Former Eagle Chris Long went on Jeff Pearlman’s Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast for a discussion about the intersection between NFL players and the media. It’s a pretty fascinating and honest listen, as are most things involving the Super Bowl-winning defensive end. Pearlman himself is a sports writer who has published numerous books on football, baseball, and basketball, and is a Sports Illustrated alumnus who went to the University of Delaware.

One of the relevant pieces of audio centers on the topic of locker room access, and seeing naked dudes walking around:

Long: Here’s what I’d ask, and I used to talk to Jeff McLane about this in Philly. Why the fuck can y’all walk in and we are half naked? In no other workplace in America are you expected to be putting your clothes on and somebody’s going to talk to you. And there’s going to be cameras. Not just people while I’m pulling my pants up. Or like Brandon Graham’s locker is next to mine and he has 40 reporters around him and someone is bumping into my naked ass. I’m at work! I feel like because we get paid so much money and we’re such macho dudes that everybody is like “fuck em.”

Pearlman: It’s a great question. And being in a locker room sucks for a reporter. I’ve never expressed this before, but you are terrified that someone actually thinks you are looking at their dick. You could be staring at your notepad. Or maybe you are (staring at a dick). Maybe in you’re head you’re like “holy shit.” 

Long: It’s a tough job you guys have, and a tough job for us. If you think about it, what other workplace in America would that be okay? I know there’s no way around it because players leave after games, and that’s one thing. But when I floated this to certain reporters, and I’m not going to include Jeff in this because he was very patient with me and my dissertation on it’s fucked up. But they were dismissive of it, like “you’ll be okay.” And I’m like, “oh, so you see my balls every day and all I get is a ‘you’ll be okay?'” Your lifeblood is talking to me and I’m providing you a story and I have to do it naked and that’s just the way it is? You know what I mean? It’s kind of fucked up, if you think about it.

…

You are expecting me to be naked as part of my job description possibly, and get hit with a throng of 30 people who want to know why I wasn’t in the B gap. And they don’t even know who was supposed to be in the B gap or the C gap on that play. Not only do I get asked the hardest questions known to man, but I have to do it while putting on my sweatpants. I just think it’s an interesting dynamic. And football is thought of, a lot of the time, like we are cattle. It’s a very “cattle-y” thing, high paid cattle, but a very “cattle-y” thing.

Hear hear!

I’ve been beating this drum for years. We the media have no business being in locker rooms. You know how awkward it is to go up to somebody who is pulling up their pants and say “hey Sebastien, you have a minute?” And then they say yes, but you twiddle your thumbs or sort of hover off to the side while letting them get dressed. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

Chris is right. In no other workplace in America would this be expected. I wrote an entire column about this last year, and the gist was that athletes need their space and deserve to have a private area that is reserved for them. We don’t need to be dicking around in the locker room. Get it? Dicking around? Anyway, they can come to the podium, or pass through a mixed zone. There are ways to keep access where you don’t have 30 weirdos standing around a butt naked dude and waiting to ask him questions about a game he just finished playing 20 minutes ago.

GREAT listen, and here’s the full link: