If, as a male sports writer, you feel the need to compare a young female athlete to a sports car, try not to do so immediately after asking her to flash you a heart symbol. In fact, better yet, try not to make it about yourself in the first place.
At a press conference on Wednesday introducing basketball superstar Caitlin Clark, whom the Indiana Fever selected first overall in Monday’s WNBA Draft, Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel forced an awkward, inappropriate and now mega-viral exchange with Clark. He then followed it up with a similar exchange involving Clark’s new coach, Christie Sides.
ESPN columnist Jemele Hill called it a “terrible moment for Gregg Doyel,” according to the New York Post.
Hill, of course, normally flaunts her woke credentials by reducing everything to racism or misogyny. But in this case, she had the right take.
“You just were given the keys to that,” Doyel said to Sides, introducing his awkward sports-car analogy. “What are you gonna do with it?” Clark, meanwhile, sat to her new coach’s right.
Sides raised her eyebrows, laughed a bit along with the crowd, and then re-framed Doyel’s question.
“What am I gonna do with them?” the coach said, ignoring Doyel’s “that” and “it” references to Clark but still answering his question while subtly shifting focus to “the keys.”
“Hopefully we’re gonna win a lot of games, to start. She’s gonna help us out with that,” Sides added, drawing applause from many who gathered for the introductory press conference.
Clark, the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I women’s basketball, led her Iowa Hawkeyes to back-to-back national championship game appearances.
Do you think this was bizarre?
“SHE scores bangers,” an account with fewer than 14,000 followers on the social media platform X as of Friday morning, posted a 22-second clip of Doyel’s question and Sides’ answer. That clip, as of Friday morning, had more than 819,000 views. Readers may watch the clip below.
Gregg Doyle had second exchange that would also be categorized as…creepy.
GD to the Fever coach Christie Sides: “You just got the keys to THAT, what are you gonna do with IT?” pic.twitter.com/2fyWLTMj6y
— SHE scores bangers (@SHEscoresbanger) April 17, 2024
Of course, for sheer volume of negative attention on social media, that 22-second clip of Doyel and Sides paled in comparison to the sports writer’s earlier exchange with Clark, which many have called “creepy” or “cringeworthy.”
In an overly familiar approach, perhaps constituting an awkward attempt to build instant rapport, Doyel apparently flashed the signature “heart” symbol that Clark often makes with her thumbs and index fingers.
“You like that?” Clark said in a clip posted to X.
“I like that you’re here. I like that you’re here,” he replied in a strange tone.
“Yeah, I do that at my family after every game, so. It’s pretty cool,” Clark said, looking down as if unsure of what else to say.
Then Doyel made things really weird.
“OK. Well, start doing it to me, and we’ll get along just fine,” he said.
As of Friday afternoon, the clip of Doyel’s exchange with Clark had more than 48 million views.
Reporter: 🫶
Caitlin Clark: “You like that?”
Reporter: “I like that you’re here.”
Caitlin: “Yeah, I do that at my family after every game.”
Reporter: “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”
Caitlin: 😳
(via @IndianaFever / YT)pic.twitter.com/BBjU881K7a
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 17, 2024
Unsurprisingly, responses to both videos were overwhelmingly negative, with many X users calling for Doyel’s ouster.
“@indystar fire this guy already. That’s 2 exchanges in the same press conference. He clearly doesn’t understand how to conduct himself professionally w/female athletes. This is really embarrassing for Indy and the entire state,” one user wrote.
@indystar fire this guy already. That’s 2 exchanges in the same press conference.
He clearly doesn’t understand how to conduct himself professionally w/female athletes.
This is really embarrassing for Indy and the entire state.
— Hoosier Haze (@HoosierHaze) April 18, 2024
“I know everyone in the room felt uncomfortable. Fire this clown,” another user wrote.
I know everyone in the room felt uncomfortable. Fire this clown
— Renaissance Man (@Billsfandiehard) April 17, 2024
The proper response to mistakes of this kind always seems to elude us in their immediate aftermath.
For instance, on Tuesday an anti-racist law student in California publicly denigrated “ugly-a** little Jewish people.” One could scarcely imagine an insult more outrageous or more worthy of condemnation.
Doyel, of course, did nothing nearly so horrible. But his misstep did require serious reflection. And he seems to have recognized at least one of the two obvious things he did wrong.
First, in an apology published late Wednesday, Doyel admitted that initially he reacted to the day’s controversy in a defensive manner, insisting that he would have engaged in the same kind of back-and-forth with any of Indianapolis’ famous male athletes. To his credit, however, the writer then acknowledged “a woman I deeply respect” who explained to him his error.
“But Caitlin Clark is a young woman, and you don’t talk to a young woman the same as you would a young man,” the unnamed woman told Doyel.
Indeed, you do not. Our moral code, universally recognized, tells us that men must not treat women the same way they treat other men.
That conclusion, of course, has massive theological consequences. After all, in ordinary human affairs, women both demand and deserve equal opportunities and equal treatment under the law. It appears, therefore, that those who rightly objected to Doyel’s behavior did so not because he denied Clark equal treatment — in fact, he did the opposite — but because he violated a law of conduct that comes from a much higher authority.
Doyel’s second mistake, however, appears to have escaped his notice.
In short, by asking Clark to “start doing it to me,” i.e. flashing him the heart symbol, he made the exchange about himself.
Had he said something along the lines of, “Well, hopefully Indiana fans will welcome you and make you feel like family,” then the rest of the exchange would not have sounded quite so cringe-worthy. Even the sports car-related “that” and “it” references, though still awkward, might have come across as less creepy, had he not personalized the encounter.
