Stephen A. Smith on Caitlin Clark and the racial bias of America

No matter how far we've advanced, no matter how far we've come, even when we had a black president a decade ago, even when we had a woman as the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States in the year 2016...  Even with all of these "advancements" per se in our society, Caitlin Clark is a reminder, as great as she is through no fault of her own, America is still more receptive to marketing white folks more so than anybody else.  It's what they've looked for and what they pray for and they're getting it [with Caitlin Clark].  That's the reality.

~ Stephen A. Smith, "Caitlin Clark stands against hate," The Stephen A. Smith Show, 8:15 mark, June 16, 2024

My response:

Ok, how about some proof, SAS?  Where are your receipts?

Here is the counter evidence: Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neill and Lebron James, arguably the three most marketable athletes in modern history.  According to Sportico, Lebron was the top paid athlete in endorsement deals last year at $80 million. 

Sorry, SAS, that can't happen in a systemically racist society.  The real racists are those clamoring for victim status claiming to fight racism.  It's the Oppression Olympics.  Can you understand how white males might get turned off by this incessant gaslighting?  Look at what happened to NBA ratings when the NBA decided to go full activism during the BLM protests.  Activism is not good for business.  If you keep it up, SAS, you'll learn that lesson the hard way.

Clay Travis on resentment towards Caitlin Clark in the WNBA

All I will say is "I told you this was coming."  Caitlin Clark is white and straight in a league that is primarily minority and lesbian.  I told you that this was going to be an issue and lots of people tried to pretend that it wasn't going to be an issue and they claimed that I was making stuff up.  This was so self-evident going to be an issue and it's already now exploded as an issue.  Now you've got everybody acknowledging all over the place.  The average WNBA player does not like Caitlin Clark because she is white, because she is straight and because now she is rich and getting a lot of attention.  And there is a great deal of resentment about that...

I can never remember any male athlete ever entering into a new league and being treated like this.  I don't remember it in the NFL, I don't remember it in the NBA, I don't remember it in Major League Baseball.  I can't recall a celebrity athlete coming in with a big fan base that is lifting tons of attention and theoretically going to make everybody a great deal of money, and people are just losing their minds over it. 

~ Clay Travis, "WNBA Player's CHEAP SHOT On Caitlin Clark PROVES She's HATED?!" OutKick.com, 1:35 mark, June 3, 2024

Mike Decourcy on the star power of Caitlin Clark and WNBA player resentment towards her

Mike Decourcy: I do have a problem with how Caitlin Clark is being treated by fellow players, but it's not all physical.  Some of it's verbal as well.  This idea that they have to chop her down.  Look, you [the WNBA] can do whatever you want to do, it's your league.  But if you want your league to grow - and you know what happens when the league grow, Mike, the money grows.  If you want to make more money, then you embrace her entry into the league.  I'm not saying you let her, "Here, take an open shot, Caitlin."  It's not about that.  But you don't have to cheap shot her and take pot shots at her verbally as well.

Mike Carver: That's part to me, Mike, that I can't grasp...  Here's what I can't figure out the most: Why is everyone in that league - not everyone - why are a lot of players in that league, at the root of it, Mike, so upset that this girl is bringing notoriety, money?...  There is so much to gain, Mike, and it seems like a lot of girls are unhappy about it!  That doesn't make any sense to me.

Mike Decourcy: It's the same thing that I wrote about back in February we're seeing reflected in the college game where she was seen elevating the college game.  And let's not forget here, a couple of years ago, before Caitlin Clark made the Final Four, they were happy if they got a 5 million audience for the championship game of the women's Final Four.  They were happy.  "Five million, ok, that's a good number."  That's what they were looking for.  When Caitlin Clark played in it last year against Angel Reese and LSU, they got 10 million.  And she played it this year against Carmilla Cardoso and South Carolina, they got 18 million!  That's three times the audience.

If that's what's out there, look, you don't try to get mad because, "Oh, why weren't you watching us all along?"  Hey, the audience wasn't.  You can't explain a phenomenon, Mike.  Why were the NBA Finals of the 1970s on tape delay?  They just were, the audience wasn't there.  Magic and Bird come along, all of a sudden it's magical and everybody's watching.  It's just sometimes that's how it works.  Joe Namath comes along in 1969 and the NFL goes from a very watchable league, a lot of fans, to the most powerful sports entity in the world.  All of that happens because a certain player at a certain moment draws people in and enough of those people stick around that everybody's boat is elevated.  Right now for the WNBA, that person is Caitlin Clark.  Don't try to explain why everybody wants to watch her play...

