Report: Sarah Thomas To Become NFL's First Female Full-Time Official
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The glass ceiling was cracked three years ago. Sarah Thomas is now reportedly set to shatter it as the NFL's first female full-time official.
Thomas, whose work at the highest level of college football made her a name to watch, has been hired by the league, according to Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun.
But she won't be the first woman to officiate a regular-season game. That distinction belongs to Shannon Eastin, who worked as a replacement during the referee lockout of 2012.
Thomas was asked by CBS News in 2013 how she would react to a professional football player getting in her face.
"I was an athlete myself at one time. And I joke about it, but I couldn't stand the officials," she said after emerging as a candidate for an NFL gig. "I just try to let him know that maybe I didn't see it the way he saw it, or you know, that I'm doing a job."
Thomas broke ground in the NCAA with Conference USA in 2007 and two years later became the first female referee given a bowl game. She made history again in 2011 as the first woman to officiate in a Big Ten stadium.
Thomas has been in the NFL's developmental pipeline and worked as a line judge in a preseason game in 2013.
"I know a lot of females are maybe inspired that there's a gender-barrier about to be broken," she told CBS News two years ago. "But I never set out to shatter the glass ceiling."
