Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton sent out a recorded apology on Thursday night for his “extremely degrading and disrespectful” choice of words in response to a female reporter’s question.
“After careful thought, I understand that my word choice was extremely degrading and disrespectful to women,” he said in the video. “And to be honest, that was not my intention. If you are a person who took offense to what I said, I sincerely apologize to you.
Charlotte Observer journalist Jourdan Rodrigue asked Newton Wednesday about wide the Panthers’ Devin Funchess embracing the physicality of routes.
”It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes like … it’s funny,“ Newton responded laughing.
The backlash was immediate with one of his sponsors, Dannon Oikos Yogurt, saying that they would drop Newton and pull his ads immediately.
”I’m a man who tries to be a positive role model to my community and tries to use my platform to inspire others. I take ownership to everything that comes with that. What I did was extremely unacceptable.“
He added that the incident made him think of his daughters: ”At their age, I try to instill in them” that they can do and be anything that they want to be. The fact that during this process I’ve already lost sponsors and countless fans, I realized that the joke is really on me. And I’ve learned a valuable lesson from this. To the young people who see this, I hope that you learn something from this as well. Don’t be like me; be better than me.”