One would have hoped the dumbass and unnecessary (and racist!) chatter coming out of the women’s championship game would have died an easy death on the next day’s news cycle. But seeing as how the men’s version was two packs of ass and the First Lady got involved, that was too much to wish for, apparently.
If you missed it, Jill Biden stated that she’d like to invite Iowa to the White House with champions LSU, because…well, I don’t really know. It certainly feels like some gesture by a white woman scared of any conflict anywhere, especially when it involves a Black woman and a white woman, and this is meant to show everyone that everyone’s cool and peaceful and can have cake. But we’ll get back to that.
First off, the winners go to The White House. Even though that might be an anachronistic tradition and now one weaponized for whatever side wants to, that’s how it works. The White House isn’t a participation trophy. It’s patronizing and in some ways infantilizing to suggest doing anything else.
One of the problems women’s sports face from those who won’t give it the time of day (a shrinking number to be sure) is the feeling that amongst the fans and in the stands there isn’t the same passion for the result. That everyone is kind of just happy to be there. That certainly doesn’t come from the players, who want to win as badly as any other and work tirelessly to see that they do. And it doesn’t come from any of the sports’ most ardent fans.
But there is a different feel to most women’s games, though not the ones like Sunday that are for all the marbles, generally. It can be a more picnic-like atmosphere, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I may watch soccer because it shakes me to my core and turns me into a complete creature simultaneously capable of throwing a chair through my wall in delight or…throwing a chair through my wall in anger. But I must admit that those feelings stirred by sports eventually breed the most toxic components of fandom — the bile, the homophobia, the tribalism, the racism, etc. That women’s sports come without any of that, or certainly, a highly reduced level of it, is almost certainly a trade worth making for the day-out feel it can have.
But that doesn’t mean women’s sports are, or should be, devoid of passion, or bite, or conflict. That’s the name of any game. Rivalry doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and a little bit of rancor between competitors only enhances the viewing experience. It’s a delicate balance, but one worth attempting and maintaining. Sports without passion is just exercise, and I don’t go watch people at the gym.
Jill Biden’s desire to flatten out the spice we got out of the final speaks to a, “It’s just nice that everyone had a good time” feel that anti- women’s sports goobers like to prey on. It’s unquestionably cool that opponents ratcheted up the volume on Sunday. It’s good for women’s sports that the results start to matter more and more, which would only mean it’s being viewed more and more as any other sport would. LSU’s championship doesn’t need to be overshadowed anymore by something that isn’t anything to begin with, which is what making Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark shake hands in the Rose Garden or some other horseshit would be.
It’s also hard to ignore, however well-intentioned Biden might be, that making LSU and Reese especially conform in a way that no other champion has had to have some racial undertones. It’s asking her and her teammates to, essentially, behave. We don’t need to ask ourselves if the First Lady would be extending such an invitation had the result been reversed and it was Clark getting in Reese’s face, I don’t think. This feeds into the Neanderthal notion that some have that Clark was somehow wronged.
No one with half a brain is asking Reese to tone down anything or be anyone other than who she is. And who she is isn’t sharing the stage she and her teammates earned through their play with someone whose ass they just beat into burger. But the white lady in power would like everyone to share. Fuck that noise.
Iowa lost. They and their fans have to sit on that for at least a year. If they have to hear it from LSU and their supporters, that’s the deal. We all sign on for that when we become fans, and players. Losing and feeling bad about it isn’t something to be erased. It’s a natural part of the world.
Is Vince McMahon secretly booking WWE matches again?
Tell me Vince McMahon isn’t secretly booking WWE again without telling me that Vince McMahon is secretly booking WWE again:
Shohei Ohtani crushes one
I’m not gonna post about every Shohei Ohtani homer (then again I might), but this one last night seemed especially rude:
Ohtani is actually somewhat fooled by this George Kirby change-up, you can his hips kind of bail out. And he still hits this 415 feet with basically just his arms. That shit ain’t right.