The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 1: The Problem with 'The Hot Girl Problem'

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Hour 1 begins with Dan, Jessica, and Mike give their initial thoughts on Ethan Strauss' latest piece for The Free Press titled "The NCAA has a 'Hot Girl' Problem." They discuss the premise of the article, current NIL structure, and the consistent failures in moving the conversation forward on women's sports. Then, it's time for Meadowlarkers 82 as Kate Fagan, Amin Elhassan, and Howard Bryant dive much deeper into the story. They touch on where the article fell short and where it added perspective, 'lazy journalism' around women's sports, the greater problems in sports marketing as it stands today, using a 'lottery ticket' for NIL vs. Clicks, how editors play into sports journalism, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Dunluba Tarshou with the Stugat's Podcast. Ethan Strauss wrote something for the Free Press, not the Detroit free press, the free press, an outlet that is not newspapers is far right. Ethan Strauss, I don't think is far right, but he writes in the shadows close to some things that other people in the media aren't writing about or think is a little too hot to touch. And he has written with the headline that he did not write about the NCAA's Hot Girl problem because the Cavendor twins, that's the headline, that's not in the story, but

the Cavendor twins have made a lot of money and gave him some access and their agent gave Ethan Strauss some access and felt betrayed in the process by the article that ended up getting written that frame the Cavendor twins as profiting off of their brand, even though they're not that good at basketball, more than other players in the NCAA that are a lot better at basketball because they're good at TikTok and because they created a brand that got the University of Miami's coach to lose a couple of games because of how it is

that they were recruited by John Ruiz and others at the University of Miami and how it is they went about building a giant brand that is profitable. And the article, Ethan Strauss has defended the article, and he has defended the controversy that has been created around the article because the Cavendered twins felt like they were misled.

And I don't know if they were misled or not. I think of Ethan Strauss as a credible journalist who does things that are supposed to be journalistically proper. So I don't know if they were misled or not. I think of Ethan Strauss as a credible journalist who does things that are supposed to be journalistically proper. So I don't know if they were misled or not. But the article cast them as an avatar for some things that are wrong with the NCAA and NIL that they are not in any way responsible for, for profiting in the modern age off of the brand building that comes from moving from Fresno to Miami and capitalizing on a new kind of fame and profit that is, how do I get popular and have millions of followers by being good at TikTok, by being good at basketball, by being good at being famous.

What were your thoughts, Jessica, on that article? Well, my initial thoughts were kind of an eye roll. This is something that is not new to the conversation about NIL and college athletics, and especially in women's sports. It's something that Kate and I have talked about a lot on Op The Looking Glass, because NIL, the idea that this would ever be some sort of like performance-based money supplement. It was never what it was intended for. Its name, image, and likeness.

It's not a salary that players are earning based off performance like you would get in, you know, a salary sport, like in the WNBA, for example. So the idea that people that are profiting from NIL tend to be people that are quote-unquote marketable, that are, you know, conventionally attractive, white, often straight women. And this is something that they even were asked about in the piece and responded to and said that, basically, yeah, it's unfair. To kind of put that back on them for being profitable in the space, I don't think it's very fair.

I think it's a systemic issue that we see in all levels, especially women's basketball, of the stars that are marketed the most, and the stars that we see in commercials, the most, tend to be players that companies want to make ads bet non, or people that audiences feel comfortable with. Like we have talked about a time and time again in the sport.

It's nothing new. I don't think it is something that you can pin on the Cavendr twins. And I think that the subtext of this being like, it's never like he explicitly says, like, oh, they're making money because they're hot. But based off of the headline and the subhead, the subtext of this article is like, they're TikTok's popular because people want to consume their hotness and their attractiveness.

I think that that is like they said. It's degrading because, first off, if you watched any Miami basketball this season, they're good at basketball. The team made the elite eight. Mike can back me up on this. I believe Haley was it who was starting for the team who was a 100% free throw. Free throw. Great rebounder, really improved as a player.

