Caitlin Clark had a creepy encounter during a presser

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. So, full disclosure, the person who's unfortunately the subject of this is, professionally at least, a friend. Greg Doyle writes for the Indianapolis Star. He is an incredible writer.

Very creative. And, I mean, seriously dives into the subject matter that he writes about. He's a sports columnist. I want you to hear the press conference where Kaitlyn Clark is introduced. We all know who Kaitlyn Clark is by now. The former Iowa basketball star, first pick in the WNBA draft, and the Indiana Fever who drafted her have already sold out. The Washington Mystics, they usually play their home games, not at Capital One Arena, the big arena downtown. They play them off-site or at a different place, smaller arena. They're moving the game against Indiana to Capital One Arena because they know what's going on. Anyway, she was introduced yesterday.

The draft was Monday. She was introduced yesterday. And here is the exchange between Greg Doyle and Kaitlyn Clark. Hi, Kaitlyn.

Greg Doyle, IndyStar. Real quick, let me do this. You like that? I like that you're here. I do that at my family after every game, so it's pretty cool.

Start doing it to me and we'll get along just fine. Alright, we don't need to hear the question, all of that. She makes the heart symbol to her family, so he started his question by making the heart symbol to her, which, I mean, that's creepy. Yeah, and just the way he said it too.

It's incredibly creepy. And I'm not here to defend Greg. Greg doesn't need me to defend him.

And it's really not defensible, what he did. But we are here in a new era, shouldn't be a new era, but it is, where, like we're used to Serena Williams as an athlete. She's been around, women's tennis has been a big deal for a long time, so it's not new to us. We're even used to professional, female professional soccer players as athletes. Not as women athletes, but as athletes. But this year introduced America to the greatness of Clark and, like, because we were watching her, we noticed others.

And when we got to the Elite Eight, the Final Four, there were stars everywhere. Like, I can't wait to watch Juju Watkins next year. Oh yeah. Can't wait.

She's gonna be great. Oh my gosh. And we're gonna have to start talking about these athletes as athletes and not treat them like girls, which is unfortunately what Greg Doyle did.

On top of the fact that there's a lot of things that go into what he did. Caroline Darnie, for the win, friend of this program, my friend, who has covered sports for a long time. Big Wahoo's GoUVA, if you're interested in college lacrosse, she tweets about it all day long, at CW Darnie. I know you saw it. I feel for Greg because I know him fairly well and I know what he's about, but man, that is the worst possible look when you're trying to make a good first impression on somebody like Kaitlyn Clark.

What were your thoughts when you saw that? Yeah, and like you said, I'm not here to dump on Greg and it's just unfortunate because like you talked about, there are very few, probably fewer than 20 people that cover women's basketball whole time. That it is their full-time job, that they're paid to cover it and get in there and imagine that if that was, this isn't to be like, oh, imagine everything should be the same for men's and women's. Right. But 20, fewer than 20 people, I talked to a good friend of mine before I came on. It's probably 10 to 20 is what we estimated when it comes to full-time coverage.

And so what you run into is the biggest thing to me is, like you mentioned, they have to be just be covered as athletes. Like Adam Golden's studio with my man coach Pete DeRuta, Capital Financial Advisory Group. You have a 401k, but you're changing jobs. You're taking that 401k with you.

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Investment advisory services offered by Capital Financial Advisory Group, a North Carolina registered investment advisor. Even last year, when you look at the game, the LSU Iowa championship game, the trash talk or whatever you want to call it between Angel Reese and Kaitlin Clark and the pointing at the ring finger. And you can't see me. People acted like it was the worst thing that ever happened on a basketball court, like the audacity to trash talk. And even the way you're talking now about, you know, Diana Taurasi is the queen of trash talk.

She's always she's not she doesn't have a personal vendetta against Kaitlin Clark. Like she wants rookies to come in and they're rookies. This is a league full of talented, talented women that have played and not had any attention for years. And now there's a lot of attention. And it's just a matter of can you cover these women as athletes? Because imagine if you if you gave LeBron James the same kind of like he has to be nice to every rookie that comes into the NBA.

What are we doing? Like, it's just that's the thing. Like when we talk about coverage, it's not just don't be don't be creepy or don't say things that are like trying to be too familiar or trying to be cutesy or like whatever it is. Just ask them questions. Anyone else, they're just athletes. I mean, treat them treat them with respect as athletes. And because I think that's where Greg went wrong is that he was trying to make some some somehow deeper connection than you could possibly make with anybody. Forget a male or female in an introductory press conference. There's nothing you can say like if it removed Kaitlin Clark from it, make it Victor when Benyama. Right. First pick in the draft last year. Nobody in San Antonio is going to like come with some like cute little family thing that he does and suddenly become Buddy Buddy. And I think that's where Greg was.

