Oct 7, 2017 5 min read

What Cam Newton said was really dumb.

In case you missed it, Newton, the Carolina quarterback, when asked by 25-year old Charlotte Observer beat writer Jourdan Rodriguez if he was impressed with the route-running of Panthers wide receiver Devin Funchess, said, “That’s funny, to hear a female talk about routes like that. It’s funny.”

Three or four minutes later, the answer went viral and Newton was known worldwide as a sexist.

It took Dannon Yogurt about an hour and a half to cancel its endorsement deal with him.

It took Newton, who has two young daughters, until the next day to issue a perfectly predictable apology.

In the meantime, somebody dug up some old tweets by Rodriguez in which she laughed at her father’s racist jokes and used the “N” word.

That probably won’t go over too well in NFL locker rooms where 75 percent of the players are black.

Rodriguez, of course, also has apologized.

Nobody should be surprised that it’s all been blown way out of proportion. The 21st century is on its way to becoming known as the Out of Proportion Century. That’s what we do now. Most in the media have the antennae up to catch someone famous saying something stupid or being a little too honest so that they can try to ruin his or her life while displaying their own righteousness.

Newton is getting a lot of criticism from the sports media, but a lot is also coming from people who have never set foot in a professional athlete’s locker room.

I’ve been in too many locker rooms to count and I’ve never been in one where I didn’t feel like an interloper. Newton made the mistake of saying out loud what I’ve always assumed most athletes believe – people who question and critique their performances don’t have a clue.

And I believed that before women were allowed in locker rooms. Why?

Because, when they see the horde of old, fat, skinny, short, scrawny, nerdy humans pouring into their locker rooms after a game or a practice, they see a bunch of people who’ve never done and never could do what they do.

We in the sports media have always overestimated the athletes’ respect for our ability to grasp what they do.

You can be pretty sure that Antonio Brown believes that the reporters of different ages, sizes, shapes, races and genders that pepper him with questions after a game couldn’t have any real appreciation for the difficulty of what he makes looks so easy.

Athletes probably should be given more credit for showing as much patience as they do. I could be wrong, but I would guess that every quarterback and wide receiver in the league thinks that, when a chubby 50-something man critiques their performance, it’s just as funny as when a 20-something woman does it.

Newton just reminded them that they’re better off keeping it to themselves.

Adam Schein hosts “That Other Pregame Show” Sundays on CBS Sports Network, “Inside The NFL” on Showtime and a daily talk show, “Time to Schein” on SiriusXM Radio and is presented as an NFL expert. He did a story a few years ago for CBS Sports Network with former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms, in which Simms was trying to teach him to throw a football. Schein couldn’t throw a 15-foot spiral and Simms couldn’t help him. How could any NFL player have any respect for Schein’s quarterback evaluations after seeing that?

Do you think Newton finds his critiques any less funny than a 25-year-old woman’s?

• Marc-Andre Fleury didn’t do his former teammate Matt Murray any favors Friday night when he played the best game ever by a goaltender in an expansion team’s first game. After Murray had gone through the Penguins’ first two games with a 5.89 goals against average and an .831 save percentage, Fleury stopped 45 of 46 shots by the Stars in Dallas and the Las Vegas Golden Nights won their inaugural game, 2-1.

Murray’s two Stanley Cup rings in two years speak volumes about his ability, but is he really an established super-goalie after 64 regular-season games and 32 playoff games?

Fleury has played 692 regular-season games and in the 2009 Stanley Cup season he played 86 games.

Murray still has to prove that he can play at a high level for more than 60 games from October until June.

• Just wondering: If it could be proven that NFL players kneeling during the national anthem caused TV ratings to drop and players’ salaries were tied to those ratings, how many would kneel?

• All you need to know about comparing quarterbacks from different eras is that in 2017, a pass that travels 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage is now categorized as “deep.”

• Connie Hawkins, who died Friday at the age of 75, is probably one of the 10 best athletes ever to play in Pittsburgh (Rens and Pipers) and very few people know it. He was Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Michael Jordan before Dr. J and Michael Jordan.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.