Dawn Aponte: NFL will 'absolutely' have female GM one day

The NFL hired its first full-time female official in 2015 and now has its first full-time female coach in place for the upcoming season.

Dawn Aponte, executive vice president of football administration for the Miami Dolphins, believes it's just a matter of time before there's a female general manager.

"Absolutely, absolutely," Aponte told Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post. "I have a 15-year-old daughter who wants to be a scout. Of course I'm trying to steer her away from that, a football life. … My son wants to be a coach and my daughter wants to be a scout - and I still have hope with the younger two."

Aponte joined the Dolphins in 2010 after spending the 2009 season as vice president of football administration for the Cleveland Browns. Before that, she spent 15 years with the New York Jets in various capacities and served as vice president of labor finance for the NFL's management council.

"For me, it was always, why are there no women?" Aponte said. "And to this day, I still find it really mind-boggling to some extent that there aren't more women because I don't really feel that there are necessarily barriers that are up. I just feel like I don't know if women are taking or trying to take this career path."