Really good player. It's completely discounting the fact that there is actual, to play in a D1 sport, you have to be really good at sports. And then there's the angle of it that anytime you see someone who's popular because of social media, especially a young woman or someone who's popular on TikTok, like a cabbender or Olivia Dunn

who gets mentioned a lot because she's made a lot of money off of NIL. It's like, oh, we have to insult that because it's so silly and frivolous and there's no substance there. When in reality, like these we have to insult that because it's so silly and frivolous and there's no substance there when in reality like these women have the savvy and the skill that large corporations would probably pay millions of dollars to employ right like they have a knowledge of

these platforms and of what people want and how to monetize it that most people can't figure out like this is not an easy thing Mike as a Twitter subscriber person can tell you it's not like you just like fart out money by posting on social media it takes a lot of work and it's difficult and so to see all of this boil down to like the NCAA has a hot girl problem I don't think really fully grasps what we're talking about here in any capacity I do find it funny that that NIL is being used to fix what is still a very real problem, the NCAA using up all this labor and not paying for it. Like it's on NIL to fix that issue.

When the problem still very much remains that the institutions are getting their labor for free and they'll just claim education when these are multi billion dollar businesses and now it's on NIL to fix a societal issue. It's not just societal though because I do think the crossroads that NIL finds itself in because it is such a new revenue stream is how do you value which currency? And I'm not talking about the hotness. I'm talking about there is no dispute

that while the Cavendor twins are fine at basketball and it does take a skill, there are many, many players in college basketball better than they are. And I do think that people think of NIL as being something that should be merit-based for how valuable are you in terms of performance.

And I think they get it wrong when they do that because it is currency, fame and attention and bringing attention to a program because you have your own brand. It doesn't mean that you have to be the best basketball player on this team, which they weren't on. Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that there are better college basketball players. that you have to be the best basketball player on this team, which they weren't on. Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that there are better college basketball players. They're not on a WMBA roster.

Like, they Alia Boston was the best player this year who ended up going first overall in the WMBA draft. I don't know how much money she's made on NAL. None of this is really public information that you can search on a database, which makes it difficult to really gauge who's getting what deals. We can tell that the cabiners are extremely popular

because of their social media fangs and what they've put out there. Yeah, there was at NIL marketplace, at ESPN used as a graphic, which all felt flimsy. Okay, the cabiner twins are top five in NIL valuation. I don't really even know what those intros are. I don't really know, yeah, I don't really know exactly either what deals are being made.

There are other athletes being compensated very highly at that level, but I would say NIL was never a merit-based thing that happened because the top players weren't making the most amount of money. It is a completely, like, its name, image, and likeness. It is marketing, brand, advertising. It is what company wants to buy a person's social media page, essentially. That's what these brands do. If Coca-Cola wants you to post, they think they can get something off of your Instagram

page and you endorsing their product, they'll pay for that. And they go and look at whatever, whoever, which person's in the space, who has most followers. Okay, it's this person. They're on a D1 team cool, they fit the profile of the type of person we want to promote our product, we'll pay money for it, they're not like, hey, but actually this person has more points per game, but it only has 3,000 followers,

like that's not how these ad buys are happening. So for this to be kind of pushed back on these women for being smart, especially during COVID, which is when they really got popular for building up their platforms and then making money off of it. Like that's the problem with NIL, yes, like 100%. And that's why it's not a perfect solution

for athletes not making money in salaries for the labor that they're providing to the institutions they play for. We can kindly say that the headline is provocative and thought provoking, but a more accurate headline is the NCAA as a free market capitalism problem. I don't, this is all about name image and likeness is about, well, some people don't use it this way, but it is about bringing attention to your product.

We had an NIL deal with Destiny Harden and Tyler Van Dyke. I was very happy with the Destiny Harden, a portion of that. But man, do I wish Tyler Van Dyke was I was very happy with the Destiny Harden portion of that. But man, do I wish Tyler Van Dyke was posting every week about our show during a very successful Heisman campaign season, because that would have gotten more eyes for what we were doing. Additionally, I think, and I don't think that we've discussed yet, there was an accusation that the interview was granted under false pretenses, which is not what the article was supposed to be about. Right. So Hannah Cavendr posted on Twitter, the interview for this article was obtained by a false

pretence that would be written about life after NIL. Why we didn't take our fifth year, our passions and business opportunities. We were specifically told via the publication, the context would be, quote, see the Cavendr's as a very important story, not only in the context of women's college sports, but the new media culture and business. They're building a hugely successful brand and they're at the forefront of a new space and we think that's exciting and newsworthy, end quote. And she went on for a couple more paragraphs about that.

