Speaker 1: Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're avoiding
Speaker 1: cracks in the sidewalk, being careful around mirrors, and staying
Speaker 1: far away from ladders. Just in case. It's Friday, June thirteenth.
Speaker 1: Happy Friday the thirteenth to everybody except my Triskadeca folks.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we'll be skipping the need to know
Speaker 1: and jumping straight into my conversation with Howard Meggill, founder
Speaker 1: and editor of The Nine Newsletter and the Next Women's
Speaker 1: Basketball Newsroom. He's got a new book coming out on
Speaker 1: June seventeenth, titled Becoming Caitlin Clark, The Unknown Origin Story
Speaker 1: of a Modern Basketball Superstar. So we talked about how
Speaker 1: we approached putting Clark's meteoric rise in context, the research
Speaker 1: he did to tell the history of women's basketball and
Speaker 1: dig up the stories of past women's soups grates, and
Speaker 1: his role guiding young writers in the evolving women's sports
Speaker 1: media landscape. It's all coming up right after this, joining
Speaker 1: us now. He's the founder and editor of The Nine
Speaker 1: Newsletter and the Next Women's Basketball Newsroom, a staff writer
Speaker 1: for Baseball Prospectives, and senior contributor at Forbes dot com.
Speaker 1: He's published eight books, including his latest, Becoming Caitlin Clark,
Speaker 1: out June seventeenth. He'll take the occasional break from women's
Speaker 1: sports to down a Metz Cheese steak, egg roll, or
Speaker 1: witness the glory of the Philly fanatic hot dog Cannon.
Speaker 1: It's Howard Magdoll.
Speaker 2: Hi, Howard, Hi, Sarah. Great to be with you always.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to have you. Congrats on the book. Before
Speaker 1: we get to that, I want to back up a
Speaker 1: little for our listeners that might not know your extensive
Speaker 1: history in the women's sports space. So can you give
Speaker 1: us a sort of condensed version of how you got
Speaker 1: here and how you've been such a big part of
Speaker 1: women's basketball and women's sports.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, you know, for me, it has been
Speaker 3: our journey over the course of my career. I've been
Speaker 3: in sports journalism about twenty years. And as soon as
Speaker 3: you get involved and you know this that you can
Speaker 3: see this gap between how men's sports and women's sports
Speaker 3: are covered, and you can't unsee it. And so the
Speaker 3: question is in my mind and has been what do
Speaker 3: you do about it? And I've covered women's sports at
Speaker 3: legacy publications for many years, always felt like I was
Speaker 3: building in sand, and so how do you go about
Speaker 3: building the infrastructure that creates the everyday coverage Number one
Speaker 3: and number two creates opportunities for others to be doing
Speaker 3: the work as well. And so in twenty eighteen started
Speaker 3: The Nine, which is a women's sports newsletter. It was
Speaker 3: three sports, then we're up to six now one per day,
Speaker 3: and then in twenty twenty the newsroom the next, which
Speaker 3: is a women's basketball twenty four seven, three sixty five
Speaker 3: newsroom where we have over one hundred reported pieces every
Speaker 3: single month on women's sports. We have a WNBA beat
Speaker 3: reporter or sometimes two on every single team. We try
Speaker 3: to cover with the fierce urgency that you can really
Speaker 3: take for granted when it comes to men's sports. And
Speaker 3: so that's essentially the thumbnail version of how I'm here.
Speaker 1: I love it, and it's so true, and it's something
Speaker 1: of course we think about a lot here at this show.
Speaker 1: The only daily podcast is what can we bring to
Speaker 1: people consistently and with regularity that they can't find anywhere else,
Speaker 1: so that they can keep up and connect all the
Speaker 1: stories in different stars across the space. For those who
Speaker 1: want to subscribe The Nine is like title nine the
Speaker 1: Roman numerals IX, so if you're searching forward, it's the
Speaker 1: IX newsletter and then the next Women's basketball so you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to those and get all the goodness in
Speaker 1: your inbox. I want to talk really quickly about that,
Speaker 1: because it's great to have those goals. It's great to
Speaker 1: want to create something. But did you actually want to
Speaker 1: be a boss, an entrepreneur, someone who had to handle
Speaker 1: a staff and manage payroll and like all those other things,
Speaker 1: because I don't. So I'm very impressed that you are
Speaker 1: helping so many other young reporters and journalists in the space,
Speaker 1: because that's a lot of extra work on top of
Speaker 1: the stuff you actually want to do, presumably, which is
Speaker 1: the journalism side.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that question. You know.
Speaker 3: What I have found is being able to create these
Speaker 3: opportunities and build this infra structure with permanence makes it
Speaker 3: worth doing those other things. I can't tell you that
Speaker 3: I love the process of taking on payroll by hand
Speaker 3: every single month, but absolutely to be able to reward
Speaker 3: the folks who are doing it is also really significant
Speaker 3: to me. And being a mentor in this space is
Speaker 3: something that's really important to me. So there's enough that
Speaker 3: I love out of it that, Yes, the place where
Speaker 3: I feel most at home is in a pressure room
Speaker 3: or sitting in a one on one interview, but being
Speaker 3: able to do those things as well important in something
Speaker 3: that I've come to really find joy in.
Speaker 1: What's the toughest part about managing folks, especially folks that
Speaker 1: they're maybe in one of their first gigs learning the
Speaker 1: ropes as journalists.
