Just a week ago, the South Carolina Gamecocks were celebrating their third national championship in four years, but you wouldn’t know that the media covered the event.
Since South Carolina won, all you have seen is love given to Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes, who lost the game. Even headlines on CNN mentioned South Carolina’s win on their website but showed Clark and her teammates on the front page.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Clark deserves some recognition. She played a great game, but neither she nor her team won the game.
Yet the media acts like she did. She was even on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment. Remind me again: who won?
Caitlin Clark (@CaitlinClark22) stopped by Weekend Update! pic.twitter.com/SSmbUcIOJl
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) April 14, 2024
Even when South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley appeared on CBS This Morning with Gayle King, King openly admitted on live TV that she and others were pulling for Caitlin Clark.
Gayle…honey. You were all rooting for who?!? Bye pic.twitter.com/bpHfAPrEXl
— BeeHorton 80 (@beehorton81124) April 14, 2024
With all that being said, you can understand the frustration that the African-American community and the South Carolina Gamecocks must feel, knowing that although they went undefeated (something the UConn men’s team didn’t do), they aren’t getting the recognition they deserve.
These young ladies deserve to be recognized, and the fact that they aren’t just shows you why people are frustrated with the uneven coverage.
The same thing happened to the LSU Tigers last year after they defeated Clark and the Hawkeyes. Clark was made the heroine, while Angel Reese and the Tigers were the villains who took out America’s sweetheart.
Even First Lady Jill Biden wanted to invite Iowa and LSU to the White House last year, which did not sit well with the winners.
Never in the history of the White House have the winners AND losers been invited to meet the President. I’m sure Biden didn’t mean any harm by her suggestion, but still, this is why there is so much resentment towards Caitlin Clark.
Like Tim Tebow before her, her coverage is being overdone. Remember Tebow mania? Tebow only started for one team in his short NFL career, the Denver Broncos.
He played awfully through most of his NFL years, yet the media hyped him up so much that NFL fans started to resent it. Tebow never did anything wrong, however, but like Clark, he was getting hyped up for not accomplishing much.
The South Carolina Gamecocks have a dynasty in women’s basketball that we haven’t seen in a while, and it should be talked about more. Instead, we see the head coach being dragged by certain segments of the media for not being a great head coach and others hinting that her team is a bunch of thugs.
Oh, the media will hype Clark because she’s young and she’s white, and White America will eat her story up, but a bunch of mostly young black females going undefeated in a sport, any sport for that matter, apparently isn’t impressive enough for some. It’s time for these folks to be called out.
Usually, we measure greatness by championships won, not individual awards, and although Clark is excellent in her own right, she is not a champion, and she needs to be measured by that as well.
