What’s more infuriating than Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel’s whiff of a welcome toward basketball phenom Caitlin Clark on Wednesday, a highly unprofessional, inscrutably brain-dead moment from a credentialed journalist? It’s the army of receipt-keeping reactionaries and easily offended sports fans barging into a movement alongside rightfully enraged women.
While women’s sports are experiencing a tidal wave of interest and coverage from mainstream media, the gatekeepers are having to keep their dukes up against threats — real and perceived — that may try to belittle this progress. These are women who are fed up with their sports and their athletes not being treated with the same seriousness afforded to male athletes. They’re tired of listening to the conversations focusing on how much WNBA players are paid; besides, it’s only mock concern from many of the commentators anyway. Also, they’re repulsed by the arrogance of some outlets that show up and expect these little women to be grateful for coverage.
Long gone are the days when arriving at a draft pick’s introductory news conference felt like covering the Tuesday afternoon junior varsity cross-country meet. With the Caitlin Clark effect permeating her league, everything is bigger now. As tennis star Frances Tiafoe once said about Clark, she is “box office,” and thus, so is the WNBA. People are watching and streaming and, yes, clipping 22-second gotcha moments from news conferences with the intention of going viral. Clark is box office, and she’s also a test for sports reporters.
(Free advice to all journalists covering female sports superstars: They’re not your pals. They are athletes and sources. Treat them as you would LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes.)
So the eye-rolling over what happened during the news conference is justified. But the anger is being co-opted by interlopers.
This is a morality play in which almost every rebuke feels phony and every actor looks miscast: Doyel as the creepy misogynist, Barstool bros as males concerned for women’s safety and Clark as the precious flower in need of their protection.
This outrage lacks truth. Especially coming from a human being who once wrote that if you’re a woman and wearing skinny jeans as a size 6, then you “kind of deserve to be raped.” This same person created a multiplatform on which sexualizing women and trumpeting general contempt over their existence became the acceptable candor of boys just bein’ boys. So, no thank you, sir. You can keep your fake disgust over so-called sexism displayed during that news conference. Surely, your time is better used finding the next crazy broad out there just waiting for you to call her a “bitch.”
Also, this outrage lacks transparency — because so many in the offended party are engaging in a societal and political battle yet cloaking it beneath the guise of fighting for women.
Doyel, who wrote a column apologizing for his behavior toward Clark, is a blaring, blue dot in a sea of Indiana red. He once hammered then-vice president Mike Pence for staging a walkout when San Francisco 49ers players took a knee during the national anthem. When Carson Wentz refused to get the vaccine during the 2021 season, almost every time Doyel wrote, he dipped his quill into acid and eviscerated the quarterback. Then last year, Doyel raged in a column about former Colts coach Tony Dungy for promoting anti-trans sentiment. Doyel described Dungy’s actions as “g-d–n cruel.”
These are the opinions from the leading sports columnist in a state that voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Over the years, Doyel has made enemies in the culture war as well as the comment section. For some, the vendetta is more personal than politics: Egads! How dare he diss my favorite team! Grievances have spread from the Deflategate Deniers to U-Conn. Twitter and judging from the bios of the triggered people screaming FIRE DOYEL on social media, his enemies have finally found an opening to punch back and punch harder. They could not care less about Clark and her feelings. Their only mission is to secure a pound of flesh. The same people railing against Doyel’s alleged toxic masculinity probably thought the Indiana Fever was a plague that wiped out all the state’s corn in 1902.
Now, here’s the awkward part. To provide what’s missing in this selective outrage, here’s some truth and transparency: I know Gregg Doyel, and I worked with him at the Star from 2014 to 2016. For a while, he was one of my closest friends. However, time, distance, petty behavior (by both of us) and massive never-reconciled disagreements ended this relationship. So I’m not writing in his defense. These days, I find his real problems are an unchecked ego that compels him to stand out and a desperation to appeal to local subscribers. He tried to ingratiate himself with Indianapolis’s newest, brightest star and “welcome” her when that isn’t the job of a journalist.
He’s a homer, not a perv. (For the record, that “creepy” sounding voice? Honestly, that’s him trying to be self-effacing. He’s just weird, y’all.) And while playing the role of the city’s dancing bear, Doyel landed himself as the nation’s latest rag doll representing male patriarchy.
A viral clip devoid of context — that fails to reveal a man’s true character — opened the door for outrage and all of its insincerity. Want to know a cheap and easy way to win points with the empowering movement in sports? Just chase “likes” and engagement and let your disingenuous Twitter fingers show the world how much you’re down for the cause.
At some point in time, a sports columnist in Indianapolis wrote something that someone didn’t like. Then he wrote again and again and again, and his adversaries grew with every click. Then on Wednesday, he did something stupid in a news conference. Suddenly, he became a target for opportunists. But those who truly care about women in sports should never align with the actual misogynists or overly sensitive fans just looking to settle a score.
While some in this debate are legitimately concerned over the interaction between Doyel and Clark, others are not genuine partners here to celebrate women. We should all be discerning enough to know where to aim our indignation and when a pile-on is more about maliciousness than compassion.
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