA’s book when comes to female coaches. In August, the San Antonio Spurs hired Becky Hammond as the association’s first full-time female assistant coach. A former WNBA player, Hammond earned her position because of her basketball IQ and coaching skills.

Baseball is also making strides for women’s rights, but not through new coaches or officials. Instead, MLB is implementing new domestic violence policies.

With these new programs, MLB is finally acknowledging its domestic violence track record, which is even worse than the NFL’s. However, MLB isn’t waiting for a high profile case to make a change. These new policies will make it easier to punish players who commit domestic violence or sexual assault and will require all players to attend mandatory domestic violence education programs.

However, there’s still a lot of discrimination left in sports. Even if sports organizations themselves are changing, not everyone has kept up with the pace. Recently, Wal-Mart decided it would not display UFC champion Ronda Rousey’s new memoir on its shelves because the book was “too violent.”

Wal-Mart carries DVDs documenting UFC fights and books about male wrestlers, many even aimed at children, but apparently a book about a female fighter is just too violent to stock in stores.

But this bump in the road shouldn’t distract from all the progress women have made in sports recently. The NFL, NBA and MLB — essentially the trifecta of professional American sports — are all making huge changes in support of women’s rights. When more women like Thomas and Hammond make their mark in the sports world, we can shut down that age-old stereotype that professional sports are only for men.

Kathryn Krawczyk is a freshman magazine major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at kjkrawcz@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @KathrynKrawczyk.

Published on April 15, 2015 at 11:26 pm