BONUS: March Madness round-up
why does michael che still have a job?
This newsletter originally had different intro commentary but I ended up deciding to pitch it to a publication and run it as reporting, so keep an eye out for that later this week. Thank you, as always, for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to dedicate more time to this newsletter. It’s not just the time I spend writing, but the time I spend planning, researching, and reporting that is supported by upgrading.
If you want to pay for a subscription but don’t want to give money to Substack, feel free to use my Venmo or PayPal. Just reply to this email and let me know you’ve sent it so I can add your email to my paid list!
if you’re going to be sexist, at least be correct about it
No one watches Saturday Night Live anymore1 but if they did, they would have seen Michael Che recycle one the oldest, tiredest jokes in the book during his “Weekend Update” segment this past Saturday.
“A number of sports bars around the country are promising to only show women’s basketball games during March Madness,” Che said, looking pleased with himself before even getting to the predictable punchline. “The bars are known collectively as ‘the empty ones.’”
Okay, Michael Che, you want to go? Let’s go.
What is your beef with women’s basketball? Was being called out by Ziwe about your sexism regarding the WNBA not enough for you? Was the embarrassment of that interview not shameful enough for your ego that you are still out here picking rotten, low-hanging fruit?
Were you not paying attention when Mo Welch gave a masterclass on how not to tell a women’s basketball joke so you walked right into the very worst of the tired stereotypes? In case you missed it: “Punching down is a huge topic in comedy, and you have to be aware of it… almost every joke about the WNBA that comedians make that is always that same low-hanging fruit of “Nobody watches the WNBA” or “They all look like dudes” or whatever. It’s hack shit. It’s just stale. It’s not creative. I’m not saying everyone needs to go up there and wave a WNBA flag, but if you’re going to make a joke about the WNBA, at the very least be creative.”
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Can you show me all the “empty” women’s sports bars because I can’t find them. My partner and I went to the Boston brewery listed on the Togethxr list of places to watch women’s March Madness and… we had to leave because it was so crowded that we couldn’t get a seat. None of these bars look empty, either. As I wrote for Eater a few weeks ago, the two first women’s sports bars to open up were profitable before the end of their first year, which is nearly unheard of in the restaurant industry. This new women’s sports bar has been so packed that they had to put disclaimers on their social media about how to get a table.
Last night’s Elite 8 matchup between LSU and Iowa was projected to set viewership records—and it did. The game drew 12.3 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most-watched NCAA women's basketball game ever, and the best college hoops game ever (any gender) on ESPN channels. A tweet from Travis Scott hyping the game has over 44,000 “likes.” Tickets for the women’s Final Four are more expensive than the men’s. The five NCAA basketball players with the most social media followers are women. Be sexist all you want, but there’s no way to keep pretending that people aren’t watching women’s basketball.
Men are just out here saying stuff. Like, yes these players will likely make more money through NIL deals than they will from a WNBA salary right now and that’s enough of a reason to stay in college as long as they can. But to claim “little to no crowd attendance” at WNBA games? The Las Vegas Aces just sold out their entire season and it hasn’t even started yet. Last season’s WNBA Finals set league attendance records.
If you’re going to be sexist, at least be correct.
March Madness reading
But first! Come join us in the chat on the Substack app to share all our reactions, takes, hopes, dreams, and feelings about the women’s tourney up until this point:
In case you missed it, I wrote for Teen Vogue about how the racist violence the Utah WBB team experienced in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho was the latest example of a larger pattern in which the NCAA fails to protect its marginalized student-athletes.
Katie Barnes profiled Angel Reese and, as always, it’s a must-read.
Sue Bird and Nneka Ogwumike talk to Aliyah Boston and Paige Bueckers about NIL: “The money follows you. The money you’re making in NIL deals turns into endorsements in the league on top of your salary. It’s not a ‘less than,’ it’s not a pay cut, it’s not a step down from the college game. It’s a step up money-wise, talent-wise, and everything-wise.”