So Billy's right, I think they felt blindsided by the way that the article was framed. I think the way the article was framed is the main problem in that this is a problem with what they're doing and what they're doing is frivolous and not worth money. And I think that there are a number of issues in women's sports, especially in the college basketball level.

There's so much racism, sexism, misogyny, all of it, classism, and like to push it back on people that are actually profiting from a system in which there was no profit to be made five years ago is completely misdirected. You do have it right though, when you say that name, image and likeness, the words don't have anything to do

with how good are you at basketball. It's how good are you at selling your name, image and likeness. Hello, someone listen. I need help. I'm in Barcelona, and the creatures are everywhere. If you listen to me,

you'll see, you'll see, you'll to the ice, look, listen to the ice. Listen to what you hear, cover your eyes. The street is going to take all the dirt, but the most terrifying is not knowing what to trust. The people who ask you to look at it, if you want to continue with life. Selena, estreno en Netflix el 14 de julio. Te atreves a ver. ¡Dándleba Tard! We like to call this one a chorus of Owen Wilson. Ready? Stugats!

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Welcome to Metal Lockers 82. I am Howard Bryant. We have Amino Hassan and Kate Fagan. And it's been a while. We are back. It's been a couple of weeks. And we are here to talk about what are we here to talk about? We're going to talk about the, the calendar twins. Yes, the 22 year olds who are suddenly the talk of the NIO world. We were getting ready to discuss the free press article by Ethan Strauss titled the NCAA has a hot girl problem. The calendar twins, the emerging oligarchs of women's college basketball aren't the best players, but they might be the best looking.

And it is a story all about the evolving NIL story and how people are manipulating it, who's profiting from it, how they're profiting from it and all the different implications that come with it. We will jump in immediately. Before we do that, we will go quickly with our honorary captains for Metal Lockers 82. It's a wide receiver's number really easy. Lowhanging fruit. We'll just throw John Stallworth out there and we'll throw John Taylor my favorite 82 from the San Francisco 49ers. I'm sure there are others. You could go with Vincent Brisbane or Don BB or other 82s. Shannon Sharp is an 82, and Jason Witten is an 82 as well, Tite and Dallas Cowboys. So there's so many 82s out there. If you can catch the ball, you probably want 82 at some point in your life.

Hello, Kate. Hello, I mean, how are you doing? So where are we going with this? Let's start with who wants to go first on the NIL and on this story and on the free press itself as an emerging. Are we going to do that? on the free press itself as an emerging platform. Exactly. There are so many different ways to go, Kate Fagan,

you wanna start us off. You read this story, you had some things to say offline, now you will have things to say online. Thoughts, questions, comments. I mean, let's just start that to me, this story is piggybacking off of a story that came out in the New York Times a few months ago by Kurt Streeter, essentially talking about the same exact topic, but instead of framing it around the Cavendor twins, it was framed around Olivia Dunn,

a gymnast from UCLA. And the reaction to Kurt Streeter's article and the New York Times was pretty similar to what we're seeing here, to the reaction to the article and the free press about the Cavendor twins. And so we can go a lot of different places once we each establish what our initial reactions were. To me, my initial reaction to reading this piece was the deepest, I can manage because the piece is just lazy at every single turn. When I say it's lazy at every single turn, like, let's just take one example that I think represents the whole. Is in that original New York Times article, Stanford legendary

basketball coach Tara Vanderveer is quoted by Kurt Streeters, so she didn't interview for the New York Times article, essentially saying like the NIL deals and the way they're being distributed, like a lot of times in our sport, it can be two steps forward, one step back, and I think the NIL deals are one step back. Now, in the aftermath of that New York Times article coming out, Tara Vanderveer talked to her players about it because she has players who do NIL deals like Cameron Brink, and we actually had Cameron Brink