Speaker 2: The most difficult? Then? That's hard to say.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone comes with certain strengths and certain weaknesses,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of identifying what are the best ways
Speaker 3: that I can support a young journalist, you know, as
Speaker 3: she makes your way forward in this work. So I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say that there's one thing that stands out most
Speaker 3: of all. You know, they're different challenges for different people,
Speaker 3: But the joy of seeing somebody figure it out is
Speaker 3: my favorite thing. I may enjoy that more than doing
Speaker 3: the work itself.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Oh, that's amazing. That's probably why you're in the
Speaker 1: position that you're in. That's that's a really good quality
Speaker 1: to have to care so much about watching other people
Speaker 1: as they rise. I find what's interesting to me moving
Speaker 1: across different spaces is even at ESPN, at different spaces
Speaker 1: at ESPN, how the newsroom, whether that was a radio
Speaker 1: or a TV or a written kind of newsroom operated differently,
Speaker 1: And I wonder for you how that works. You've got
Speaker 1: sort of whatever you make and create is the rules
Speaker 1: for how you operate. But then you're working with journalists
Speaker 1: who might have jobs at other places. You're working with
Speaker 1: folks who maybe have never worked in an official journalistic
Speaker 1: capacity anywhere. What do you tell them about how to
Speaker 1: handle themselves in the women's sports space, particularly as it
Speaker 1: changes so much, because it went from sort of pay
Speaker 1: your own way, show up if you care about it,
Speaker 1: sometimes too sick a phantic coverage because you're trying to
Speaker 1: make sure you connect with the athletes and continue to
Speaker 1: get access to Now where there's an expectation to really
Speaker 1: be professional in the space and to potentially be able
Speaker 1: to and have access to ask tougher questions. How do
Speaker 1: you help them adjust to that?
Speaker 3: There's no simple answer to that, but the way you
Speaker 3: framed it is exactly right. I mean reflects obviously the
Speaker 3: work that you do in this space all the time. Right,
Speaker 3: there's a baseline we have to set up professionalism of
Speaker 3: an understanding of you are there to cover and a
Speaker 3: lot of people come from and this is not a
Speaker 3: criticism from a place of we love the sport. We
Speaker 3: care about the sport. You may even have fandom that
Speaker 3: you bring into it, and we check that at the
Speaker 3: door and we say, look, this is what we need
Speaker 3: to do, and you do it for not just the
Speaker 3: reasons of being able to maintain that distance, to be
Speaker 3: able to cover, so that our audience understands we are
Speaker 3: you can trust.
Speaker 2: Because we are here to inform.
Speaker 3: And ultimately our relationship is with the reader, the viewer,
Speaker 3: the listener in all these cases, but also so that
Speaker 3: there is that space to allow a writer to be
Speaker 3: critical when necessary, not critical in a way that you
Speaker 3: cannot look that person in the eye when you see
Speaker 3: her the next day at practice, but to make sure
Speaker 3: that you are telling the truth about what's happening. And
Speaker 3: I think we've found a lot of success with that.
Speaker 3: Being able to provide people the access to do the
Speaker 3: work is something that is of course a fight in
Speaker 3: and of itself sometimes but critical part of making sure
Speaker 3: that people are there, people are showing up. And then
Speaker 3: the flip side of that is is that the people
Speaker 3: who we have covered through the years. Understand we will
Speaker 3: be there. We will be there when they're winning, we
Speaker 3: will be there when they're not. We covered the Indiana
Speaker 3: fever when they were five and thirty one, no less
Speaker 3: than we cover the Indiana fever today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part
Speaker 1: of this space in general, is how are teams and
Speaker 1: leagues and pr people and comms folks adjusting to the
Speaker 1: new normal, and in some cases, I think not always
Speaker 1: that great. I was talking to a local sports person
Speaker 1: who said that their access to the women's teams in
Speaker 1: their city is significantly less than the men's that they
Speaker 1: are trying to give them more coverage. But whether it's
Speaker 1: bandwidth resources that you know, not long tenures of the
Speaker 1: folks working there who don't have relationships in the city
Speaker 1: the same way, or whether it's the athletes themselves who
Speaker 1: are rightfully gunchy about some of the coverage. How have
Speaker 1: you seen the players in the w change over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, Because I do think that they
Speaker 1: have a good reason to wonder about some of the
Speaker 1: reporters parachuting in for the first time and asking dumb questions,
Speaker 1: But they also need to be ready to make the
Speaker 1: transition from fan like reporters to higher level journalists asking
Speaker 1: tougher questions that are fair.
Speaker 3: I think it's less binary than this. I think you've
Speaker 3: identified a lot of critical parts of the issue that
Speaker 3: we see right now, and it's severalfold. And one is
Speaker 3: that not all teams and not all leads have come
Speaker 3: to the conclusion we don't need to credential literally everyone,
Speaker 3: whether or not they're.
Speaker 2: Doing the work.
Speaker 3: And as a result, players are not going to necessarily
Speaker 3: know whether somebody is parachuting in without a lot of information,
Speaker 3: somebody is coming to cover, or somebody is there in
Speaker 3: a fan capacity but credentialed as if they are media.
Speaker 3: And when you don't know where the next question is
Speaker 3: coming from, I don't just mean physically, but I just
Speaker 3: mean from what perspective you can meet unshy as a result.
Speaker 3: And so there's a lot of work that needs to
Speaker 3: be done on multiple levels. Right The media needs to
Speaker 3: come in an informed way and that needs to happen.
Speaker 3: Needs to be work at the team and lead level
Speaker 3: to understand who ought to be in those spaces, and
Speaker 3: then for players, you know there's an information and understanding
Speaker 3: of who are the people as individuals who are covering
Speaker 3: me rather than the media as a monolith, I mean
Speaker 3: those of us. And you've been in these rooms too,
Speaker 3: where you just you want to bang your head against
Speaker 3: the wall when you're a question from another quote unquote
Speaker 3: media member. And unfortunately even it's even binary hpray area.
Speaker 3: It's not old media versus new media. It's not print
Speaker 3: versus digital. You know, there's it's always complishing.
