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Pat McAfee’s apology to Caitlin Clark was lame. ESPN has to take drastic action now.

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6 months ago

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Pat McAfee’s apology to Caitlin Clark was lame. ESPN has to take drastic action now.

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I don’t know if Pat McAfee has a conscience. I’m not sure if he understands, fully understands, or cares, that referring to WNBA star Caitlin Clark as a “white bitch” is misogynist and racist trash. I’m not sure if he will look around at the goons who will back him no matter what he says and gets solace from them. Not sure if McAfee looks beyond his ratings. Not sure if he’s introspective. Not sure if he looks in a mirror and ever says: What in the hell did I just do?

What I do know is that ESPN should be doing all of these things. One of the most powerful media entities ever created should have higher standards than allow someone to use its network to refer to a woman in that way. Some of you will laugh at the notion of ESPN being responsible, but they have shown remarkable aggression in the past in policing on-air personalities. The network got big mad when Jemele Hill said things it didn’t like.

On Monday’s “The Pat McAfee Show” he was ranting about this year’s WNBA rookie class when he said: “I would like the media people that continue to say, ‘This rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class.’ Nah, just call it for what it is. There’s one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar.”

McAfee later apologized. “I shouldn’t have used ‘white bitch’ as a descriptor of Caitlin Clark,” he said on X, formerly Twitter. “No matter the context..even if we’re talking about race being a reason for some of the stuff happening..I have way too much respect for her and women to put that into the universe. 

“My intentions when saying it were complimentary just like the entire segment but, a lot of folks are saying that it certainly wasn’t at all. That’s 100% on me and for that I apologize…I have sent an apology to Caitlin as well. Everything else I said… still alllllll facts.”

Not really allllll facts. In part of his rant, McAfee talked about how Clark basically put Iowa basketball on the map. However, Iowa made the NCAA tournament ten of the 12 years prior to Clark arriving. The team made the Elite Eight.

None of this is to denigrate Clark. She’s an historic talent. But McAfee continues to prove he’s remarkably ill equipped to handle this huge platform he’s been given.

If ESPN could suspend Hill for what she did, the network could easily suspend McAfee’s show for this, which is infinitely worse. Sure, ESPN might be scared of McAfee, but it’s ESPN. The network is infinitely more powerful than McAfee. They need to act like it.

I also don’t think McAfee apologized because of a conscience or introspection. I think he did out of sheer panic and fear of being blackballed by Clark and the Indiana Fever.

His apologies also don’t mean much because he constantly issues them and doesn’t seem to learn, or want to learn, how to grow from mistakes. He apologized over the lies Aaron Rodgers told. He apologized (sorta) for a dumb Larry Nassar post on X. He apologized for some insane rumor about Raiders owner Mark Davis. Now there’s Clark and ESPN seems incapable of dealing with McAfee.

There’s a lot of things involving Clark these days and some of them are just bonkers. An MSNBC morning host said the foul on Clark was assault. She wasn’t alone. The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board wrote of the foul: “Outside of a sporting contest, it would have been seen as an assault.”

Outside of the fact that I have no acting ability, I’d be Denzel Washington. Some of this stuff is just absurd. At its core, what’s happening to Clark is about a level of competitiveness toward her that is standard given her extremely high profile. 

Other issues are far more insidious, and as some of us predicted some time ago, and many others tried to refute, much of it has de-evolved around racial and class lines. This is America. This is how large swaths of the country think and sticking head-in-sand won’t change that.

What McAfee was doing, without question, was feeding into some of the belief systems of mostly right-wing and conservative people, people who just a few years ago couldn’t find a WNBA team with their Waze, but are suddenly experts on the league, who are saying Clark is being treated differently because she’s white.

These are the same people who will spend every waking minute and terabyte saying how everyone else (especially Black Americans) talk too much about race. Now, those same people won’t shut up about it.

More WNBA: Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon: Chennedy Carter’s hit on Caitlin Clark ‘not appropriate’

This whole notion picked up steam after the hard foul heard around the world. You would think Clark was hit with a two-by-four. The shot was dirty and not typical of WNBA play. However, if you’ve watched the WNBA for more than a minute, it is an intensely physical league. In many ways it’s more physical than the NBA.

Just because you don’t know this history, that’s a you problem.

Clark is being treated aggressively because she’s a star and a rookie. Rookies always get roughed up. Rookie stars get it even more. There weren’t sonnets written and Constitutional amendments passed after Alyssa Thomas was ejected for an absolutely brutal foul against rookie Angel Reese.

In so many ways, we are in different territory in this country. Some of the ways we’re in trouble as a nation are guttural and even frightening. Our institutions, of all kinds, need to fight indecency and ESPN is a powerful force that can do that. When it wants to.

What people like McAfee do is take conversations like these into the sewer. What ESPN does is let him do it.

Time to stop that.

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