When Jennifer Welter was hired to coach the Arizona Cardinals’ inside linebackers in 2015, she made NFL history. Until then, all NFL coaches were male, and when Welter earned her spot she became the first woman to break that 97-year-old barrier. Since making a name for herself in the football world, she’s used her platform to show young girls that there is absolutely nothing they can’t achieve. Glamour spoke with Welter about her experience being a leader, her stance on NFL players taking a knee to stand up for racial justice, and the release of her new book, Play Big: Lessons in Being Limitless from the First Woman to Coach in the NFL, out this week.
Glamour: For those who don’t know, when was the moment you decided you wanted to work in football?
JW: I loved it when I was a little kid, but I never got to play. All the guys played and I thought they were superhero gladiators. When I went to college I found rugby which was as close to football as I could find [for women]. From there I started playing flag football and I got recruited to the Mass Mutiny [women’s football team] and ended up making my first football team. When I made that team, I believed that was my destiny. I knew I had to be in football, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I made a pact with myself that I would stand up for that challenge. I had no idea how big that would be. There were no jobs for women in football and my work was elsewhere, but I kept with my passion and thankfully it ended up opening up doors.
Glamour: In your new book you mentioned you left your high-paying job to train for that tryout with the Mass Mutiny women’s football team. What did you learn about risk-taking when you made that huge change?
JW: It’s a difference of living your life for passion and not for a paycheck. I worked almost all the time but it was something I loved so much as opposed to a job that I didn’t love, where you’re skating in at 8:59 AM or 9:10 AM and leaving the second it hits 5:00 PM. If you’re assigning a dollar value to what you’re willing to put up with as opposed to doing what yields you in this world—I have been a whole lot happier when I’ve been a whole lot broker. Money doesn’t define happiness; it’s what you do everyday that does.
Glamour: You’re often the only woman in the room or on the field. What has been your strategy to make sure you’re heard on the job?
JW: The guys just need to know [a few] things from me. Number one: I belong, I can do the job, and I’m here for the right reasons. I was a football player, so I knew I was going to get tackled and I couldn’t look at them and say, “you can’t tackle me, I’m a girl!” That’s the job. So I would just get right back up and keep doing it in the same way that they would, no different. Then number two, they need to know that we can get along. Because if they do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, you just have to laugh about it. Those moments where you need to laugh, let them know that it’s OK. When you’re the outlier and everybody has more questions than they do answers, then you can answer those questions and put everyone around you at ease by being yourself.
Glamour: In your book you wrote about giving your players personalized pre-game notes to build their confidence on the field, something they weren’t used to. At the time, why did you think you should do that, and why is it important for leaders to uplift their team?
JW: It was what I would have wanted as a player. It’s not a male or a female thing—it’s empathy. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes, or in my case, play down in someone else’s cleats is one of the very best things you can do. There’s nobody in this world who doesn’t have that voice in their head. Sometimes it’s the best voice in the world and it pumps you up, but sometimes the voice is down. I wanted those guys to be able to hear my voice in their head instead of someone else’s because I knew that was a narrative I could control.
Glamour: Do you feel like perspectives are changing around women working in male-centered sports? What is one thing you would change about the industry right now, as it relates to women?
JW: One of the things that people have to understand is that it’s not women vs. men and sometimes we get that wrong. My biggest champions a lot of the times in my career have been those men. Not that women necessarily wouldn’t, but if there are no women in the room and the door is locked, it takes a guy to unlock the door for you and let you in. I think we have to get better at working together in that regard, as opposed to always feeling like we need to crash the door down. You don’t need to bring out the axe; sometimes you can just knock. And sometimes guys will open the door for you, but for so many women who felt like they had to fight so hard, we forget that they may be allies. Men have taught me that because I couldn’t have done it any other way.
Glamour: Was there a specific moment when you felt really tested on the job?
JW: Football taught me in life that it’s not a question of if you’re going to get knocked down; we’re all going to. The question is how are you going to get back up? And when you do, do it with a whole lot of attitude. My whole career was a series of tests. There were women that I played with that were better than me at every turn. Bigger, faster, stronger. But I stayed with it consistently, and worked on the process.
Personally, the toughest time for me was in 2008 when I [was] wrapped up a very toxic relationship. I lived out of my car for about four months to get away. And [what] I learned about myself in the process is that sometimes a safety net isn’t really that safe; it’s actually what keeps you from flying. That year, I went from playing football to being a football player. Football wasn’t paying my bills but people didn’t really know how bad it was. I would shower at the gym and be the first one there and then practice. Because that was the one place in the world that when everything else was chaos, I could be great. I think we all have that place where we experience greatness, [even] in the face of chaos or drama or loss. Football definitely saved my life.
Glamour: That’s incredible. Where do you see your future in football going?
JW: I have some amazing opportunities now and I’m very into developing those. I just had an event with Snoop Dogg’s youth football league, so me and Snoop and their whole league and [former NFL player] DeShaun Foster did an event for special needs kids at UCLA and it was one of the most amazing events I’ve ever done in my entire life. My underlying philosophy is that everyone has a place to shine.
Glamour: How do you feel about NFL players choosing to kneel on the field to stand up for racial justice? Would you take a knee if you were on the field?
JW: My dad is a Vietnam veteran and he’s been my hero my whole life. I remember when this first happened he was upset and I talked to him about it. I said “Dad, what if it was me? And I was protesting the exact same thing but about women.” And he said, “Well you’re my baby.” I told him, “These are somebodies’ babies. These men are great men, and this has nothing to do with the flag.” While I might have been neutral at some points, I was the ultimate minority and those guys welcomed me with open arms and I was brought into the NFL through the Bill Walsh Minority Fellowship which was originally designed to get African American former players who were physically under represented in coaching positions in the NFL. So, that struggle is all of our struggle, and everybody has a right to work here.
That’s what makes this country great, the fabric and the core of our beliefs and our being is we wrap ourselves around diversity. We say that the American flag represents our right to be free in every aspect of what that is, and every veteran who fought, fought for that freedom. So what we have to do is realize it’s not a choice between the country and racial justice; it’s about what we believe in at the core of our being, and that’s that we are free. We have to embrace that. Jerry Jones was probably the smartest person about it, because he did both. He took a knee and stood for the flag, and that’s a message that we can all see. It shouldn’t be, if you take a knee you’re fired. If that was said to me I’d take a knee right there!
I was always told I couldn’t do something. If you tell me that, there’s no question I’d drop to my knee. What we have to get away from is that divisiveness—trying to make me have to choose between standing up or taking a knee for injustice, or having place in the NFL. That’s why you saw so many displays of unity in different ways. I would be with my team, and they shouldn’t be seen as Anti-American, because we as Americans have a right to be free.
Get your copy of Jen Welter’s new book, Play Big on Amazon.
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