He completely misfired on that. But I do think because it's in some ways new to us. That we're now discovering that these are not just these are not women, these are not girls. These are athletes and they have to be covered as so as such. And until we're going to see a lot of people now, we're getting to the debate of, well, how come they don't make as much like are we really doing this or really having this discussion now?

But yeah, we're going to play a piece a little bit later on that just shows you there are people who are waiting for this to fail. Right. We know all about that.

But to me, that's that's all it is. We're so far ahead in other sports. We're ahead in tennis. We're ahead in soccer. We're ahead into a certain extent in golf where we don't like.

That's the thing. Basketball, the WNBA is new in in comparison to everything else. Well, in women's basketball still struggles with the perception, right? You have when you have folks like Doug Gottlieb saying he can't get into it because it's it's all layups. And stuff like that or whatever the tweets are around when.

Right. Basically, I'm watching Kate Martin hit fadeaway twos with precision repeatedly that like, you know, multiple teams on the men's side wish they could have had that regularity of like connecting from that shot, that spot. It's there's so much to unpack with it because there's so much it's so much deeper than just one season. And over the past couple of years across women's sports in general, you know, you if you've ever tweeted anything positive about women's sports, you've probably seen the replies with the like, nobody watches it, nobody cares, nobody, whatever. And now that there's been moments where you've seen the huge volleyball game at Nebraska, you saw women, Iowa women play outside at Kinnick and get a huge crowd versus record setting crowds.

And sure, those things are kind of, I wouldn't say gimmicky because like they were really, really cool. But it's if you can have a volleyball match played in a football stadium, no doubt there's going to be way more people like than if it's inside just by logistics. It's like when, you know, Syracuse sets all the attendance records.

Of course, you can fit more people. But the idea that like it's almost an if you build it, they will come. And so ESPN has held the reins for access to women's basketball, especially the NCAA tournament, I guess, for years. And we're finally getting a chance. And it goes hand in hand with a few things on the like the play side where I'm not here to say like, oh, UConn being so good for so long was bad for the sport. But it's undeniable that the parity has improved. And that's also because the resources and energy that's been dedicated to girls, youth sports and training and training the young women like they do the young men that are playing basketball. So strength, training, conditioning, that they get more of the same resources and attention that leads to more really good women's players that are going into college. And then they decide to stay at home and play for Iowa. And then Iowa has a moment or they go to play for other teams. They have more and more of these exciting moments in women's college basketball that pick up steam, pick up attention.

And now you have it's all coming to a head, which is great. So it's a matter of like, how do you take advantage without one disrespecting the players that have come before in the NBA didn't get this type of attention that do deserve respect. You know, Asia Wilson Wilson is like one of the most fun players. And you've got Sue Bird and Diana, like all of these legends and people that you need to like give them their flowers and their attention, but also realize that it is at a moment of peak popularity. And like you said, people might have watched for Caitlin, but they found Juju.

They found Hannah Hidalgo at Notre Dame. Like, you know, as someone who's watched UVA a ton, obviously, Kimora Johnson, super fun freshman point guard to watch. So there are names and faces and players that can continue this momentum. It's just exciting to see. It's just a matter of like taking it, taking advantage, but like realizing, yeah, come on in. It's fun.

These ladies are fantastic. And not just because they're women, they're fantastic athletes. And honestly, not liking the game because they're just layups as opposed to dunks like it. I don't even I can't process that as making sense to me, as though you only watched for the did you not watch basketball in the 70s when they didn't allow the dunk? The dunk was too easy. We took the dunk out. These people still watch.

What does it say? Caroline Darnie is joining us for the win USA Today, among other things that she does. What do what does it say that the peak audience for the WNBA draft was over three million people? Nobody has watched.

I don't think the WNBA has ever gotten an audience for a game over a million. Don't let anyone take what's yours. Lock your meds. Be aware.

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Call click Grainger dot com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. And the draft drew at a peak, I would assume early since she was the first player taken of just over three million. Does that portend anything for the future?

I mean, I'd like to think so. Yeah, I would say the crazy thing is to me, it wasn't a surprise who was where she was going to go. It wasn't like Caitlin Clark had a big push to the end of the season and she might be a lottery pick now. Even the team that had the first pick, the Indiana Fever, have been tweeting 22 related things. They've been tweeting about Caitlin Clark.

