The bittersweet autumn weather is steadily taking over the UMaine campus. Soon, our entire student lives will be occupied by heavier homework loads, warmer clothes, vibrant trees, pumpkin-infused everything and the highly-anticipated start of football season.

Football is more than just a sport to a vast population of college students. The game spreads unified flames of pride all over campus, creating sources of conversation and a pleasant buzz whenever our team wins. Football is an intense and aggressive contest that students love to bond over. Bonding in the form of going to the stadium together to watch our Black Bears storm the turf, gathering around a cramped living room every Sunday to root for our favorite national teams or competitively quarreling over fantasy football leagues.

However, who is actually doing the bonding? Football has continually been known as a man’s sport. The game is rough. Wild. Dirty. Masculine. Surely such a sport would fit right in with the other boy’s club activities, wouldn’t it? Yet, how do women fit into the mania that will soon be encompassing our campus?

Well, it’s a good thing that some people in our university have already been pondering the same question. An opportunity was presented in our school late this week. To prepare for the upcoming football season, a class was offered to students to learn more about the game of football. Though, the class wasn’t for all students — it was directly aimed at women in the university. The class was titled, “Football 101 for Women.”

As I scrolled by the post on our campus-wide announcements section, I immediately wondered why could this not just be a “Football 101” class? Why did it have to be just for women? Then I remembered all of our societally accepted stereotypes. Of course women don’t know anything about football! Women have better things to do than to sit down with the boys and watch a silly football game — like painting their nails, baking some cookies and making sure the boys always have snacks and cold drinks. Right?

Wrong. The problem lies with the fact that this class was directly created to teach women about football, because the common stereotype is that women are not educated about it in the first place. But that is all it is, a stereotype. So let me enlighten you — many women do in fact watch football. They do understand the game, and they do enjoy it! In case anyone needs some evidence to believe me, the NFL reported last year that women make up nearly 50 percent of the NFL’s 150 million fans.

So we should stop the stereotyping. We should stop putting genders in certain boxes that predetermine what they like and dislike. Some women watch football, some women don’t. Just like some men watch football, and some men don’t. Stop telling men that just because they are men, they need to live and breathe football. Stop telling women that just because they are women, they need to attend classes to acquire knowledge of football. Though the class was nice in theory, it’s offensive and insulting. It should have just been a “Football 101” class for anyone who needed to brush up their comprehension of the game.