Ben Bolch, the writer of the very offensive Los Angeles Times column I covered in my last edition of “Haterade,” has issued an apology—two days after the LAT editorial team issued a retraction on much of the language in the column.
The University of South Carolina’s women’s team is headed to their fourth straight Final Four and some of Dawn Staley’s post-game comments raised a few eyebrows.2
Coming off a 30-pt game, Duke guard Jared McCain has signed an NIL deal with beauty and nail polish brand Sally Hansen: “I’m just gonna be myself and do what I think looks nice… Sorry if that offends any of you guys.”
Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo and Texas' Maddie Booker are two of the best freshmen in the country. They're also best friends: How two freshman stars’ friendship helped lead them to the Sweet 16 … on different teams, via Chantel Jennings at The Athletic
- talks to a man named Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer who “has represented everyone from Tom Brady to (the player formerly known as) Ron Artest to the U.S. women’s national soccer team. He’s also the longtime lawyer whose landmark settlements created free agency in both the NBA and the NFL, some three decades ago.” He just won an all-time case against the NCAA in front of the Supreme Court, and is helping college athletes reclaim the revenue they generate: “What we're going after is the cartel part of the NCAA.”
Lyndsey D’Arcangelo wrote about why ESPN assigning a beat reporter to cover Caitlin Clark did a disservice to the rest of the players—and to the sport of women’s basketball as a whole: “The NCAA Tournament shouldn’t just be about one player and one team. It doesn’t need to be. Not where we are now with women’s basketball. Sixty-eight teams make the field. And that field is brimming with storylines and stars and rivalries and trash talking and off-the-court inspirational tales and record performances and upsets and more… The question shouldn’t be how can we milk this star and this moment for everything it’s worth. It should be about how can we add to the momentum, keep it going, and help facilitate the continued growth of women’s sports.”
Speaking of Clark, The Athletic did a piece breaking down the physics of her shot and it’s pretty cool.
At Power Plays,
dove into the attendance numbers for the first two rounds of the tournamentNebraska player Keisei Tominaga says there should be more room for emotion in men’s sports after he went viral for crying following his team’s loss in the first round of the tournament. You love to see it!
At
, reflects on men’s March Madness in South Florida (where I’m from!): “When I thought of the kind of story I could write about South Florida it was one of push-pulls. The relationship of betting to college basketball, of historic land theft and persecution of the Seminole and the Seminole’s subsequent reclamation and repurposing of undesirable land into profit centres and manicured paradises; the backdrop of always-encroaching swamp against sprawling development. The pressures, from afar anyway, seemed apparent. Up close, the strain shifted.”Stanford's season ended in the Sweet 16 on a court that the NCAA never should have even allowed, Marisa Ingemi writes at the San Francisco Chronicle. That’s right—the court in Portland had two different three-point lines, one of which was NINE INCHES SHORT. How does that even happen??
Nose rings. 3-point line distances. Officiating. Hotels. These are not the issues we should be talking about at this point in the season. But here we are.
“When Caitlin Clark hit her eighth 3-pointer of the night, Kim Mulkey looked at assistant coach Gary Redus on the bench. ‘Is she just faster than us?’ Mulkey asked. ‘Is she just better than us?’” I really hate to see the LSU players struggle but they were let down mightily by Mulkey’s coaching last night, imo.
“Me and Caitlin Clark don't hate each other,” Angel Reese explained in a press conference before their teams met in the Elite 8. “Once I get between those lines, it's no friends.” Only women would have to explain how trash talking in sports works, istg.
“Basketball is a game, where even with little at stake, if you’re on, you feel emboldened to talk your shit,”
writes in this spectacular essay on trash talking in competition.
With apologies to HVL, the memes were incredible
After being one of the only white players in recent memory to call out the racism directed at her Black teammates with such directness and clarity, LSU’s Hailey Van Lith had a really, really bad night on the basketball court (thanks in large part to Kim Mulkey’s coaching but I digress). You couldn’t help but feel bad for her as she tried (and failed) to defend Caitlin Clark but also kept throwing passes away and missing shots. The timeline was, unfortunately, cooking.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Out of Your League to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.