on our off-the-looking last podcast. We talked to her about this. Tara was very much like, I don't feel like I was adequately represented and in my feelings in that New York Times article. So as a journalist for this now piece in the free press, to me, if you're paying attention deeply to this storyline and you know that Tara Vandervere

communicated afterward that she felt like she was misquoted. It's inherently lazy to me to represent her quote in this piece as if it is, it's stand, of course she was quoted in these are her words, but she has made it clear if you want to be a journalist and really tackle this topic to let her quote stand in this new piece when she's not offering you in interview is laziness. Now that's just like that is like that is not even the laziest of the lazy things that happen in this article. Like the the I mean the fact that the the rampant misogyny in the piece like at the very beginning when he talks about the Cavendor twins and I think it's their assistant or their

business manager and he's like and they're high pitched voices. He later Ron goes to call them button-nosed blondes, which is just evocative of 1950s pin-up culture. Like there's a lot of language in this thing. At one point, he's like, they're not even two separate people, right? They're just like a whirling dervish of just like blondness and Instagram posting or whatever it is.

And so like the, and now I can get, I don't wanna take up like too much of a chunk of time at the outset, but like the laziness in the thinking in this is really what's painful to me. Yeah, I would say that if this were an article about their basketball prowess or about some social cause that they're fighting for, ending world hunger or saving the whales or whatever, then you're right. Those details are superfluous and unnecessary and irrelevant.

But the article is about how NIL early on on the women's side of the game seems to favor a certain kind of athlete. And the word elite is not part of that equation. And so in that regard, it is central to the story being told that they are buttoned nose and blonde and girl next door because that is the central selling point

of their value proposition throughout this. And I can't speak to the tariff end of your quote because I did not know all that extra stuff and you know, I have to take that as a fair point because I just don't know. But I thought that what the guts of the article was about was about this. And by the way, it's never even painted as a positive or negative. It just is. And so it was very, you know, amusing to me to see the reaction from people who are reacting

off of the headline, I'm not talking about UK, but other people on the internet reacted at the headline because the article doesn't say anything that isn't true. Like they, and they know what they admitted themselves, they know what their value proposition is. We look good and we know how to work the internet. Like you you you use that as a derogatory. All of this is how they're born and they use Instagram. That's that's their whole deal. They're telling you. That's what we do. And what they're saying is, you know, that this is the world we live in. And it's wrong that we live in that way.

But we live in it. And so we're going to take advantage of it in this way to great fortune. And so I know reading it, I didn't walk away feeling like I was blown away. Oh my God. And how could you or even how could anyone see it this way when the very subjects themselves are presenting themselves as such?

I would just say that first, the idea that their looks are relevant, obviously it's Ethan's perspective and it's the framework of his article. Apparently, right, because the Cavendors did respond to this. Apparently not the one he told them he was writing. Now, I can't verify that. That's just what the Cavendor twins put out there. It was like, and even responded to that as well. What did Ethan say?

I didn't see his respond. He said, I have the tapes. If you want to play the tapes, we can play the tapes. Unfortunately, the tapes also have things that were cut out of the article that probably would not paint the Cavendor twins in the most positive light. But the stuff that's on there that can be played and won't change the public perception of them will show that this is exactly what he went to go find out

about NIL and this burgeoning economy. And by the way, he wrote a whole separate piece on his sub stack that was deeper into the evolving world of sports media beyond N NIO, just the idea that the things that do well aren't people like us. Aren't people who are steeped in this and have done the work whether it's journalismistically whether working behind the scenes, it's being turned over to just people who are good on TikTok.

And it's funny because as I was reading his separate article, his separate column, I was thinking to myself, yeah, I can't count how many times where these things go viral, talking about things that are, I mean, how did you guys not know this? Hey, did you know Michael Jordan retired for two years of playing baseball? I'm like, yeah, this is like a whole thing

that we've talked about a hundred times and also was a subject of a documentary and then a subject of another documentary like this isn't news, but it's delivered in a way that does better than just people talking about it for whatever reason. And so I his explanation, his what he wrote on his own without the editorial of direction of the free press. And then this column itself, all of them, to me, lend to, yeah, I'm inclined to believe Ethan over, you know, the twins or slash their very aggressive PR firm. Well, my feelings sort of falls in between both of you. When I read this, the very first thing that I felt journalistically was, I don't know if laziness was the right word that I would use, but it is the right word, because you have to make the call to Tara Van der Ver, because if she is upset with

how she was quoted in that original story, you can't just leave that quote. You either have to put it in context and say she disagreed with how she was portrayed in the times, or you got to make the call to her to give her the chance to have the floor again. So she can say, she can say it the way she wants to say it. That was a journalistic swing and miss for me. The other journalistic swing and miss, and I do not like to criticize other journalists because, you know, my attitude when it comes to this stuff is you do what you do. I do what I do. But we are in a form of critique right now.

