Good morning, Broadsheet readers! NJ/NY Gotham FC is the first NWSL team to be honored at the White House, a congresswoman pushes for proxy voting for new parents, and Sunday football this weekend came with a historic first. Have a mindful Monday.
– Game day. Yesterday, the Carolina Panthers beat the Las Vegas Raiders 36-22 at the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Football fans say it was a much-needed win for the struggling Panthers franchise. But, perhaps more importantly, the matchup was a historic moment for the NFL: the first time a game was played between two teams whose business sides are led by women.
The Panthers and the Raiders are the first and only teams in the NFL led by women who aren’t part of an ownership group. Kristi Coleman was promoted to Panthers’ team president in February 2022, and Sandra Douglass Morgan—who is the only Black female president in the NFL—was named president of the Raiders in July of that year. The teams are part of different conferences and are guaranteed to play each other only about once every four years; this was their first matchup since both presidents started their jobs.
Douglass Morgan explains the role of an NFL team president this way: “Our jobs are to make sure the business is still running regardless of what happens on the field.”
Coleman rose up through the finance side of the Panthers organization, first joining the team 11 years ago after the Panthers were her client at Deloitte. Douglass Morgan is an attorney and longtime leader in the Las Vegas business community. The Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas four years ago, and owner Mark Davis tapped Douglass Morgan to rehabilitate the franchise following a workplace scandal and develop its fan base in its new home city. Since then, Las Vegas has hosted the Super Bowl, a process Douglass Morgan was involved in even before she joined the Raiders. Now she’s working to grow the Raiders’ local fan base.
Coleman, meanwhile, is working on a stadium renovation for the Panthers and even supporting efforts to establish girls’ flag football as a varsity sport in North Carolina. Both teams went through coaching and GM changes in a short time period and the leaders have turned to each other for counsel throughout those transitions. “We’re all competitive. We all want to win. We collaborate on business operations, but not necessarily football,” Coleman says.
Coleman and Douglass Morgan were so busy in their respective jobs neither realized this milestone was approaching at first. “We know any given Sunday the matchup is going to be the premier attraction—and that’s what we want it to be. Neither one of us wants to distract from that, but we want to celebrate each other and we want to grow the game of football [including with] female fans,” Douglass Morgan says.
Both team presidents have observed—and occasionally been a bit jealous of—the female fans Taylor Swift has brought to the Kansas City Chiefs. Coleman says other football execs would like a Taylor Swift for their own teams. Douglass Morgan is a bit more reserved, given than the Chiefs are the Raiders’ direct division rival. “I’m not rooting for the same team she is, but it’s great…that we can get more people understanding and appreciating the game of football,” she says.
The team presidents hope that their historic game this weekend shows fans—especially women—all the ways they can get involved in the sport. “Women love this game. They want to be a part of this game,” Douglass Morgan says. “And there are so many different ways to do it.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Welcome to the White House. Today, NJ/NY Gotham FC will be the first NWSL team honored at the White House for winning the league championship in 2023. A professional women’s soccer club has not been invited to the White House since 2010, before the NWSL was established. ESPN
- Strategic charges. Prosecutors’ strategy against Sean “Diddy” Combs resembles the tack taken in other sexual abuse cases, including those against R. Kelly and Nxivm cult leader Keith Raniere, both of whom were convicted. All three cases included charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. Combs has pleaded not guilty. New York Times
- House leave. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) is advocating for the U.S. House of Representatives to change rules to allow members to vote by proxy while on parental leave. Pettersen announced that she is 20 weeks pregnant and noted that just 12 of the 12,500 members in the House’s history have given birth while in office. Roll Call
- FTC updates. The Federal Trade Commission accused streaming and social media companies of not effectively protecting users’ privacy. FTC Chair Lina Khan said that findings in the agency’s staff report were “especially troubling” when it came to child safety. Also, the FTC filed a lawsuit against pharmacy-benefit managers and affiliated businesses, accusing them of profiting from inflated insulin prices. Express Scripts sued the FTC prior to this lawsuit, CVS Caremark placed the blame on insulin makers, and OptumRX did not respond to requests for comment. Washington Post
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
USA Today named Caren Bohan editor-in-chief. Most recently, she served as executive editor for politics; she has also been interim editor-in-chief since July.
Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company founded by Arianna Huffington, appointed Tara Parker-Pope as chief content officer. Previously, she was Well+Being editor at the Washington Post.
Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private equity firm, added Jennifer Martin as chief financial officer and general partner. Most recently, she was CFO at Providence Equity Partners.
ON MY RADAR
Erika Badan built Barstool Sports. Can she rebuild Food52? Adweek
Xbox’s president on handheld consoles and subscription gaming Bloomberg
Scientists mapped what pregnancy really does to a mom’s brain Washington Post
PARTING WORDS
“There is a huge cultural fixation with novelty and growth. Everything has to grow all the time. Get bigger, sell more and be different—novelty, reinvention. I don’t find that very interesting.”
—Author Sally Rooney, who says she is focused on each novel she writes and not the arc of her career