Speaker 1: Case by case really yeah, And I think like one
Speaker 1: of the things that stood out to me was talking
Speaker 1: to a veteran player who said, it's as simple as
Speaker 1: being able to tell by someone's question that they don't
Speaker 1: know that they were just traded this year, or they
Speaker 1: used to be an MVP, or they've won a title before,
Speaker 1: and I think.
Speaker 2: Their name is pronounce right. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of basics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think a lot of that though, is
Speaker 1: also like there's a real fear and I've been there
Speaker 1: of walking into male professional league locker rooms and worrying
Speaker 1: what the other media will think about you if you
Speaker 1: haven't done your homework. And in the women's space, there
Speaker 1: are far too many media who stroll in having done
Speaker 1: zero homework and feel perfectly fine. Asking dumbshit questions that
Speaker 1: the people who do know recognize as dumb shit immediately.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I do think it's more helpful
Speaker 1: you are allowed to be mad about that, and where
Speaker 1: does that get you as a player if your reaction
Speaker 1: is frustration as opposed to can you choose instead, especially
Speaker 1: if someone seems to be coming with good intention and
Speaker 1: just maybe needs to learn how to better prep to
Speaker 1: help them through that. It's not their responsibility or their job,
Speaker 1: but for their response to be offering a little bit
Speaker 1: of grace, we'll probably serve them in the coverage of
Speaker 1: them better than to get frustrated and shut down. So
Speaker 1: I think there's like a little bit of both sides,
Speaker 1: where again it's not the player's responsibility to do that,
Speaker 1: and also does it help them or the league or
Speaker 1: their team to essentially be mad and not do media
Speaker 1: anymore because they want everybody to show up and ask
Speaker 1: better questions, you know, like what's the end goal? The
Speaker 1: end goal is more coverage, better coverage, you know, and
Speaker 1: teaching those people with the dumb shit questions.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to note as well that we
Speaker 3: want to see places that haven't necessarily covered. The WNBA
Speaker 3: or room in sports in the past to cover it.
Speaker 3: But a lot of times that means that the editorial
Speaker 3: structure in place doesn't even have folks who are able
Speaker 3: to bring people along to do it the right way,
Speaker 3: and so they are forced to learn on the job.
Speaker 3: It's something that I'm really conscious of at the next
Speaker 3: where we're trying to build people up to the point
Speaker 3: that for those who stay with us, that's amazing. And
Speaker 3: for the people who end up at a lot of
Speaker 3: other places and they have they're coming in with the
Speaker 3: training to be able to do it the right way,
Speaker 3: but that type of modeling is not there in the
Speaker 3: way that it is for a lot of men's sports,
Speaker 3: just because the structures have not covered it before. So
Speaker 3: I just think it's significant, and I, you know, I
Speaker 3: just wanted to mention it as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree, And like I think that's why
Speaker 1: in the end, everybody has allowed their feelings. But what
Speaker 1: ends up getting us to the best place, and that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of grace on both sides, right and
Speaker 1: understanding that some of those people got assigned to you
Speaker 1: an hour before drove out. They're trying to do their
Speaker 1: best and when you help them, the coverage is better
Speaker 1: than when you stonewall because you're frustrated. And we talked
Speaker 1: to athletes about that too, and how they're ready for
Speaker 1: the fair and tough questions. They just want them to
Speaker 1: be well researched, which I understand. Let's talk about the book,
Speaker 1: because you've written a number of books. Why, Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 1: Why right now?
Speaker 3: It's several years in the making, to be frank, And
Speaker 3: it goes back to even just seeing her as an
Speaker 3: initial phenomenon and seeing an understanding that as she blew
Speaker 3: up and I mean that before she blew up in
Speaker 3: an audience sens so she just blew up as a player,
Speaker 3: which you could see right from the start, right from
Speaker 3: day one as a freshman at Iowa, there was this
Speaker 3: legacy clearly tied not just to the previous few years
Speaker 3: at University of Iowa, but going back a century. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've had the privilege of covering and writing
Speaker 3: about Molly Kashmir, who was Molly bowlan machine dun Molly,
Speaker 3: dating back to the nineteen seventies in the WBL, and
Speaker 3: you just couldn't help but see those parallels right away.
Speaker 3: And so just the more I dug into it, the
Speaker 3: more it was just very clear to me this is
Speaker 3: a multi generational story. And then the more she blew up,
Speaker 3: the more it was clear and obvious that there's a
Speaker 3: large audience out there who may not know why this
Speaker 3: is happening now. And I think that's what's really important.
Speaker 3: That's what drove me when I wrote Rare Jam, which
Speaker 3: is about effectively four generations of women's players in Minnesota
Speaker 3: and where that came from, and to see this history
Speaker 3: in Iowa, it goes back even further and there are
Speaker 3: these direct links. You know, Jan Jensen is the lead
Speaker 3: assistant coaching Caitlin Clark, and her grandmother was a star
Speaker 3: in girls six on six basketball, not only in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties, but writing about it, and I had access
Speaker 3: to her journals in a way that no one had
Speaker 3: ever seen before writeing about it in ways the language
Speaker 3: parallels the way Caitlin talks about living as a basketball
Speaker 3: player today. And so the more you see that, the
Speaker 3: more you just feel like, you know, Wow, this is
Speaker 3: a story that runs so much deeper than I'm going
Speaker 3: to be able to get to in one story or
Speaker 3: one podcast.
Speaker 1: We got to take a quick break when we come
Speaker 1: back more with Howard mgdal hang tight. I loved the
Speaker 1: history that was in the book because it's Caitlin Clark
Speaker 1: has done a lot, but her story is still relatively short.