So in critiquing what I was reading, the other thing that I felt, which was the biggest problematic piece for the story, was why Ethan felt he needed to dance around the central piece of all of this which is your both right that this is the game. that Cavendor twins may be trying to produce for themselves a lane that is body positive, that is feminist, that is not feminist, that is educational, that is whatever. The bottom line is that once you are out there, the public is going to determine how they manipulate you or the market is going to manipulate And I felt when I walked out of when I've got done reading the piece I said to myself quite frankly

Black men are here to sell their bodies They have been here since the beginning of slavery to sell their bodies. Their bodies are why they are here. In the modern era, it's body overbrain, and you add to that anger, these are the things that they sell. When you take a black male, whether it's music, whether it's Hollywood, whether it's sports, or whatever. And when it comes to women, it's the same thing. You're, you know, go back to the sport magazine with Jan Stevenson, the golfer in the bathtub full of golf balls, whatever you're trying to sell, the barstoolers are going to sell it a different way. And they are

aware of that. And what I would have liked to have seen is a story about that, about how you are trying, whatever you're trying to sell, here's how it's going to get taken. Yeah. You know, I wrote a book about why baseball in the 1990s was the greatest era of offense in the modern age. And it got reduced to one sentence. This is a book about steroids. It wasn't a book about steroids, but that was the coin of the realm at the time. And every woman in the business right now, or everyone who's in business, in sports, they know the reasons why those tick-tock numbers are what they are and the harassment that's coming and the framing that's coming

and the people who are online, what they're going to do to those people no matter what their motives may be. And I thought that that was actually the story was that whether you're in it to sell sex, whether you're not in it to sell sex. And that that's going to be how you're positioned to go ahead, Kate. So to me, just like, you know, framing this at the start, I mean, and how are they like, it was the laziness that got me the overall, and I'm interested in meaning how you feel about this, like the overall hypocrisy of what Ethan Strauss has done here really got to me because going off of what Howard said,

he's writing a story about how the Cavendor twins are trading to get easy clicks, their bodies to just make sure they make money because that is the system. Ethan Strauss could have written a story about any other female athlete who was actually really talented and good, but he didn't, because he wouldn't get the clicks. He also could have written a story about the actual system, about some of the history, about where we're going with this, about how it will be shifting in the next coming years, because we're in the middle of a market.

Right, whatever, yeah. Like, I'm not saying he's never tackled these things, but I'm saying this is the piece that we are, and I don't know Ethan's entire body of work. But in this piece in particular, he is trading on the Cavendor twins to get page clicks. I'm not saying he's doing it, maybe the free past press is doing it, but there are a lot of stories to write in women's sports. And in a moment in time where money is pouring into women's sports, and we've seen this historically like when Title IX passed, anytime women are gaining some level of power

in whatever way that exists in sports, whether it's money or attention, there tends to be this reaction that creates these like red herrings that this is what it's actually about. Like, we are using so much of our journalistic effort to tell this story of the hot girl when we're talking about half a dozen people. And you're actually here to talk about the hot girl.

The way I remember, but beyond the fact that if you talk about where the system is going, all that he actually wrote about that in tandem, and that was a part that the free press didn't want. That's why it's on his sub stack. So which is behind it. Paywall, right? Which is behind it. Well, but I believe that one was free.

If I'm not mistaken, that one was free. But, but this point remains, we all have fallen victim at one point or another in our careers to editorial direction, right? Where it's like, I wonder what about this, your editor says, I don't care about that, I want you. Well, we got to hang on with that, hold on to that one in the remain.

