Music City Mizfits: The Women on the Gridiron Fighting for Their Space

Currently, eight states sanction girls’ flag football as a varsity sport: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York. A handful of colleges have begun to offer flag football scholarships to women at many Division II, Division III, or NAIA schools. Teams like the Music City Mizfits, a women’s semi-professional tackle football team, strive to “change the game of football, one woman at a time”.

With players from all walks of life including former college athletes, retired military members, and mothers, these incredible athletes are showing you can always go after your dream. Mizfits owner Donita Hines is also a player on the team and had this to say about women’s interest in football,

“The thing that draws women to women’s football is that women are being told that football is not for women. And that’s definitely not true”. 

Located in Nashville where SEC football reigns supreme the Mizfits are carving out a space for women who are passionate about sports. The team already has the support of the local NFL team, the Tennessee Titans. The Mizfits hold multiple scrimmages at Nissan Stadium, home of the Titans, as well as sell tickets at Titans’ games. Playing in the Women’s Football Alliance, the longest-running active women’s football league in the United States, and working on securing players NIL deals, including individual athlete NFTs, they are serious about their players being looked at as professional athletes.  It was recently announced the WFA signed a network deal with ESPN, broadcasting their games to a national audience.

We got to know a little bit more about the Music City Mizfits and the athletes who make up the Mizfits family.

Where did the name come from and when was the team formed?

The owner of the Mizfits, Donita Hines, was a huge fan of an animated musical TV series called Jem and the Holograms that ran in the late 1980’s.  The series is about record company owner Jerrica Benton, her singer alter-ego Jem, and the adventures of Jem and her band the Holograms.

The Holograms had a rival band called the Mizfits, and Donita happened to like them more than the Holograms, so when she formed the team in 2016, she used the band as inspiration for the name. The Mizfits frequently attempt to upstage Jem and the Holograms’ endeavors, often resulting in physical harm to members of the group. Seemed like a good fit.

What are some of the best things about being on the team?

Let’s start with family. Our team spends a lot of time together, in football and away from the field. We have an open-door policy on the team, any member can talk to us about anything they need to. We are there for each other and openly talk about how we love each other. Our head coach, Don Ragsdale, often talks about how we are building, developing, and maintaining relationships in the guise of playing football. So in a very real sense, the Mizfits are a family first. 

Another aspect of being a Mizfit is competition. Being in the world’s largest women’s football league, you HAVE to know how to compete. A lot of our athletes have missed out on being competitive since getting out of high school or college, so it’s super exciting when they find out about our team. We set up our practices so they are always competing. These women love it!

Finally, since most of the ladies that join our team have never played organized football before, it’s something new. You can use some of the skills you have learned in other sports and incorporate them, but there is no other sport like football. So you see the new players kind of dipping their toe in at first, but by the end of the season, they are all the way in the water. It’s so fun to watch that transformation happen!

Something that is important to your organization is paying players. You have incentive bonuses for players of the games and season and have created player NFTs, but let’s talk about the Name Image and Likeness (NIL) Mizfits Pride Initiative which is one of the first instances of women being compensated for playing football. What does that distinction mean to you?

We are very proud of our efforts getting NIL deals for our athletes. It has opened up a whole new world for our athletes to make money by partnering with brands to promote their products. We feel like this is a big step towards getting our athletes paid directly, but we still need more exposure in order for that to happen. In the meantime, getting our athletes deals that they can earn money with has been a game changer. It’s helped with recruiting, interest in the team is way up and we believe eventually other teams and leagues will follow suit.

For us, we have all of our returning athletes signed to an NIL deal except one, which was a goal we set back in the summer; to have them all signed to an NIL deal by the end of the calendar year. So we are on track for that. We have seen our returning players have a renewed sense of purpose because of the NIL program. Those athletes are used to paying to play football, so to get something back for their time with the organization is huge for them.

You have an upcoming scrimmage at Nissan Stadium after the Titans-Jaguars game. What does the support from the local National Football League team mean to you?

It means a lot. Aside from the fact we get to play in an NFL stadium, the Titans have partnered with us to allow us to sell tickets for their home games, which has become our biggest fundraiser. They also make sure that our experience at the stadium on the days we play there is top-notch. This is the 4th season we’ve played at Nissan Stadium, and it feels like magic every single time! 

The Titans have also partnered with several local school districts to get flag football for girls in high school programs across Middle Tennessee. So they are definitely leading the way when it comes to bringing awareness to female football. We have a lot of respect for the Tennessee Titans organization and the NFL as a whole is doing more now too, so it seems there’s a shift occurring.

Where do you hope to see the Women’s Football Alliance in five years?

Number one, on TV every weekend in the spring. The WFA already has their Pro Division championship game on ESPN2 every year. And this may just be wishful thinking, but we’d like to see the Pro teams on ESPN and some of the lower division games on ESPN2 every week, because even though we may not be as big as the Boston Renegades or Minnesota Vixen, we play good football too. 

If we are on TV, then number 2 is paying the athletes and coaches. Because, quite frankly, the only way anybody gets paid is if it’s on network television. Obviously, the product has to be good and the market has to dictate that is what should happen. But again, we think you’re witnessing a shift in the market. With the recent ratings of the National Women’s Soccer League championship game, we think the market is becoming more accepting of women’s sports. 

How can we continue to grow women’s sports?

More exposure helps. We need media attention. Social media obviously plays a big role nowadays, but traditional media is still the trusted source of information. It’s not “real” unless it’s through them. When we do get more exposure, we have to do a better job of capitalizing on it and maximizing it.

We have to get into the communities and work with the girls at a younger age. We have a few girls that practice with us who play on teams locally, and the one thing we hear is that they get way more attention practicing with us than they do with their teams which tells us they are not being worked with by their coaches, probably because they are girls. So we have a gap to close there; it’s not just football, and to be honest, it’s not just girls. Coaching youth in all sports and genders needs to be taken more seriously, there’s too much ego in youth coaching. They don’t seem to be there for the kids.

Last, we need to be more supportive and come together as a female athlete community. We can all do a better job with that. Find and follow female sports, teams and leagues on social media. Go to the girl’s little league games. Find out who the local women’s basketball, hockey, football, soccer, whatever, teams are, go to the games, cheer for the athletes, buy some merchandise. You can’t be a sports enthusiast but not be enthusiastic about sports, right?

What is your best advice to young women who want to play sports professionally?

Be in the habit of working when nobody’s watching. It’s not about who is watching you. It’s about you becoming the best version of you, no matter what.

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