The allegations in a report from The Washington Post aren’t anything new for the cesspool of a sports franchise in our nation’s capital.

SportsPulse: The Washington Post revelations of rampant sexual harassment is more than enough to justify the removal of Dan Snyder as owner of the NFL’s Washington franchise, says Christine Brennan.
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The sexual harassment and verbal abuse of 15 former female employees of the Washington NFL team, as reported Thursday by The Washington Post, is appalling and unacceptable. If true, and there’s no reason to believe it’s not true, the NFL’s punishment should go to the very top of the organization, to owner Dan Snyder. If you’re running this kind of a cesspool of a sports franchise in 2020, you shouldn’t be running that franchise anymore.
That said, I can tell you this isn’t a recent development within the walls of the headquarters of Washington’s NFL team. It was a different building and a different time, but there were bad things happening to the first woman reporter to cover the team back in the mid-to-late 1980s.
I know because that woman was me.
I was The Washington Post’s beat writer covering the team for three seasons from 1985-87, ending with the Super Bowl in 1988. Those were the days when the team actually won games, and Super Bowls. Even now, I value the time I spent reporting on Joe Gibbs, one of the classiest, most honorable people I’ve ever covered, and his excellent teams. It helped make me the journalist I am today, and for that, I will always be grateful to The Post and to Gibbs and many of his players.  
Recent allegations against the Washington NFL franchise are nothing new for the organization.
 (Photo: Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports)
But, I did have to navigate some difficult moments. Back then, the owner of the team, Jack Kent Cooke, would sometimes pat me on the head (not an easy thing to do when I, at 5-11, was several inches taller than he was), and talk about my clothes and hair. I smiled and tried to ignore it, which is what women did back then, while charging ahead with a few questions. Cooke laughed and answered half of them.
Twice, Cooke kissed me. He shook all the male reporters’ hands but leaned in for a kiss with me. Both times, I was able to turn my head and take it on the cheek. Cooke eventually got the hint and I simply got firm handshakes.
General manager Bobby Beathard made it clear early on that he didn’t want a woman covering his team. “It messes up everything that they’re sending you out here,” he told me.
He was concerned about my presence in the locker room, which was the place where reporters interviewed the players. I told him I had no problems with it.
“I know you’re a nice girl and I know you don’t really want to go in there,” Beathard said.
I reiterated that it wasn’t an issue. I don’t think he heard me.
As for the players themselves, unbeknownst to me, I was the alibi for one veteran who was cheating on his wife. One of the player’s buddies on the team stopped me one day and said that if the player’s wife ever asked, I had called their house to interview him.
I didn’t get it.
“You see, (the mistress) called one night and (the player) told his wife it was you.”
“Oh, great,” I said.
Another time, a player told me word was out in the locker room I was having an affair with a local sportscaster who was married. I wasn’t, but that didn’t stop players from giggling every time they saw the unsuspecting announcer talking to me. I later told my TV friend. He told his wife. I told the man I was dating. I think we had the last laugh.
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Another player asked me once to stop talking to him as I passed by his locker.
“The players are gossiping,” he said.
This was my first year on the beat, so I asked him why this was happening.
“Remember, we’re talking about football players,” he said. “They have nothing better to talk about.”
I had about a dozen players ask me out. Some were married, some weren’t. Maybe I should have expected this. I didn’t, at first. Politely, I said no. In the 1980s, you had to do it that way. What if I had to interview them the next day?
One night, right on deadline, all alone in the press room typing on my portable computer, I looked up and saw a married member of the Washington organization staring down at me, smiling.
“Do you stay at the same hotel as the team?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to get together this weekend?”
“No thanks,” I said.
He pressed the issue. I politely stood my ground. Within a few seconds, he turned to go, then swung back toward me.
“Would it be okay if I kissed you?”
“No!”
He walked away. I looked back at my computer screen. The phone rang. It was one of my editors.
“What’s taking so long?”
“If you only knew.”
That was a very different time, a time when you didn’t mention things like that to your editor, or anyone else. It was a time when you tried to ignore the harassment and the sexism and keep right on going, which is exactly what I did.
Now, however, terrible behavior like that is eventually reported. Men lose their jobs. People are outraged.
I think we call that progress.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Christine Brennan on Twitter @cbrennansports.
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