The LSU Tigers are the national champions of women’s college basketball for the first time in school history. Angel Reese led the team through the tournament, including an easy 102-85 win over Iowa in the national championship game. Dan Le Batard said he couldn’t help but notice that all of the conversations about Reese are about her behavior and not her accomplishment.
Reese ended the game by seeking out Iowa star Caitlin Clark and flashing wrestler John Cena’s famous “you can’t see me” taunt in her face. Clark, one of the best shooters in the country, had been doing the same gesture throughout the tournament.
The gesture was the only thing many members of the media seemed to notice about the game. Former ESPN and MSNBC star Keith Olbermann drew particular ire after he called Reese a “f***ing idiot” on Twitter.
“A lot of people went after Keith Olbermann yesterday,” Le Batard said on his Monday show, “because that was a hostile reaction calling Angel Reese an ‘f-ing idiot’ for what is a fairly benign gesture, I thought, in the name of trash talking.”
Shaquille O’Neal, Marcus Spears, Jay Williams, and actor Samuel L. Jackson were among the chorus of critics. The discussion quickly became about Olbermann’s tweet. Many pointed out that Olbermann and others had been largely silent about Clark’s antics during the tournament.
Dan Le Batard said that this isn’t a good thing for women’s college basketball. In a year when the tournament was setting ratings records and new viewership highs, the national conversation about the national championship game has nothing to do with actual basketball.
“I don’t know if it is a great step for womankind to have sportswomanship be the thing we’re talking about instead of the action,” he said. “Sportsmanship is what we’re talking about instead of the action in the games!”
Jessica Smetana was unsurprised. Smetana, in addition to serving as a producer on The Dan Le Batard Show, co-hosts Meadowlark Media’s women’s basketball podcast Off the Looking Glass. The current discourse is no different to her than not talking about women’s basketball at all.
“We haven’t talked about the game,” she said. “We’re just talking about the reaction from people in the media that don’t give a single shit about women’s sports.”