Speaker 1: So the idea that you connect that short story that's
Speaker 1: been broadcast on the highest and biggest stages alongside this
Speaker 1: lengthy history. And you talk mostly about Iowa and how
Speaker 1: Iowa's had this incredible support for women's basketball dating back
Speaker 1: to even previous iterations of the sport, and you do
Speaker 1: compare it to other places and how it's different, And
Speaker 1: of course the part about Illinois is stuck with me,
Speaker 1: but it was uniform across many states. But this is
Speaker 1: the example you used from Illinois, you write, as historian
Speaker 1: Scott Johnson Chronicle quote. Not long after the introduction of
Speaker 1: basketball as an athletic activity for high school girls, all
Speaker 1: levels of the educational hierarchy were engaged in a debate
Speaker 1: over its merits. As a simple playground game, girls basketball
Speaker 1: had prompted few objections. However, when girls started developing interscholastic
Speaker 1: programs that rivaled those of the boys, basketball quickly turned
Speaker 1: into a nightmare for school administrators. While students and empathetic
Speaker 1: teachers push for more interschool play, school principles, and professional
Speaker 1: educators marshaled their resistance to what they perceived as the
Speaker 1: masculinization of the female athletic program. This scenario played itself
Speaker 1: out in practically every state during the early twentieth century. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not surprising to folks who have been in
Speaker 1: the women's sports space. In fact, it feels weirdly reminiscent
Speaker 1: of some of the reactions to the w last year,
Speaker 1: for folks who hadn't watched before, who said, oh, this
Speaker 1: is mma. They're boxing out there, this is too physical,
Speaker 1: everyone's mean, they're targeting Caitlin, and we're all like, this
Speaker 1: is basketball, bro, Like, why have you been watching? But
Speaker 1: the idea that girls playing is fine until people come
Speaker 1: to watch, or tickets get sold, or the stakes get high,
Speaker 1: or it becomes similar to the boys or surpasses the boys.
Speaker 1: And there were plenty of examples in early Iowa basketball
Speaker 1: that you cite where thousands of people are going to games,
Speaker 1: where there's a tiny town of just a couple hundred
Speaker 1: and two thousand people show up to celebrate when they win,
Speaker 1: lining down the street. And what was the big takeaway
Speaker 1: for you of the waves of fighting that are required
Speaker 1: to push women's sport forward from the eighteen hundreds to
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds and carrying on.
Speaker 3: So this is a big takeaway for me from this book,
Speaker 3: but frankly, this is a big takeaway for me from
Speaker 3: Rare Gems. This is a big takeaway for me from
Speaker 3: covering women's sports with a historical lens, and that is
Speaker 3: that every time you see a gap between outcomes with
Speaker 3: men's and women's sports, you can always trace it back
Speaker 3: to process. And the thing that I think frustrates me
Speaker 3: the most is where I hear people mistake process for outcome,
Speaker 3: and to your point, and this is the most significant
Speaker 3: part of it. Every time there's an elevation, every time
Speaker 3: there is growth, there is a backlash to what we're seeing. Look,
Speaker 3: we're seeing it in women's sports. We're seeing it, and
Speaker 3: we've seen it at every wave of feminism that we've
Speaker 3: had in this country throughout the world as well, you know,
Speaker 3: again and again and again a pushback. And so that
Speaker 3: for me is the big takeaway for people to understand
Speaker 3: that women were playing basketball as soon as there was basketball,
Speaker 3: just the same as men were. So everything that we've
Speaker 3: seen for the EBB and flow and the fact that
Speaker 3: there is not a parallel rise in men's basketball and
Speaker 3: women's basketball is everything to do with efforts made to
Speaker 3: stop the progress of women's basketball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one thousand percent. I talk about that all the time,
Speaker 1: that if you don't understand the intention behind holding back
Speaker 1: women's sports, you will continue to blame the product. And
Speaker 1: the product has never been the problem. It has always
Speaker 1: been the infrastructure and the people around it who are
Speaker 1: trying to hold women back or keep women in a
Speaker 1: specific lane. And it's frustrating to see that ebb and
Speaker 1: flow and come back and repeat itself over the course
Speaker 1: of time. We're currently fighting our way still in this
Speaker 1: massive moment of growth, but of course we look at
Speaker 1: some larger administration and other folks, the Trump administration, other
Speaker 1: folks looking to push us back into yet another eb
Speaker 1: What was the most surprising thing you learned about Caitlin
Speaker 1: in the process of writing this book, because you sort
Speaker 1: of tell these parallel stories of the history and then
Speaker 1: her history as well.
Speaker 3: The most surprising thing to me is that she never
Speaker 3: had a moment of breaking. If that made sense, there
Speaker 3: was something and it made sense within the context of
Speaker 3: understanding that in a lot of ways she was born
Speaker 3: and raised to meet this moment. But she did not
Speaker 3: have a moment where her game failed her. She didn't
Speaker 3: have a moment where she wasn't able to handle what
Speaker 3: has been a gradually rising but clearly attention that she
Speaker 3: has been receiving dating back to her high school days
Speaker 3: and even before that. You know, she's playing at seventh
Speaker 3: and eighth grade in these AAU tournaments in front of
Speaker 3: you know, people like Lisa Bluter, and at no point
Speaker 3: did she falter. And that is astonished.
Speaker 1: So she is a robot.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's astonishing, right, I mean, this is a
Speaker 3: twenty three year old woman, and I just think about
Speaker 3: myself at twenty three and what we are all prepared
Speaker 3: to handle, and for her to handle this hurricane around
Speaker 3: her that gets more and more intense, seemingly.
Speaker 2: By the day.
Speaker 3: And there was no moment where publicly she cracked. And
Speaker 3: that to me is amazing because she would be understandable,
Speaker 3: she would be human, she would be forgiven for having
Speaker 3: done so. But we haven't seen it, yeah at all.
