We've all got a little Andy Gray and Richard Keys in us. Unfortunately.

Not the sharpest knives in the Sky Sports drawer, are they?

Andy Gray and Richard Keys sacked? Fair enough I think.

Here's the background:
During the Wolves v Liverpool match Saturday, the two Sky Sports commentators made statements indicating their belief that a female linesman would not know how to make an offside ruling due to the fact that women are unfamiliar with that law of the game.

Were the two more shock jock pundits rather than professional commentators I would say everyone should calm down.

But given their role, the comments made were beyond unprofessional.
Liken their statements to me going into my job as an management consultant and telling my client that he should not contract a vendor because the bidding corporation has a black/white/Asian/Hispanic CEO and "everyone knows that black/white/Asian/Hispanic people couldn't possibly understand IT consolidation."
Ummmmm.....yeah..... I'd expect to be fired on the spot. Pretty vile thing to say, not to mention ignorant, incorrect, arrogant, unprofessional, unfounded, and unprovoked.

Had Gray and Keys mentioned the race of the linesman there wouldn't even be a debate.

They represented Sky Sports, not the Howard Stern show; they were working in an environment with certain professional expectations and their actions fell far short.

As for their comments, I won't even address them because they are beyond ridiculous.

However upsetting, some good may come out of this situation. Not only will attention be brought to the need to dispel stereotypes of women not understanding sport, but also hopefully to our own patterns of speech.

This weekend I took the 13 year old girl I mentor out for a manicure and some girl talk and she opened up to me about the less than stellar behavior of a boy in her class.  I caught myself saying "Well, boys your age are so immature. In fact, they sort of stay immature until well into their 20s...and even then its a struggle."
This sort of tongue in cheek comment seemed clever at the moment but in retrospect I was making sexist comments no different than Gray and Keys.
I generalized...and in a negative way. And in my attempt to sort of instill a certain mistrust of boys in my protege (mainly because I want her to not be hurt) I may have done some damage.


So good riddance to Gray and Keys but let us all remember that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones....they should throw parties :-)