Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker and CBS Sports analyst, is running for Congress in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. According to his campaign website, one of his top issues is “protecting women’s sports.” According to Feely, “radical gender ideology is destroying fairness and opportunity for young women, and weak leaders are letting it happen.”
Most of Feely’s commentary is geared toward excluding trans women from participating in women’s sports. This is largely a non-issue, as the NCAA has already limited participation in women’s athletics to “student-athletes assigned female at birth,” trans women are now barred from competing in women’s divisions in the Olympics, and there are no openly trans women competing in any professional sports in the United States. Most states, including Arizona, also ban trans girls from participating in girls sports.
This raises the question as to why Feely has made the issue central to his campaign. Is he truly concerned about women’s sports? Or is he just interested in exploiting women’s athletics as a political cudgel?
Unlike many congressional candidates, Feely has a lengthy history of public commentary before he entered the political arena. To gain insight into his real beliefs, Popular Information reviewed what Feely has said over the years about women’s and girls’ sports on television, during podcasts, and in other forums.
Feely has several daughters and has enthusiastically supported their athletic development, coaching the girls high school soccer team. His team won the state championship. But Feely’s public discussion of that experience, along with other comments, has also revealed his retrograde views about how females approach athletic competition, the economic value of women’s sports, and the skills of professional female athletes.
On a September 2021 episode of What’s Next with Eric Wood, a podcast hosted by a former NFL center, Feely said that girls’ athletic performance is dictated by their emotional state while “guys” can easily set their emotions aside:
For girls, girls are so emotional that to go out and play their best, they have to be right emotionally. You know, whereas guys, like, we can fight in the locker room. And I’m like, those don’t matter. Like, you can fight and then go out and like, it doesn’t matter. So what? That’s done with and we can go play the game. And for girls, like, if they’re not right emotionally, they’re not going to go out and play their best.
Feely also discussed his experience coaching girls soccer on an April 2020 episode of the When The Game Ends podcast. He said that girls cared more about their personal relationships with other players than success on the field. “Girls are so emotional,” Feely said. “They care more about the way they make people feel and the camaraderie than they do about winning.”
During the same podcast, Feely noted that coaching girls was “a little bit different than coaching guys.” He relayed a story when “every girl” started crying over a practice that wasn’t going well (even though he was not “riding them hard”) and he was forced to cancel practice the next day:
I remember there’s one, one practice this year. We’re getting ready. It was in the playoffs and we had a game coming up two days later and we had the worst practice we had maybe in four years, you know, just awful. No one could do anything. And the girls were completely emotional. And at one point I look over and there’s literally like four girls crying and I’m not even getting on them. I’m not like riding them hard. They’re just emotional. I think the pressure of the moment, you know, it’s kind of getting to them all. And so I have jokingly told our captains, like, go take them over, get some water, you guys hug it out, get all your crying out and then come back. And I turn around about two minutes later I look over and they literally are all over there crying like every girl is over there crying and they’re all hugging each other and I look at my coaches and I’m like alright we can’t practice tomorrow we gotta do something different.
Feely said that maybe if he coached girls for “six more years” he would “understand them” because “I’m not sure I do right now.”
Discussing female professional athletes, Feely has been more caustic.
In the summer of 2025, WNBA players were negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. The minimum salary of about $66,000 was forcing many players to get a second job, even though arenas were packed. During an August 2025 episode of Fearless with Jason Whitlock, Feely said that WNBA players should stop complaining and be grateful for the money they are making:
If they lived a real life and they were they were making, you know, 50, 60 grand as a teacher or a coach or, you know, going out, getting a job, starting out in sales, having to travel all over the place, not being home, you know, making 60 grand a year. I think they’d have a different perspective. I think every person at WNBA would appreciate a lot more. They wouldn’t complain near as much about what they’re making. I think that holds true for the NFL and other sports as well.
Prior to his interview with Feely, Whitlock delivered a monologue calling the WNBA “the most unlikable league in the history of American sports by far.” He described WNBA players as wanting “all the glory, none of the work” and blasted their “entitlement.” Whitlock criticized Diana Taurasi, one of the greatest WNBA players of all time, for advocating for more money because, in his estimation, millions of men are better at basketball.
“I heard all your commentary,” Feely volunteered to Whitlock. “I don’t disagree with it at all.”
Feely has also said, as a then-49-year-old retired kicker, he could best many professional female athletes. On a June 2025 episode of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, Feely said that he “could take on the women’s U.S. national team in soccer.” On the same show he said that he plays “with LPGA girls in golf” at his country club and “when I play well and I putt well, I can beat them head to head.” Feely said he can beat LPGA golfers even though he is a two handicap and “not great.”
A spokesperson for the Feely campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
A KICKER talks about guys fighting it out in the locker room. 😂
He was the guy they taped to his locker for fun…. he is a KICKER! Real tough guy position!
Just another MAGA snowflake who wants to “protect” girls but degrade women who play a professional sport. He is a POS and I feel bad for his daughters.
Why is Jay Feely making "protecting women's sports" a priority for his campaign? I went to his official site, and I can tell you that he doesn't have much of substance to offer. A lot of it is boilerplate Republican rhetoric, especially on the economic front. Secure the border. Support Israel.
It's about as developed as you might expect from a man with regressive views about women/girls and who thinks kicking a ball makes him a good candidate for public service.