Speaker 1: You talk about the coverage and conversation around her in
Speaker 1: the book and on our show, we have struggled to
Speaker 1: both address the problems that result from some of the
Speaker 1: toxic discussion around her, and also embrace and acknowledge how
Speaker 1: conversation around the league itself has changed and grown as
Speaker 1: a result of her arrival. And I always describe her
Speaker 1: as the match that lit the bonfire. You needed this
Speaker 1: giant stack of sticks for that match to do anything,
Speaker 1: but the match also expedited the fire in a way
Speaker 1: that we'd never seen before. And you write in the
Speaker 1: book the WNBA had existed as a safe space for
Speaker 1: marginalized people for nearly three decades because broader American culture
Speaker 1: so often ignored it. That trade off was felt in
Speaker 1: ways large and small that filled the league's players, coaches, executives,
Speaker 1: in long tenured fans with ambivalence. So this feeling of
Speaker 1: we don't know how to feel about this growth because
Speaker 1: we love it, and it's also bringing with it a
Speaker 1: whole new kind of conversation that wasn't here before and frankly,
Speaker 1: is not welcome. Ultimately, I loved that you came to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that we have here, which is that you
Speaker 1: can't name one thing or one reason as to why
Speaker 1: Caitlin blew up the way she did. You can't name
Speaker 1: one thing or one reason as to why the reaction
Speaker 1: to Caitlin blowing up became so problematic? Can you talk
Speaker 1: about some of the things that when writing this you
Speaker 1: really recognized about how Caitlin became such a for many people,
Speaker 1: black and white evil or good villain or hero sort
Speaker 1: of character or avatar in the league.
Speaker 3: And I would be remiss not to point out, as
Speaker 3: a Rabbit listener that I am very appreciative of the
Speaker 3: way you guys frame this on a regular basis, as
Speaker 3: well as it relates to the question you asked. It
Speaker 3: is mind boggling to me that people are trying to
Speaker 3: come up with a single answer or to assign singular
Speaker 3: motivations to how people even ought to feel about it.
Speaker 3: And I spoke to players and coaches and gms all
Speaker 3: around the lead. You know, I do that anyway in
Speaker 3: the day to day course of my work, but for
Speaker 3: this book, specifically in the idea that a player cannot
Speaker 3: simultaneously be thrilled that the media rights deal is going
Speaker 3: to be worth between eight and nine times what the
Speaker 3: last media rights deal is, but also to want to
Speaker 3: go out there and beat the hell out of her opponent,
Speaker 3: whether it's Kitlan or anybody else, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Both of these things are obviously significant motivations in a
Speaker 3: professional athlete. You know, the idea that Caitlin is doing
Speaker 3: this now and breaking through now is very much a
Speaker 3: consequence of what we have seen in terms of growth
Speaker 3: of the lead in the years leading up to it.
Speaker 3: If we look at the number of games on national
Speaker 3: television when Kathy Engelbert took over as commissioner, compared to
Speaker 3: where we are now, it's exponentially larger.
Speaker 2: When you look at the fact that.
Speaker 3: There is shoulder programming around WNBA games, that was a thing,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, a WNBA pregame show. No, you couldn't
Speaker 3: imagine it in a million years. Now we see it
Speaker 3: at ESPN, we see it at ION and CBS it
Speaker 3: just last week. And you know, all of these things matter.
Speaker 3: We know, for instance, that when shoulder programming was built
Speaker 3: and there was cross promotion leading up to the twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen Women's World Cup, that is when the US women's
Speaker 3: national team in soccer broke through into the larger culture.
Speaker 3: And so there are all of these elements that play apart.
Speaker 3: But yes, absolutely there is this awful, ugly undertone that
Speaker 3: reflects where the country is here in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: There are people who are new to the WNBA space
Speaker 3: who are fans, and there are people who have entered
Speaker 3: the WNBA space because it is part of broader culture
Speaker 3: and using this as an opportunity to attack women who
Speaker 3: are overwhelmingly black women in the WNBA. And those two
Speaker 3: things are both true at the same time, and pretending
Speaker 3: one or the other doesn't exist is doing a disservice
Speaker 3: to the current moment that we're in.
Speaker 1: Completely agree. I really liked what you had to say
Speaker 1: about DJ Carrington being assigned to guard Caitlin Clark and
Speaker 1: then afterwards being asked about her in a way that
Speaker 1: felt in congruous with the job she'd just been assigned.
Speaker 1: You wrote, was it difficult for Carrington to effusively praise
Speaker 1: Clark even as she fulfilled the obligation of her job
Speaker 1: to battle her fiercely on the court? Of course? Why
Speaker 1: was that even her responsibility? And I think that's something
Speaker 1: that stands out to me is players can be grateful
Speaker 1: for the attention Caitlin brings and also be frustrated if
Speaker 1: that's the only thing they're asked about. I've heard of
Speaker 1: players in the league tell reporters, I'm happy to sit
Speaker 1: down with, you know, Kaitlin Clark questions, And maybe that's
Speaker 1: going too far. And I can get why that's frustrating
Speaker 1: for the reporter, but also maybe if you don't say that,
Speaker 1: you sit down and you answer ten straight questions about
Speaker 1: another player and not yourself, and you ask, what are
Speaker 1: we getting at here? Are we really trying to uplift
Speaker 1: the league, spotlight other players, get everyone to watch more,
Speaker 1: or are we operating to idolize a single individual and
Speaker 1: keep her separate from the whole. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a job that's still happening now. I think that's a
Speaker 1: conflict we're all still feeling. I got frustrated last year
Speaker 1: when I wanted to get excited about Caitlin, and if
Speaker 1: I did, I was accused of being quote unquote on
Speaker 1: a side of the larger thing. And then if I
Speaker 1: didn't cover her, then I was accused of being on
Speaker 1: the other side and actively working against her. So we're
Speaker 1: so sick of that. And I think it's gotten better
Speaker 1: this year, but maybe just because she's been injured, so
Speaker 1: there's been fewer opportunities for people to lose their shit
Speaker 1: over stuff. That's just basketball. Has writing the book changed
Speaker 1: your coverage of Caitlin day to day at all?
