The male-dominated sports media apparatus is stumbling over Caitlin Clark.
It is trying to pretend that it hasn't ignored the WNBA for decades until the superstar rookie came along. But rather than admitting its blind spots, several male commentators are parachuting themselves into a league they barely understand and dismissing anyone who suggests they could do better.
It's getting ugly.
In the flurry of hot takes that followed Chennedy Carter's foul against Clark over the weekend, ESPN host Pat McAfee went on his show Monday to argue that Clark — whom he casually called the "White b*tch for the Indiana team" — was singularly responsible for the sudden surge of WNBA popularity and therefore she should be given more respect.
He later apologized for using the slur, emphasizing that his broader thesis was that Clark's star power created a halo around a league that's been languishing in obscurity.
"I was talking about how I hoped that the WNBA and sports media, ex-WNBA players, would show a little bit more respect to Caitlin Clark for what she has brought to the WNBA," McAfee said on his show Tuesday.
Of course, it's not that the league was dormant before Clark got there — it's that most of the mainstream press weren't paying attention.
The impact of Clark's arrival is undeniable. But McAfee and the four men flanking him in his Indiana studio are not the best people to lead that conversation on one of the most influential sports networks in America.
McAfee's right that the ground is shifting for women's basketball — it's one of those pivotal moments when journalists and analysts would normally call up an expert or two and try to absorb some of the complexities of the situation. Instead, the male commentariat have done too much talking and not enough listening.
Clark, a White, straight phenom, has become male sportscasters' proxy in a league built primarily by Black and LGBTQ athletes whom the mainstream felt fine skimming over in the past. And in covering the league, they're relying on outdated tropes about how women are supposed to behave. Charles Barkley recently called women "petty" for being rough on Clark.
"Y'all should be thanking that girl for getting y'all ass' private charters, all the money and visibility she brings into the WNBA," he said on TNT's "Inside the NBA." (TNT and CNN are both owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)
As the journalist Victoria Uwumarogie wrote in an essay for Essence this week, "the expectations Barkley has of men are vastly different from those he has for women, and that's similar to many of the other men who are, all of a sudden, WNBA experts now that Clark is in the league."
Clark isn't in Iowa anymore. She's "going up against women who've been fighting for their just dues for years, including veterans and champions who were putting the league on the map before she stepped on the court," Uwumarogie writes.
The league those women built has always been a physical one, a fact that Clark herself acknowledged in a postgame news conference.
And that's the point basketball analyst Monica McNutt was making on ESPN's "First Take" Monday, only to have her male counterparts dismiss her point when it felt uncomfortable.
"There are so many layers in this conversation," McNutt says, while batting down the two men on screen who try to talk over her. "The prevailing sentiment for folks that are just joining the WNBA and following women's sports is unfair to the women of this league … who have laid the groundwork for Caitlin Clark to come in and now take it to the next level."
The host, Stephen A. Smith, became immediately defensive: "Who talks about the WNBA … who talks about women's sports more than 'First Take?'"
McNutt returned with a dagger: "Stephen A., respectfully, with your platform, you could have been doing this three years ago if you wanted to."
The conversation fell apart, and the network went to commercial.
Much like Clark, the mainstream sports media is new to the WNBA. And like any rookie season, it's been a rude awakening, full of stumbles and setbacks. Clark is learning how to navigate it. Let's hope the media can up its game, too.
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