Sports media is missing the mark(eting)

This should be a moment for self reflection. Instead, we're getting the mansplaining Olympics.

Hi, friends. So, once again, I had another column planned for this week. I was not going to talk about Caitlin Clark or the discourse surrounding her, because I’ve said most of what I want to say about it in previous newsletters, including last week’s piece, “Women in sports are done being grateful.”

But then, this week started out — on my birthday nonetheless — with Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe lecturing Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike about the marketability of women’s basketball and growing the game. (Pssst, click here to get 20% off of Power Plays all month in honor of my birthday.)

And I know I shouldn’t take the bait. And I promise I won’t always. But their words triggered me because they’re emblematic of one of the most bothersome parts of the current women’s sports discourse: The lack of accountability and introspection from the people at the top of the tower in sports media who have played active and deliberate roles in the systemic marginalization and societal mocking of women’s sports for decades.

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The next event is on June 23 in Brooklyn — it’s a screening of “Power of the Dream,” the documentary about how the Atlanta Dream and WNBA helped swing the 2020 election. Click the link for more info and to RSVP!

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This week’s round of hot takes started over the weekend, when word leaked that Caitlin Clark was not selected to be a part of the U.S. women’s national basketball team for the upcoming Paris Olympics.

Now, I can see a case for putting Clark on the team — mainly because she’s young, there’s no player under 25 on the roster, and it’s beneficial to get the youngest generation that experience. But I also see plenty of reasons to keep her off of the team — she has zero experience with the senior national team, the physicality of the WNBA is already causing her trouble and the physicality of FIBA competitions is next level, and the USWNT is incredibly, absurdly deep at guard. I wouldn’t have been outraged if she’d been included on the team, nor am I outraged in the slightest that she’s left off. In fact, I think the rest will do her a world of good.

But for some prominent members of sports media, Clark’s exclusion from the Olympic roster is being treated like an international crisis, with USA Today columnist Christine Brennan calling it the worst roster decision she’s seen in 40 years of covering the Olympics. (In fact, it’s not even the worst or most controversial roster decision the USA women’s basketball has made in the last eight years, has everyone forgotten Nneka Ogwumike’s omission in 2021 and Candace Parker’s in 2016?)

But I’m used to the pearl-clutching and overreactions when it comes to Clark, so while I was annoyed, I wasn’t angry. And then I watched the First Take segment that went viral on Monday.

The usual battle lines were drawn, with Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe both criticizing USAB for the decision, while women’s basketball experts Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike tried to interject some context, history, and nuance to the conversation. But things took a turn when the men started talking about marketability.

“So are we really trying to grow the game? Is that what we’re really trying to do? Or are we just talking about ‘we’re trying to grow the game’ and just bull jiving?” Sharpe asked the panel.

Smith — who called Clark’s absence from the team a “stupid decision” that “compromises what your ultimate goal is, which is to elevate the WNBA brand” — echoed Sharpe’s sentiments about the missed opportunity for marketing, and then spoke directly to Carter.

“I am telling you right now you are going to be underpaid for the rest of what I believe will be an illustrious career unless you get your mind right about that marketing. It matters,” he said, in one of the most condescending tones I’ve ever heard.

“I hear you, Stephen A.,” Carter responded. “But I will not sacrifice my basketball knowledge and my integrity in terms of the game for marketing. My marketing is doing just fine.”

In case you need a reminder, this comes just a week after Smith claimed he was one of the biggest supporters of women’s basketball, and publicly scolded Monica McNutt when she pushed back. (McNutt went on the Daily Show Monday night, and was fantastic.)

So here we have two of the most high-profile and well-paid men in sports media — one of whom has had a platform for decades where he helps set the framework for national sports discussions on a daily basis; both of whom have, despite their claims, never shown any sincere interest in women’s sports, and have gone WEEKS, probably even MONTHS, without mentioning women’s sports on their platforms — lecturing, even berating, two of the most prominent and accomplished women’s basketball analysts in the world about what it takes to grow and market women’s basketball.

And *this* is what worries me the most about this moment in women’s sports.

The same people who directly contributed to the disenfranchising of women’s sports are still the ones with the most power in the industry; they’re still the ones calling the shots, driving the headlines, raking in the money and endorsements, and shaping the narratives. Now here they are, using the popularity of Caitlin Clark — which is only possible because of the hard work of those they purposefully pushed to the shadows — as an opportunity to present themselves as experts in the fields of marketing and reporting on women’s basketball. But they are not merely spectators to this marginalization and mistreatment of women’s sports; they’re perpetrators of it. They have agency in this situation. And their refusal to acknowledge that might be the biggest roadblock facing women’s sports.

I think a lot about a column Bill Plashke wrote in the LA Times in 2016, after the passing of the legendary Pat Summitt, “I regret marginalizing Pat Summitt’s greatness.” As the title suggests, in it, he laments how he had “professionally ignored” Pat Summitt and women’s basketball as a whole.

Summitt, who died Tuesday at age 64 after suffering with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, was a basketball coach whose greatness was only matched by John Wooden. Yet while I spent much time with Wooden, I never even met her.

Despite holding a prominent sports columnist position for this prominent newspaper for 20 years, I never covered one of Pat Summitt’s games.

Not one of her 1,098 wins, a record for men and women. Not one of her eight national championships, third only to Geno Auriemma and Wooden. Not one of her record 18 Final Four appearances.

During Summitt’s 38 years at Tennessee, not one player who completed her eligibility failed to graduate — this is just stunning — yet I never wrote a word about that. I once opined that she should be a candidate for the men’s coaching job at UCLA, but emailers laughed, and I never dared raise the idea again.

The piece was moving. It received widespread praise, and it clearly made an impression on me. Finally, someone with power in the media ecosystem recognized that they were more than a cog, they were a motor. But as anyone who has ever picked up a self-help book knows, recognizing you have power to change something is one thing, but following through is another altogether.

Plashke hasn’t necessarily become a regular in WNBA circles in the years since. Google brings up one or two Sparks columns per year. In 2018, I noted in a piece for ThinkProgress that he had been to one Sparks game that season. On his LA Times author page, I can scroll back through his past 90 bylines, going back to August of last year; seven of them are about women’s sports — two on Caitlin Clark, one on the Sparks, one on the women’s March Madness tournament, one on JuJu Watkins, one on UCLA vs. USC women’s basketball, and one on girls soccer.

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But this isn’t about Plashke, who has plenty on his plate with LA men’s sports. It’s about how the story is changing in front of our very eyes, but the storytellers are remaining the same. As Matt Ellentuck pointed out on Twitter this week, all of this increased attention and money in women’s sports has mostly surpassed the journalists who have been doing this work in the trenches for years, often on our own dime. The Caitlin Clark bump is massive and thrilling, but it’s only going to be sustainable if the proper media infrastructure is built around it. If the focus is limited to Clark alone, and the microphones stay in the same hands, the boom will be more like a blip. And for those in positions of power today, that wouldn’t be a glitch; in fact, it’s the goal.