Speaker 3: No, not at all, which has been a delightful part
Speaker 3: of it. And it reflects the mission that we have
Speaker 3: over at the next which is to make sure that
Speaker 3: the type of coverage that Caitlin Clark deserves is the
Speaker 3: type of coverage that we need to see throughout the league.
Speaker 3: And the stars are going to get more coverage than
Speaker 3: the role players, but to make sure that everybody is
Speaker 3: being covered is something significant.
Speaker 2: And this is a critical story.
Speaker 3: I mean, to your point that you just made is
Speaker 3: very amusing to me to be in the middle of
Speaker 3: writing a book about Caitlin Clark and to say, oh wow,
Speaker 3: I feel like these people are going too far in
Speaker 3: terms of isolating focus on Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 2: There's a very.
Speaker 3: Strange moment to be in. But you know, again, it
Speaker 3: comes back to are we treating Caitlin Clark like she
Speaker 3: is the sum total and the only reason for anyone
Speaker 3: to pay attention.
Speaker 2: To this league.
Speaker 3: That's insane And we know this is and I know
Speaker 3: this is someone who's been privileged to cover this lead
Speaker 3: for over a decade, and so it's getting the opportunity
Speaker 3: to see she is growing an audience. I mean, listen,
Speaker 3: I wrote about this in the book, but one of
Speaker 3: the most satisfying things for me was at Caitlin Clark's
Speaker 3: pro debut.
Speaker 2: Two point one million.
Speaker 3: People also got to see Alssa Thomas put up a
Speaker 3: triple doll, which is for some reason normal for Lysa Thomas,
Speaker 3: but for you know, those of us were humans instead
Speaker 3: of immortals. That's a crazy thing to conceive of. And
Speaker 3: so you know, there are all these ancillary effects, and
Speaker 3: for positive and for negative as well, right, and and
Speaker 3: so I do I think about someone like a Djna
Speaker 3: Carrington who had to work her way into this regular opportunity,
Speaker 3: somebody who had the privilege of covering dating back to college,
Speaker 3: and so what kind of player she was, you know
Speaker 3: in championship teams. She is now at a moment where, yeah,
Speaker 3: like you said, simultaneously, she's going to get more opportunity,
Speaker 3: She's going to get more financial reward. The league is
Speaker 3: going to right size financially to where it needs to be,
Speaker 3: where it ought to have always been. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: could also see her being very tired of the tenth
Speaker 3: Caitlin Clark question and when it's when it's framed in
Speaker 3: poor in bad faith, then.
Speaker 2: That's a whole other question.
Speaker 1: For sure. You know, I actually wrote a coll thesis
Speaker 1: on Michael Jordan and his intersection with cable becoming global
Speaker 1: and global capitalism and how his arrival was as much
Speaker 1: about him being an unbelievable player, being charming, telegenic, all
Speaker 1: the other things, but also that the world was pivoting
Speaker 1: at this moment, at the right time for him to explode.
Speaker 1: And I think writing about Caitlin Clark in this moment
Speaker 1: is that conversation. It's not just singling out one person,
Speaker 1: but it's this one person in this moment is having
Speaker 1: this impact. And you mentioned Molly Bolan earlier. There's a
Speaker 1: great espn. I think it's one of the nine for
Speaker 1: nine stories about her, and if you don't know about her,
Speaker 1: you would have your mind blown by the statistics and
Speaker 1: the ability. And she was Kaitlyn Clark, but she didn't
Speaker 1: end up like Caitlin Clark because she didn't arrive in
Speaker 1: the same moment that Caitlyn did. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think the conversations about Caitlin and the moment that we're
Speaker 1: having in women's sports are so necessary and shouldn't be
Speaker 1: shy away away from because we're afraid of putting a
Speaker 1: spotlight in one player. But I wanted to just read
Speaker 1: this quickly. A biography in a program for a tournament
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three that Molly Bolan played in. Read
Speaker 1: three year pro a high school All American. Molly averaged
Speaker 1: fifty four point eight points per game and hit a
Speaker 1: record high of eighty three points as a senior. Just
Speaker 1: an unbelievable score. Whatever you think Caitlin Clark is doing,
Speaker 1: she's not averaging fifty four point eight points per game.
Speaker 1: And there's a really incredible story around Molly having to
Speaker 1: try to sell calendars and other things to help promote
Speaker 1: her ability to play so she could keep playing. The
Speaker 1: end of her bio says she's working construction and Riverside,
Speaker 1: And that was your point. That's what it meant to
Speaker 1: be Caitlin Clark in nineteen eighty three, is you're working
Speaker 1: construction in Riverside and then when you go hoop you
Speaker 1: get fifty plus points. And the difference between what it
Speaker 1: means to be great now and what it meant to
Speaker 1: be great then is something to celebrate. And when we
Speaker 1: can strip away all the bullshit around Caitlin. We can't
Speaker 1: celebrate it, which is I think what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do with this book. Here's a whole bunch of context
Speaker 1: so that when I tell you about Caitlin you could
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Did you get to talk to Caitlin much
Speaker 1: for the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And she understands that she is standing on the
Speaker 3: shoulders of the people who came before her, and she
Speaker 3: knows about stories like Molly's, and she knows.
Speaker 1: About and there's pictures of them together.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: And to see that come full circle, I mean that
Speaker 3: moment you talked about. I've had the ability to talk
Speaker 3: to and cover Molly for many years, and we dedicate
Speaker 3: a significant portion of our coverage to the WBL and
Speaker 3: to those stories of that lead, which there is no
Speaker 3: WNBA without the WBL from nineteen seventy eight through nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one. And we have a special section over at
Speaker 3: the next about it. And I say all that to
Speaker 3: say I knew Molly, I knew her story, I.