So the thing I would say is, the part that he wrote about in the piece that it didn't go deep enough nearly for me was the idea that it's not just about the hot girl or whatever. It's that it comes at an opportunity because there's a trade off here and trade off is better athletes not getting that money specifically black athletes to be honest, when we first brought it up in the group chat, I was really interested here from Howard because I felt there were a lot of parallels between the story of Serena Williams and Anna Kornakova-Sashmerey Sharpova. And that was the next question.

Who were nowhere near the caliber of athlete that Serena was, and yet in terms of off the court earnings, we're able to capitalize very greatly on a look that mainstream America has deemed to be attractive and worth paying attention to. And no question. And he mentioned, he kind of, like, you said, he dances around, He says the twins get

their appeal, even though they think it's unfair that mostly black top scores and women college basketball make less than they do, including LSU's injuries and Flajade Johnson. That's not stopping them. And so I think there's a conversation, a much deeper conversation to be had about what this means because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens within context and the context is, again, they're not getting it because they're good at what they do, being basketball, they're getting it

because they're good at what they do over here, which again, that's all well and good, but that's now, now we left the preview of sports, haven't we? Yeah, but this is also Kate's point is the lens who tells the story is as important as the story itself. And the type of story that we've chosen to emphasize on the, on this subject is always going to go back to Anna Kwonakova in Jan Stevens and in the bathtub with the golf balls

is that you're here to sell your body. And even if there's an entire other phenomenon taking place, this is going to be what we're going to emphasize. Now when I said, I mean, hang on to that one thing. Yeah, at its own level. Getting it is the free press itself. What is the free press? Who is behind the free press? That's Barry Weiss or Barry Weiss, I don't know if pronounced her last name, who had all of her culture war issues with the New York Times and she has started her own website. This is a culture war website. There's a reason why they didn't want the type of context that Ethan was trying to produce. This site is a site. I do not trust.

I know it. Just got off the ground. I do not trust it. I got to make notes on this one. Is this not the Detroit Free Press? The newspaper? No, no, no, no, no. No, it's a brand new website.

Yeah, but they're very wise. From Barry Weiss. Yes. Who is all about attacking, you know, the neo-lib who feels like she's being, or that we're all being driven into the culture war war essentially against the traditional heterosexual world. And this story runs directly into that. I was surprised that Ethan agreed to write for these. I don't know Ethan, but I would never, ever, ever write for that person knowing what we know about their slant and where they're coming from.

That would be like if the blaze had called and asked me to write a piece on it. Then get it. I know you. And this is why I was saying, I mean, like, well, at the outside, when I was like, what happened, your boy Ethan? It's not because this wasn't the Detroit free press. And I was so confused. I'm like, why, what's happening here? And I think also it's this question I have about, we've got this temporary bubble with like NIL

and female athletes when we are still a couple years away from like the NWSL having its TV rights deals come in and the WNBA and like salaries truly growing. Because what we're talking about here is like marketing. We're not talking about the fundamental underlying salaries of how we pay female athletes. And there's so much good storytelling to be done at a lower page view count, I acknowledge,

than what has been done here? But what do we choose to emphasize? Yeah, and so it's like, at the outset, I mean, when you're like, well, there looks are relevant. Well, yeah, there looks are relevant for the perspective we've chosen for this story, and I'm not, I am not disagreeing with the premise that like right now, in NIL deals and historically, but we are having this

resurgence of money flowing to the sexy, traditionally beautiful, mostly white women. I'm not the premise of the article as a general thing to me, it's like one sentence. And then we can get to the true journalistic work. And the true journalistic work, I haven't read his sub-stack, is not asking the Cavendor twins like how they blend their smoothies and quoting them to make them seem, and I don't know them personally,

but like every single quote he used seemed to make them seem like Ditsy dumb blondes. Now maybe that was all of their quotes. But when the entire article is framed on how they look and their sex appeal when there is so much journalism and storytelling to be done, it gets a little repetitive in women's sports when like money's coming in, attentions coming, outlets are assigning stories,

