The Indiana Fever were the first pick in the WNBA draft and their selection was hardly unexpected.
There is, fittingly enough, Caitlin Clark fever throughout the United States.
The 22-year-old point guard has been a dominant force in college basketball and has been singled out as the future of women’s basketball. After going No. 1 in the hyped draft, Clark, for the first time as a WNBA player, faced the pressure.
– I have dreamed of this moment since I was in the second grade. There is a lot of hard work behind this, she says.
During the last season, the Fever had the second worst audience average in the entire league. But they have already started to notice a real Caitlin Clark effect with several sold-out matches, writes AFP.
And when her college team Iowa recently played in the NCAA final against South Carolina, 18.7 million people watched the game. It is the highest viewership ever for a basketball game in the United States, even with the NBA included, writes NBC.
The columnist’s actions are seen
But Caitlin Clark’s first press conference as a Fever player has left a bitter aftertaste to say the least.
This on the occasion of the newspaper Indianapolis Star columnist.
Clark has a habit of shaping his hands into a heart after basketball games. Gregg Doyel did the same during the press conference, saying:
– A little quickly, let me do this.
Clark replied:
– Do you like it?
– I like that you are here, I like that, Doyel retorted.
Clark then explained that she does the gesture every game and that it is directed at her family, to which Doyel replied:
– Start doing it to me and we’ll get along fine.
The columnist’s words have caused scores of profiles to go through the roof.
“He is a sexist perv, he proved that today with his disgusting behavior”, writes Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports X.
The outcome: Should be carried over from the matches
CBS’s Shireen Ahmed is of the opinion that Doyel should be stripped of his accreditation and thus stopped from covering the matches.
“Almost all of my female colleagues and sports journalism students share the Gregg Doyel clip with distaste. We are, quite rightly, furious and disappointed. His accreditation should be revoked and the place should be taken by a journalist who respectsr women,” she writes.
CBS colleague Katie Mox:
“What happened to Caitlin Clark today at her first press conference with Indiana was truly disgusting. I hope she gets an apology.”
She has that too.
Gregg Doyel has apologized, both on social media and in a column in the Indianapolis Star.
“Caitlin Clark, I’m so sorry. Today I was part of the problem. After going through denial and anger, I now realize what I said and how I said it. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean, it was just wrong”.
Doyel believes that his actions are in line with how he is as a person. That he often ends up in uncomfortable situations and that he had similar jargon with a lot of other athletes. Athletes who have all been men.
“I was convinced that I was acting innocuous until a woman I deeply respect said to me ‘But Caitlin Clark is a young woman and you don’t talk to a young woman the same way you talk to a young man. My heart skipped a beat. Now I had realised”.