Amy Trask: "If seeing me inspired someone to think they can do it as well, then nothing could make me happier"; Her Huddle is a new bi-weekly show to celebrate the stories of women working in and around the NFL - watch the full interview from 9pm, Thursday, Sky Sports NFL
Friday 16 September 2022 08:55, UK
Amy Trask was a trailblazer for women in what was once a male-dominated National Football League, serving as the first female chief executive of a team when holding the position with the Raiders from 1997 to 2013.
Since Trask's appointment 25 years ago, the NFL has moved with the times and in the 2021 season, women made up 38.8 per cent of the NFL league office, 25.3 per cent of teams' senior administration, 3.1 per cent of team CEOs and presidents, and 1.5 per cent of team assistant coaches, according to a report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
Trask and the Raiders helped pave the way for those who have since followed and, speaking on Her Huddle (9pm, Sky Sports NFL and available as a podcast below) - a new bi-weekly show to celebrate the stories of women working in and around the NFL - Trask spoke of her pride at the changing landscape.
"You don't wake up one day and think, I'm going to be a coach today, or I'm going to be a CEO today," Trask said. "You need to work your way into those roles.
"So the fact that the teams and the league have now opened these pipelines, I think it's terrific."
She added: "I think sport has the power to unite. Does it always? Of course not. Can it be divisive? Yes, we've seen that.
"But when I looked out into the stands during those decades with the Raiders, and I saw people of different races, ethnicities, religion, ages, genders, united in their shared passion for the hours of those games."
Condoleezza Rice, former US Secretary of State and part of an ownership group including Sir Lewis Hamilton which recently purchased the Denver Broncos, has previously hailed Trask as a "pioneer".
"She advanced the cause of women in football tremendously," Rice said. "A whole generation of girls now think it's possible to be part of the infrastructure of the NFL because of what Amy Trask did."
Reflecting on Rice's comments, Trask said: "It overwhelmed me at the time and continues to. In fact, when she said that and I learned of it, I cried.
"I never considered that as I did my job, it's not something I thought about until she said it. But if seeing me inspired someone to think they can do it as well, then nothing could make me happier."
In July, the now Las Vegas Raiders hired Sandra Douglass Morgan as their new team president, making her the first Black woman in NFL history to assume the role, reflecting a progressive outlook in the Raiders franchise that Trask witnessed first hand when working for their legendary former owner Al Davis.
Trask said: "There will be people who can't stand the Raiders and who couldn't stand Al Davis, but if we're all being intellectually honest about him, he hired without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, or any other individuality which has no bearing whatsoever on whether one can do a job.
"I also loved that Al signed players and hired others who had been reported to be 'behaviour problems'. He gave people second chances, third chances.
"And as someone who had been labelled a 'behaviour problem' at school, that resonated with me."
She added: "The biggest misconception about Al is that one couldn't disagree with him, that he wouldn't tolerate disagreement and people who did disagree with him.
"If that was the case, I would have been fired roughly two weeks after I'd been hired."
On her personal pathway to the Raiders, Trask became a fan while attending The University of California, Berkeley, interning with the team before embarking on a career as a lawyer when the Raiders called offering her a job.
"I ran so fast to give notice to the managing partner of the law firm, that if Al Davis had seen how fast I ran, he might have signed me to play cornerback," she recalled.
As for her ascent to CEO within 10 years with the team, Trask added: "I was just so thrilled to be part of the organisation. Whatever I could do to contribute, I was thrilled to do.
"I didn't have a trajectory in mind, a plan in mind. Titles have never been important to me.
"I contributed however I could. If the ticket office was busy and the phones were ringing off the hook, I went in and answered phones. I did that before I was CEO, and after."
As for advice for those following in her footsteps, the new wave of women making history and headlines in the NFL and the sporting landscape more widely, Trask says simply "be yourself" and "work hard".
"My biggest mistakes, my biggest fumbles to use a football term, have been when I've tried to be something or be someone I am not," she said. "Be yourself.
"And hard work matters. So my advice to others, irrespective of gender, is work hard, as hard as you can. That helped me."
