Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

CINCINNATI - It’s kickoff time, ladies!

We’re not talking about watching the Super Bowl from the comfort of the couch — or, worse, serving up cold Bud to a room full of guys who are.

The event in question is the start of the 2007 women’s football season.

No, it’s not the Bears vs. the Colts, but it is the real deal: On 80 teams across the nation, women are donning pads, hitting hard, breaking bones and launching the ball in a way that gives an entirely new meaning to throwing “like a girl.”

Skeptics who see a game quickly become fans, says Jodi “Moose” Houglum, fullback for the Minnesota Vixen.

“They come to the games and they say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you’re hitting that hard,’” she says. “Then they say, ‘Wow, I have to bring my friends.’"

Still, as one of the last frontiers in male-dominated sports, football is rough turf. Although many women have the passion and athleticism for the game, making an institution of women’s tackle football faces more obstacles than a kickoff returner 5 yards deep in the end zone.

Tough turf
Probably the biggest is making it a successful business. While the behemoth NFL expects some 140 million Super Bowl viewers on Sunday, women’s teams in cities such as Cincinnati, Seattle and Tampa Bay struggle for local media coverage, sponsorships and ticket sales.

For the players, it’s clearly not about the money. Most still pay to play so teams can cover the costs of travel, renting playing fields and other expenses. A few of the most commercially successful teams, like the Dallas Diamonds, pay players a nominal fee — enough to buy a pizza or two.

Many players also are squeezing in practice and games while juggling jobs or kids, or both.

And they’re risking serious injury for the privilege of playing. Women football players suffer knee injuries at higher rates than their male counterparts. The worst injury in women’s football took place in 2005, when a 32-year old player on the Seattle Majestics suffered a spinal injury in a game that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Do the shuffle
But there is no shortage of passion, which quickly became clear to Elbert L. “Ickey” Woods, who played running back for the Cincinnati Bengals from 1988-1991 and now owns and coaches the local women’s football team, the Cincinnati Sizzle.

After retiring from the NFL, the creator of the so-called Ickey Shuffle — an end-zone jig he performed after every touchdown — first took up coaching kids and men’s semi-pro football. He was talked into buying the Cincinnati license in 2002 by his ex-wife.

Woods admits he was skeptical at the start.

“(But) I got into coaching (and saw) how eager these women were to learn, and how they absorbed everything we told them like a sponge — and then to see the type of athleticism they had... I'm enjoying myself.”

The Sizzle has just started training for its third season, which begins in April. At a recent session at a Boys and Girls Club gym, the air was heavy with the menthol scent of Icy Hot muscle balm and sweat. The squeak of tennis shoes on the wood floor was punctuated only by grunts and blasts on Woods’ whistle. Two players still sidelined from last year’s knee injuries tossed a medicine ball back and forth.

“I think it’s awesome,” says Robyn King, catching her wind between drills. At 48, the dean of students at the Air Force Institute of Technology is the oldest member of the team. Though a veteran of other sports, she's a rookie to contact football. “I wish they had it when I was a girl, but I’ll take it now.”

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