Whitworth took the subject matter to Twitter on Sunday night after the interview aired and addressed it with media Monday at Paul Brown Stadium.
“It’s not like it bothers me personally, but being a guy that has been a player rep and a guy that’s always been against this policy, it’s a great example of why the open (locker) room policy is old and needs to change,” Whitworth said Monday. “You can’t judge us off who we will and won’t accept into our locker room and then say all these things we have to do, but then also put us in a situation where every single day I have to change clothes and be naked or not in front of media. It’s just not right.
“There’s no office, there’s no other situation in America where you have to do that. It’s dated, it’s old and it needs to change.”
Media members currently have access to locker rooms in all the major male professional sports – including Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. The WNBA also has an open locker room policy with a 10-minute cooling off period following games.
NFL Network Vice President of Communications Alex Riethmiller said in a conference call Monday afternoon that there are protocols to avoid situations like the one that occurred Sunday, but “unfortunately those rules were not followed in this instance.”
“It was a regrettable mistake by a production team, and we’ve already done a pretty thorough review of the procedures and processes that were dropped along the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said, also noting that implies “an apology to everybody that was affected from the players to the organization to the viewing public, first and foremost.”
As of Monday afternoon, Whitworth hadn’t heard from the NFL Network, whom he tagged in a Tweet on Sunday questioning the need to explain to his kids why their dad was naked on TV. However, he said an apology wouldn’t be enough.
The veteran lineman and his wife, Melissa, have four kids.
“This is a big issue to me,” he said. “I’ve pressed this issue before with our union and the fact I think it’s wrong. This is my office space. I shouldn’t have to change in it and be in front of people I don’t know or really don’t have any purpose for being near me other than the fact they are interviewing other people.
“If I was a woman, this would be a completely different subject, and it would be a complete firestorm. We can’t always just serve women and everyone else. Men deserve a right too. We have rights. We have privacy. We deserve all the things we want as well. As a man, I think it’s right the policy is changed.”
Whitworth said when he’s addressed the issue before, he has received the “excuse of access.”
However, he said there are plenty of other places to conduct media interviews and pointed out that most of the coaches do interviews in the hallway after practice, which could be an option for players as well.
“I could show you about 50 places in this building alone where interviews could be conducted and players could be requested to go, just like I did when I was in college and just like everywhere else I’ve played sports,” Whitworth said. “For some reason in the NFL we continue to stand by the policy that you come into the locker room, and it’s just not right.”
Riethmiller couldn’t speak to whether this instance will lead to changes in that access, but said he doubted there would be major changes in how the NFL Network conducts interviews.
“I don’t think there will be wholesale changes because that would imply we didn’t really have a system in place to prevent something like this, which we did,” he said. “I think there will certainly be a brushing up of the protocol to make sure everyone is 100 percent clear what it is and how it operates and to make sure we don’t drop the ball on something like this again.”
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