So you embrace it and everybody gets wealthier as a result.  That's not happening in the WNBA.  No one, at any level in that league, is embracing what she can do for them.

~ Mike Decourcy, "Exploring Caitlin Clark’s Impactful WNBA Rookie Season," Ferrall Coast to Coast, June 4, 2024

Chennedy Carter on her flagrant foul against Caitlin Clark

I'm a competitor.  I’m gonna compete no matter who you are and no matter who’s in front of me.  That’s just what it was.  Heat of the moment play.  We’re getting at it.  We’re going back and forth.  It’s basketball.  It’s all hoops.  After we finish the game, it’s all love.

~ Chennedy Carter, WNBA basketball player, "Chennedy Carter Justifies Caitlin Clark Cheap Shot With Three Words," Athlon Sports, June 3, 2024

Climate protesters on why they disrupted the U.S. Open

There is no tennis on a dead planet.  There is no art on a dead planet, everything that we take for granted as our way of life will cease to exist.

~ Sayak Mukhopadhyay

I understand the discomfort that the audience felt.  But we can no longer feel comfortable at a time like this.  We need the wake up calls.  It's only a matter of time before things get much worse.  So I protested because I'm terrified.

~ Lindiwe Priscilla Krasin

"Climate Protesters Get Taste of Justice After Pulling Stunt at US Open," The Western Journal, September 9, 2023

Muhammad Ali on what makes a champion

Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision.

~ Muhammad Ali

Ali knocks out Sonny Liston

Elena Mayers Taylor on how Olympic athletes rely on corporate sponsorships

My husband and I and hundreds of others wear "Team USA" uniforms, so people assume that the U.S. government funds us.  Not so.  Most American Olympians work full time or part time in addition to their Olympic training.  And we all depend on companies to pay for training, equipment and competition fees.  

For my family and many others, sponsor support isn't a bonus or nice-to-have - it's a need-to-have.  One example: In 2020, sponsor support enabled me to take time to have a child.  If you're a competitive athlete, not competing means not earning prize money - there's no "paid parental leave" on the bobsled circuit.  Because we saved some of our sponsor funds from the last Olympics, I was able to give birth to my son and take time to recover.

~ Elena Mayers Taylor, American bobsledder and winner of two Olympic medals in Beijing, "Is Eileen Gu a Traitor to America? | American Expat Shares the Truth," Cyrus Janssen video, 2:30 mark, February 10, 2022

Scott Morrison on why Novak Djokovic needs to be vaccinated to play in the Australian Open

If he is not vaccinated he must provide acceptable proof that he cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.  If that evidence is insufficient, then he won’t be treated any different to anyone else and will be on the next plane home – there should be no special rules for Novak Djokovic.

~ Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia, "Appalling message’: outrage over Novak Djokovic’s medical exemption to play Australian Open," The Guardian, January 5, 2022

Jonathan Isaac on respecting peoples' vaccine choices

Loving your neighbor's not just loving those that agree with you or look like you or move in the same way you do.  It's loving those who don't.

~ Jonathan Isaac, "Jonathan Isaac Explains His Decision to Remain Unvaccinated & Responds to Media Smears of Him," September 29, 2021

Andrew Wiggins on his decision to submit to local vaccine mandates

I guess to do certain stuff, to work, you don't own your body.  That's what it comes down to.  If you want to work in society today, then I guess they made the rules of what goes in your body and what you do.

~ Andrew Wiggins

( As quoted in "Warriors' Andrew Wiggins explains decision to get COVID-19 vaccine: Options were 'to get vaccinated or not play in the NBA'," ESPN.com, October 5, 2021.)

Draymond Green on vaccine mandates

You say we live in the land of the free, well you're not giving anyone freedom because you're making people do something essentially...  That goes against everything that America stands for, or supposedly stands for.

~ Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors power forward, press conference about teammate Andrew Wiggins' Covid-19 vaccination status, September 30, 2021

Russell Lamberti on sports and egalitarianism

Sport is a radical hierarchy of excellence sorted by genetics, upbringing, resources, luck, volition and character.  Egalitarians therefore hate sport and are driven relentlessly to disfigure it with ideology.

~ Russell Lamberti, tweet, July 29, 2021

Denis Waitley on overcoming adversity

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.  Failure is delay, not defeat.  It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.  Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

~ Denis Waitley

(Congratulations, Annemiek van Vleuten, on one of the most incredible comebacks in sports.  After a horrific crash in the 2016 Rio Olympics, she won the gold medal in the women's individual time trial in Toyko at the age of 38.)

Tokyo Olympics - July 28, 2021

Walter Williams compares a Supreme Court justice to a referee

A referee’s job, whether he is a football referee, baseball umpire or a Supreme Court justice, is to know the rules of the game and to ensure that those rules are evenly applied without bias. Do we want a referee or justice to allow empathy to influence their decisions? Let us answer this question using this year’s Super Bowl as an example. 

The San Francisco 49ers have played in seven Super Bowls in their franchise history, winning five times. On the other hand, coming into the 2020 game, the Kansas City Chiefs had not won a Super Bowl title in 50 years. In anyone’s book, this is a gross disparity. Should the referees have the empathy to understand what it is like to be a perennial loser, not winning a Super Bowl in five decades? What would you think of a referee whose play calls were guided by empathy or pity? Suppose a referee, in the name of compensatory justice, stringently applied pass interference or roughing the passer violations against the San Francisco 49ers and less stringently against the Chiefs. Would you support a referee who refused to make offensive pass interference calls because he thought it was a silly rule? You would probably remind him that it is the league that makes the rules (football law), not referees. 

Supreme Court justices should be umpires or referees, enforcing neutral rules.

~ Walter Williams, "Supreme Court and Rules of the Game," LewRockwell.com, October 1, 2020

Chris Scott on the passing of Gale Sayers

I'm sad.  The greatest running back of all time, the Kansas Comet, has died.  You were the best, Gale Sayers!  "Just give me 18 inches of daylight."

~ Christopher Scott, Facebook post, September 24, 2020

Gale Sayers
1943-2020

Kirk Cousins on mask wearing

Q: On a spectrum of one — masks are stupid and you’re all a bunch of lemmings — and 10 is I’m not leaving my master bathroom for 10 years, where do you land?

Kirk Cousins: I’m not going to call anybody stupid for the trouble it could get me in, but I'm at about 0.0001.

~ Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings quarterback, "Kirk Cousins Causes Stir With COVID-19 Comments," NBC Sports, September 2, 2020

Clay Travis on declining ratings of the NBA

I think the NBA has gone woke, and they're starting to go broke.

~ Clay Travis, "NBA ratings have been GARBAGE lately, losing nightly to Fox News," YouTube, August 13, 2020

Walter Williams on offensives sports team names

Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “Now that Washington’s NFL team has announced its ‘retirement’ of the racial slur that has been its brand name since 1933, I am tempted to gloat a little.” In response to Page’s article, there is an email making the internet rounds that raises naming issues. What about the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians? 

The New York Yankees might offend Southerners because there is no team named for the Confederacy, Some people, particularly Catholics, might be offended by or deem it sacrilegious to have sports teams named the New Orleans Saints, the Los Angeles Angels or the San Diego Padres. Then what about team names that glorify savage barbarians and criminals who raped and pillaged such as Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Pittsburgh Pirates? The New York Giants and the San Francisco Giants might be promoting obesity and the Milwaukee Brewers promoting alcoholism.

~ Walter Williams, "The Leftist Effort to Rewrite History," LewRockwell.com, August 5, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on turning Major League Baseball into "left-wing propaganda spectacles"

In addition to keeping fans away, turning games into left-wing propaganda spectacles, officially endorsing the radical communist “We’re Trained Marxists” Only Black Lives Matter, allowing players to kneel to protest the existence of “racist America” at the beginning of each game, and imposing hundreds of asinine CDC rules on the game itself, Fuhrer Fauci will throw out the first ball at the Washington Nationals game on Thursday.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Another Reason to Just Forget About Major League Baseball for Good," LRC Blog, July 21, 2020