Barry Booker is on the chopping block after he made “sexist comments” about female gymnasts during a broadcast of a men’s basketball game.
The 53-year-old former Vanderbilt basketball player joked during the promo for an upcoming SEC gymnastics event to be covered by the SEC network.
Booker made the comments during Saturday’s live broadcast of the Arkansas-Missouri basketball game.
“Honey, I’m going to hang out with the ladies,” Booker said live on the air. “I mean, I want to go see some scantily clad girls.”
His fellow announcer, Richard Cross, quickly made it clear that he did not condone such behavior. “No!” Cross said, before adding that gymnastics meets “one of the great family atmospheres that you’ll find in all of college athletics.”
But Booker kept going, clearly thinking his typical male locker room talk was just jokes.
“I’ll stay home and watch,” he said. “Actually, I’ll be on the road. I’ll be somewhere. I’ll be in my hotel room watching ‘Friday Night Heights.'”
After the predictable backlash from the gymnastics community, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey condemned Booker’s locker room talk as “inappropriate”.
Sankey noted “the SEC’s women’s gymnastics student-athletes deserve our support for many reasons” and that Booker’s comments were highly “inappropriate and do not meet the expectations we have for the SEC network.”
The SEC and ESPN networks also issued statements condemning Booker’s comments.
Enraged Twitter activists called on Sankey to fire Booker immediately.
Twitter user @MGrizzle wrote:
“Barry Booker’s comments about college gymnastics and scantily clad women is totally inappropriate. It may not have been heard widely, but surely the standard for what is acceptable commentary is higher than that.”
Former gymnast Sydney McGlone tweeted:
“As a former gymnast in the SEC, I am disappointed in the comments made yesterday towards gymnasts during the ARK/Mizzou basketball game. However, I’m glad the commentator is being reprimanded and we are able to address the issue.”
McGlone later told the Washington Post she was disappointed that Booker made the comment “with ill intent and sexualizing of a sport that has already faced so much when it comes to sexual abuse.”
Booker was a standout guard who helped lead the Vanderbilt Commodores to the school’s only back-to-back NCAA Sweet 16 appearances (1988 and 1989).
He still holds Vanderbilt’s record for 3-point shot percentages. He graduated in 1989 with a bachelors degree in economics. He earned an MBA in finance from Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management in 1987.
Booker works for CBS Sports and Fox SportsNet covering local Vanderbilt basketball games in his hometown of Nashville, where he resides with his wife, Rena, and their two sons Clay, 7, and Bryan, 5.