Speaker 2: Know it well.
Speaker 3: And yet I'm in the Iowa Women's Center researching for
Speaker 3: this book. I come across this clip as part of
Speaker 3: the molleyball and papers that are in there, and it
Speaker 3: just it hits you just to see that that after
Speaker 3: all this she's working as a house painter, what is
Speaker 3: the prime of her basketball career. And so yes, there
Speaker 3: there Again, I think there is a misunderstanding of the
Speaker 3: way in which most people are processing this Caitlin Clark moment.
Speaker 3: Within the game of women's basketball, there is an understanding
Speaker 3: of a yes and mentality when it comes to it,
Speaker 3: you know, And so from that perspective, I think it
Speaker 3: was important that people understand, you know, we talk about
Speaker 3: all the time at the next but we want to
Speaker 3: live within the dray area that it's okay if the
Speaker 3: player you're going to cover goes, doesn't go for forty
Speaker 3: or has an offer or anything like that, that's okay.
Speaker 3: We're not telling the story of player axes amazing or
Speaker 3: player axes the worst.
Speaker 2: It's here's what's.
Speaker 3: Going on with player X right now, and so making
Speaker 3: sure that we're able to do that again, the broader
Speaker 3: context time is Caitlin Clark comes of age at a moment,
Speaker 3: the first moment that ESPN broadcasts all of the women's
Speaker 3: NCAA tournament, the entirety that doesn't happen until twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: This comes at a moment where we are seeing understanding
Speaker 3: the gaps between the men's and women's Final four, right
Speaker 3: up to the point that the logo had to be changed.
Speaker 3: It was the final four in the women's Final four,
Speaker 3: and the NCAA finally got around to, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 3: can actually call it the men's instead of making it
Speaker 3: obvious in our branding that women's is the other.
Speaker 2: And speaking of.
Speaker 3: Branding, March Madness branding was finally being used by the NCAA.
Speaker 3: What an owned goal for the NCAA say, we're going
Speaker 3: to not use that branding on our own women's basketball tournament.
Speaker 3: So all of which is to say, this is Caitlin's moment.
Speaker 3: Caitlin is the transcendent athlete who has taken advantage of this.
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time thinking about my time
Speaker 3: covering Brianna Stewart, and if it had been Brianna Stuart
Speaker 3: when this happened, she would have broken through. If it
Speaker 3: had been in twenty ten, it would have been maya more.
Speaker 3: If it had been in twenty oh four, it would
Speaker 3: have been Diana Taraji. And if it had been nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight, it would have been Molly Bowling.
Speaker 1: I want to ask, there's a I don't know if
Speaker 1: competing is the right word, But there's another Caitlin Clark
Speaker 1: book from Christine Brennan coming on around the same time.
Speaker 1: Why are the covers basically identical? Can you explain to
Speaker 1: us is there some sort of like photo rights only
Speaker 1: using this particular game uniform ball position, because they're almost
Speaker 1: the same covers.
Speaker 2: It's amusing to see, I know the truth that.
Speaker 1: Is amusing the word you first thought of, or have
Speaker 1: you come around defining an amusing?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 3: No, No, I like what I think it's funny to
Speaker 3: be honest with you. No, I just I haven't had
Speaker 3: any contact. You know, Christine, someone who I've certainly been
Speaker 3: in contact with in the past, and you know I
Speaker 3: would anybody and everyone Locke covering women's basketball. There needs
Speaker 3: to be more. I'm not of the belief there needs
Speaker 3: to be one book anymore than we want to have
Speaker 3: one reporter who is covering at any given time. But no,
Speaker 3: it's as I understand it, it's a coincidence, but I
Speaker 3: haven't been able to speak to that specifically.
Speaker 1: Well, we're excited for everybody to get to read it.
Speaker 1: June seventeenth is the date that the book comes out. Howard,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, not just for coming on, but
Speaker 1: for all you've done for the game and for furthering
Speaker 1: what we try to do here as well, which is
Speaker 1: how do we give everyone the stars, stake, stats and
Speaker 1: stories every single day to keep up with and care
Speaker 1: about women's sports. And you've been doing that for a
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 2: Well, Sarah, thank you for everything you guys do.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Howard for taking the time to chat.
Speaker 1: We got to take another quick break when we come back.
Speaker 1: What the fact that puts the discrepancy between WNBA and
Speaker 1: MNBA salaries in perspective? Welcome back slices. It's time for
Speaker 1: another What the fact? As folks who've been around the
Speaker 1: women's sports space for some time now, we've seen all
Speaker 1: sorts of gender pay gaps from soccer to tennis, to
Speaker 1: golf and more. Women and nonsense, male athletes always seem
Speaker 1: to get the short end of the stick. This, of course,
Speaker 1: parallels the traditional labor market, where women still earn only
Speaker 1: eighty four cents for every dollar a man earns. Today,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the pay gap in pro basketball.
Speaker 1: Claudia Golden, a labor economist, economic historian, and Harvard professor,
Speaker 1: wrote a guest essay in The New York Times last
Speaker 1: week laying out just how underpaid WNBA players are, and
Speaker 1: she brought the data and facts. Y'all, let's start with
Speaker 1: one of those facts. The average MNBA player's salary, approximately
Speaker 1: ten million dollars in the twenty twenty five season, is
Speaker 1: eighty times the average WNBA players salary about one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty seven thousand for the twenty twenty four campaign
Speaker 1: eighty times eight zero. And here's another from Golden quote.