and yet we're hammering this one perspective because it seems to get people fired up in page views, instead of actually doing journalism work. And there's another piece to that two-kate, which is, that's why I don't trust the free press, because this piece is a bit of a gaslight in a lot of ways. In terms of what the, you know, to me, a place like the free press is really saying, what's wrong with having a hot girl, which is not what you're saying, right? There's a difference

of what what is the piece trying to accomplish for that outlet. The most disingenuous paragraph in the entire story came from the billionaire John Ruiz, who says, the Cavendor twins are extremely, extremely unique. They know the limitations of doing things in a classy way and it sells, and at the end of the day you've got to give them credit. What in the heavenly f*** are you talking about? They are not extremely unique. They are following the playbook, which is the crop top and the skinny waist and the bunny nose and all of the bullshit. That is what people, a certain demographic, is always looking for. They could not be more predictable. That is the anaconda cova Sharapova laybook. That's exactly what it is to a means point about thinking, thinking about the serena Williams is of the world. And the reason, now Sharapova won five meters. She was a very good player. Corn, Corn, Corn, and never won a tournament. And she was

there for the sex appeal in which hockey player she was having sex with and the whole thing. Right? So one and the other, they're not exactly the same, but one of the things that we absolutely know is the reaction to them from the public and from Madison Avenue and why we're going to choose to give these two individuals 30, 40, 50 million dollars worth of endorsements isn't because they're really good tennis players. And so to say that they are unique in what they're offering was laughable. Well, not unique. I don't think it's you know, we talk about what we said.

Yeah, not even. Yeah, he's. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we know about John Ruiz from a lot of different stories. So this, this tracks, it's who are you fooling? That's the whole thing. That's what I mean about the, about the gas light. But, you know, in a way, that's, that's, that's at the essence of all of this, right? It's the idea that, look, you could say, why are we writing about this? Why are we talking about this? Because there's the highest earners, right? It's the idea that look, you could say, why are we writing about this? Why are

we talking about this? Because there's the highest earners, right? On the women's side, they are the highest earners. And I think this is a classic case of intersectionality, barging in in the in the most blunt way, because you have race relations moving in here. But you also have the idea that, again, whether you're talking about NIL, whether you're talking about talking about NIL, we're talking about talking about talking about NIL, which is what we're doing right now.

We're talking about a piece that's talking about NIL. We are not acknowledging that at some point, we left sports. But we actually are. I mean, we're acknowledging it, but what we're talking about is which of the lenses this piece chose to emphasize. And that piece chose to emphasize everything

that we're not talking about right now. Which is what? Which is from a sports perspective? Not from a sports perspective. Oh, just for what? I guess the way I'm looking at it is, I guess, I mean, do you agree with the premise that the Cavider twins know they've hit on some lottery ticket

and they're selling it? Journalists have realized if they write about hot girls in NIL, they've got a lottery ticket and they're gonna get a lot of page views. Is that not the same version, but they're just doing the journalistic version of it? Cause they're not bringing anything truly, like this article doesn't bring anything truly new.

Any journalism? I'm not saying Ethan didn't do it in his sub-stack, but there's nothing, nothing new in this article. Two things. I think the details of their business operations, what they're involved in, how they're, it's not just, hey, we got an NIL deal and sat back.

I was pretty impressed with the sophistication of how they are taking it and flipping it and moving it forward. And so all of that is in there. So I would disagree with, we didn't learn anything new. I learned, maybe because I'm not tapped in, but I learned a lot from this. Well, you learned a lot from, it sounds like,

from their agents, maybe saying like, we're gonna do a deal with Bender. But I mean, like, did we learn anything truly about how an NIL athlete would go from being an NCAA student athlete to pivoting and actually becoming profitable and how those streams of revenue work that isn't told to us from an agent saying we have X-deal and Y-deal because like there's one quote in here that is bad for me.

Who is Hawking in it? Oh, they're agent. Yeah, Jeff Hoffman, they were the vehicle. Now they're the destination. Going from being the vehicle to being the destination for the audience is a much more valuable proposition. Like, I just don't know what that means. And this article is kind of filled with that for me.

Like, I have no idea truly whether they have any long lasting future in what they're doing because this article is trading on their hotness to get clicks. I think there's a couple of things going on. Number one is you said, well they're doing it, but now this article is doing the journalistic version of that. And I think one of the things that the article never does is put a judgment on it. It doesn't say, look how awful NIL is, they're just given it to the hot girls.

