Cam Newton has been making headlines lately and it isn’t for his play on the football field. In a meeting with the press yesterday, the Panthers quarterback was asked a question by beat reporter Jourdan Rodrigue regarding Devin Funchess’ aggressiveness on routes in which he replied it was “funny” to hear a female talk about routes before answering the question.
Rodrigue took offense to the comments and shared her feelings on the matter on Twitter shortly after the incident happened. She also said she met with him after the incident and he did not apologize for what he said.
As a result of the sexist comments, two of Newton’s sponsors released statements about the situation. Dannon dropped him as a sponsor altogether while Gatorade expressed disappointment with the whole event.
“We are shocked and disheartened at the behavior and comments of Cam Newton towards Jourdan Rodrigue, which we perceive as sexist and disparaging to all women. It is entirely inconsistent with our commitment to fostering equality and inclusion in every workplace. It’s simply not ok to belittle anyone based on gender. We have shared our concerns with Cam and will no longer work with him,” said Dannon in a statement.
Not long after Newton’s remarks, Rodrigue had some skeletons of her own dug up. A handful of racist and offensive tweets were unearthed from her account but they have since been deleted. She tweeted in 2012 and 2013 about her dad being “super racist” and how he was delivering racist jokes the whole way home. In a May 2013 tweet, Rodrigue said, “The earth moves at 450+ mph that’s 10 times triller than NASCAR Dale Earnhart’s a (expletive) (racial slur). Rodrigue was a student at Arizona State at the time of these tweets.
Rodrigue issued an apology of her own earlier today.
Tonight, we got to hear from Cam Newton on the matter in a video on Twitter. The video runs for nearly two minutes as Newton apologizes to all those who were offended by his comments and praised all of the “super moms” out there. He starts the video off by saying his choice of words was extremely degrading and disrespectful to women and says that was not his intention. Curiously, he did not mention Rodrigue by name.
“I’m a father to two beautiful daughters … and they can do and be anything they want to be,” said Newton in the statement. He encourages the younger audience that have seen this whole event play out to learn something from it.
The Panthers wanted to make sure there were no distractions going into this Sunday’s matchup against the Detroit Lions and this looks like Newton’s way of putting it behind him.
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Cam Newton Apologizes For Comments Made To Jourdan Rodrigue