This was a foregone conclusion. Caitlin Clark was going to the Indiana Fever with the number one overall pick and we still got that many people watching. And I want to give a shout out to like there was a whole the ESPN crew that was an L. Duncan and Andrea Carter.

She made a goon. OK, they're amazing. They were great.

And I think that really helps. And then being able to have them do coverage for the for the draft. And honestly, the women showed out to they no longer have the restrictions.

I don't know if they were real restrictions or guidelines or whatever it was around like stuff they could wear. But I saw some older some people who've been in the league for a little bit longer saying like, man, we we looked like accountants out there getting drafted in our business attire. And so it became a moment like it was exciting.

Like you said, there was the Angel Reese, there's Camila Cardoso, Mule from UConn who had such a great moment where she did so well against Caitlin Clark. So the anticipation was high. And again, this is where unless you've seen it in person or seen kind of the pictures and the the frenzy that has been created with women's basketball and like especially with young girls who want to go watch. Like that's that that's what these things continue to grow. And so I think that, you know, like you mentioned the the the Wizards have moved their game against the Fever. We've seen a couple other places that have already said, like, we're going to play here or it's already sold out or et cetera, et cetera.

The prices are higher. That's all good stuff that's trending in the right way, because I'm of the belief and you mentioned on the lacrosse fan that if you get people in the door and you get them on board and you buy them a good product. And that's with so few. You know, it's a professional league. There are incredible women that play in this league that are so good. And I think that it's going to just if once you get people in the door, I think they'll stay because I always look at, you know, women's lacrosse struggles with a lot of the same perspective stuff because you can't you can't hit hard.

You're not checking. It's not like the men's game. But when you get like high level women's lacrosse, it is the most technically sound like precision play that people should love. Like it's the you know, you're watching good passing, good shooting, good cuts, good schemes. Like it's just that stuff that if you're actually a true sports fan, like, you know, that's the stuff you should be excited about. And that's where I think that they'll succeed. Let me we'll close on this.

Caroline Darnay, I appreciate your time. For the win on USA Today at CW Darnay on Twitter. The it all comes down to economics, right? What what, you know, the the networks will put stuff on in primetime because they know, hey, people are interested in watching where they'll put it. Maybe not primetime at night, but primetime for viewers sometimes on the weekend.

That's during the afternoon. Like we see the NCAA softball college world series, right? That it's it's all over the place in May, June, almost into July.

So we'll see all of that. And a couple of years ago, the women's European football championships recognized like, oh, my gosh, people like this. They love this, the product. And they were caught off guard because they had they had basically set it up where they were going to play in smaller venues because they didn't think there would be demand for tickets. And all of a sudden they were selling out places like I don't think they were they might have been at Wembley, but they were at at English Premier League home sites and they were selling them out. And from that, all of a sudden, now you see the explosion in the women's game overseas. And I think we're finding out maybe maybe it's going to take people a longer time, but that these sports are economically viable. Yeah, and I think part two and I'm not I will say I'm not 100 percent familiar with the type of media deal that the WNBA secured. I know that they have a lot of different places that games are streamed and aired, which I think definitely works against them.

Because if you have to try and track down ion or, you know, some sort of street, it's like what you know, when everyone searches what is true TV when the tournament comes around. Right. But that's every week. So. Right.

There's when people want to say and I agree the economics piece is important because you can't just say, like, pay them the same and like, et cetera, et cetera. But when you look at the deals in the men, the WNBA has, you know, years and years of support and sustained financial success and interest. And but the media deals, I mean, how much have we talked about media deals and ACC? Right.

Oh, man, that's not what I ever want to do. That's the stuff where when when it's proven with, they can redo or retool a deal that gets more consistent coverage on easy to access streaming and television. That's when you're going to see the success of.

And then you also have to have moments where you shouldn't be so ill prepared that it's going to take the entire season for you to fulfill the order for a Kaitlin Clark jersey. We are we dealing with that right now? Yes. They were saying it's months that the people won't get them until like August or something. Are you joking? That's crazy.

I will double check. Twitter is not always, you know, X is not always 100 percent. So I'm not trying to come out here really well. But, you know, I'm seeing things where people like, oh, I ordered in the second round of ordering through or the second restock isn't going to be done for months. And it's close to the end of the season and stuff like that.

So it's just kind of like it's great that the stuff's selling out. But if you can't, you're not prepared. My gosh. Well, I can't get a Rexham. I can't get a Rexham shirt either.

So I'm kind of bummed about that. Caroline, I had to get this second restock of the new heights hat after our girl Taylor Swift was wearing it. Unbelievable. Caroline Darney, my friend at C.W.

Darney from for the win. Appreciate your time. By the way, we call it Twitter. I don't care.

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