Speaker 1: A key fact is that the NBA and WNBA resemble
Speaker 1: a joint venture in which the league's individual finances are
Speaker 1: not transparent to the public. The NBA owns around half
Speaker 1: of the WNBA and helps a portion money between the
Speaker 1: two leagues. Last year, the NBA negotiated joint television contracts
Speaker 1: for the leagues, in which Disney, NBC and Amazon Prime
Speaker 1: Video agreed to pay the two leagues roughly seventy seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars for the right to show their games over
Speaker 1: eleven years. The gap in player salaries appears to reflect
Speaker 1: the highly unequal way that NBA owners divide the league's
Speaker 1: revenue end quote. So Golden worked with the WNBA Players
Speaker 1: Association over the past year to dive into the relationship
Speaker 1: between player salaries and the revenue, viewership and attendance numbers
Speaker 1: in the MNBA and WNBA, using those numbers to decipher
Speaker 1: what a reasonable gap between the salaries might be. The
Speaker 1: most significant factor she looked at in each league's revenue
Speaker 1: is viewership, which is what makes big networks pay big
Speaker 1: bucks to sell ads during games. From Golden's article quote,
Speaker 1: the average WNBA game recently drew about seventy seven percent
Speaker 1: of the eyeballs for the average NBA game. The gap
Speaker 1: in total eyeballs per player is much larger because the
Speaker 1: NBA has more games per season and longer games. Taking
Speaker 1: into account all of these differences shows that the WNBA
Speaker 1: attracts about thirty percent, or roughly one third as many
Speaker 1: eyeballs per player as the NBA does. This ratio is
Speaker 1: a reasonable estimate of the actual relationship between WNBA and
Speaker 1: NBA broadcast revenue per player, and by extension, what WNBA
Speaker 1: players should receive in salary relative to NBA players end quote.
Speaker 1: Another important factor in the dollars and cents is attendance.
Speaker 1: So here's what Golden had to say about how butts
Speaker 1: in seats should affect money in pockets. Quote. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, for example, the WNBA's total attendance was about
Speaker 1: one tenth as large as the NBA's attendance. Adjusting for
Speaker 1: the fewer teams in the WNBA shows that it attracts
Speaker 1: about one quarter of the attendants per player in the NBA.
Speaker 1: All these numbers suggest that the average WNBA salary should
Speaker 1: be roughly one quarter to one third of the average
Speaker 1: NBA salary to achieve pay equity end quote. We've all
Speaker 1: known that WNBA players were not making enough of a
Speaker 1: percentage of revenue when compared to their MNBA counterparts, but
Speaker 1: Golden has laid it out with facts and data. It
Speaker 1: should be one quarter to one third, not one eightieth
Speaker 1: what the guys are making.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Link to Golden's essay at our show notes so you
Speaker 1: can read it for yourself. Her concluding paragraph really hammers
Speaker 1: the point home she wrote. Quote, the world of women's
Speaker 1: professional basketball is ripe for an economic update that better
Speaker 1: reflects its influence and irresistibility, but it has not happened.
Speaker 1: Yet the people who run the NBA and WNBA are
Speaker 1: instead badly underpaying the women who enter tain and thrill
Speaker 1: us with their feats of athleticism. End quote. Yet again, y'all,
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Speaker 1: We always love that your listing slices, but we want
Speaker 1: you to get in the game every day too, So
Speaker 1: here's our good game play of the day pre order
Speaker 1: Howard's book, we'll link to a site where you can
Speaker 1: snag your copy. In our show notes and we always
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, so hit us up on
Speaker 1: email good game at wondermedianetwork dot com or leave us
Speaker 1: a voicemail at eight seven two two o four fifty
Speaker 1: seventy and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review. It's easy.
Speaker 1: Watch the ultra runner who stopped to breastfeed three times
Speaker 1: and still one, rating ten out of ten. What Can't
Speaker 1: Women Do? Review? At the recent Ultratrail Snowdonia one hundred
Speaker 1: kilometer race in northern Wales, forty two year old runner
Speaker 1: and new mom Stephanie Case paused at three different times
Speaker 1: during the race to breastfeed her six month old daughter,
Speaker 1: and not only still finished, she placed first among female competitors.
Speaker 1: That's sixty two plus miles of running six months after
Speaker 1: baby and balancing both roles at once with grace. Case
Speaker 1: told NPR of the photos of her mid race that
Speaker 1: went viral, they show quote an athlete being a mom
Speaker 1: at the same time, and those things not actually competing
Speaker 1: with one another. We don't have to lose ourselves in
Speaker 1: becoming a mom, and we can keep setting big goals
Speaker 1: for ourselves end quote. The course has thirteen hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five feet of elevation gain, with runners traversing the
Speaker 1: tallest mountain in Wales and traveling rough and tough terrain.
Speaker 1: Case stopped at checkpoints at twenty fifty and eighty kilometers
Speaker 1: to nurse her daughter, Pepper, and then jump right back
Speaker 1: into the race and the story somehow gets better. Case
Speaker 1: ran while on parental leave from her job working for
Speaker 1: the United Nations as a human rights lawyer per NPR quote.
Speaker 1: Running long distances helps Case cope with the stress of
Speaker 1: working in a humanitarian crisis end quote. Case's experiences inspired
Speaker 1: her to found Free to Run, a nonprofit that empowers
Speaker 1: girls and young women in conflict areas through running and
Speaker 1: other outdoor activities. So if you want to show love
Speaker 1: to a woman holding it down for moms, for women
Speaker 1: over forty and human rights advocates, go check it out
Speaker 1: free toorun dot org and you can read the whole
Speaker 1: NPR article. We'll link to it in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Now it's your turn, rate and review, y'all. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: See you next week. Good game, Howard, good game, Stephanie Case.
Speaker 1: You tech Nik from writing for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: hours on Deadline. I'm telling y'all write a book for yourself.
Speaker 1: You'll see. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
Speaker 1: women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
Speaker 1: You could find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
Speaker 1: our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Emily Rudder, Brittany Martinez, Grace Lynch, and
Speaker 1: Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones and I'm
Speaker 1: your host Sarah Spain