Doesn't say that. It just says, these are the highest earning NIL athletes on the women's side. Let's take a look at what's behind the scenes here in case we're missing something. And I don't think we missed anything. Like I think, yes, it is a very surface level look, but at the end of the day, it's like,

how much deeper do I have to look to figure out the success of the Cavider twins? But again, I'm not here to judge that they should get less or more money or this is the death of the sport. And neither do I feel like the article is. And so if you say, what article is doing the same thing? Look, I'm not here to judge the successful failure of this article either in terms of did it use hot girls to get clicks or did it write about a librarian or, you know know or tax code or something like that Those things are are

Secondary the only way you can feel Duped is if you thought you were coming to find tax code or something about librarians and and you found this instead in the same way The only way you could feel duped by the Cavendor twins is if you said, yeah, let me draft them on my WMAT and start them. And then you're like, wait a second, they can't even play on this level. That's the only way you could be duped by the Cavendor twins. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The way I feel duped is that believing finally, maybe after 10 million people tuning into the NCAA women's basketball title game, that the media would finally tell real stories about

women's sports. Instead of regurgitating after the New York Times pinned this story on Livy Dunn, and that got culture war started, then what we do is we go, hey, I got an idea. Let's tell the same exact story, but pin it to the Cavendor twins and spin up some more culture war. So the feeling that I have of being duped is that no matter how high the ratings are, how many people are actually watching women sports, nobody within sports media, or sorry, too few people within sports media will actually take it seriously enough to tell the true real journalistic stories about the history racially in basketball why we got here and how we got to this place. Instead, we're just doing a people magazine piece on the Cavendor twins that stirs up the culture war, and that gets us distracted from the true future if this is about, if this

is about, if Ethan Strauss does want to be a journalist who's actually giving us information while entertaining us, there are a whole lot of other things we could have done. Then do this article again. Yeah, I mean, the moral of the story, it goes back to what we were saying at the start of this program, which is from the beginning of time, you know, we're selling our muscles in your selling your waistline. And there's more to it than that. And like, so the moral of this story story is hot girl stays hot, right?

I mean, until they are replaced by another set of 22 year old. But you think, but hold on hold on Howard as a tennis person, you think if you asked the average sports fan, not someone who was an avid tennis fan, but someone was like, I recognized names and talents, whatever. And you asked them 20 years ago, where do these players rank? Do you think either in ability or who are we talking about? Which players talking about the ones that we brought up earlier, Korniko, Vasharapova, Williams. If you asked someone who's not deep in the game, rank these players either by

ability or by by earning. And I think if you if you plan into them to picture and say, okay, hold on, let me stop you before you answer that question. Tell you, Serena Williams is the greatest tennis player of all time. Men's of women's. Share a pop of us one, four majors. Cornucovus never won a single title. Now ranked them by earning potential. I think most people who are sports fans, not people I've never watched sports, but she's hot, not like that. But most people would assume that the most accomplished, not just of a generation, but ever,

would be the one who is earning the most. Because as you say, we say men, so their bodies, black men specifically, that's typically with some exceptions, typically what we see today, we look at the men's game and we say, who's the highest earners, the best amount, not the best looking, not the guy who's got all the connections off the court with superstar musicians and artists, the guy who plays this all the connections off the court with superstar musicians and artists, the guy who plays this shit the best.

That's the best. Aren't you undermining your very point, which is that's not the case in this, because one, if you're, well, I mean, 20 years ago, we can't do that because Chera Poppa was not in the scene and Konakoppa was just about done by then. But anyway, 15, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever that number frame it. However you want to frame it, the bottom line is that Anna Kona Koba, we follow who we know. How do you bring new people to a sport by who you know?

Who's the name that we're talking about. And in the mid 90s, the name that we were talking about was not the best of the best. It was the one who's asked they were selling. And that was Anna Konekova. And then when you say, okay, who is this Konekova phenomenon, then you get into it and you go,

oh, she's pretty girls, I never want to turn them in. Yeah. Right. So once again, which is to your point of, as you said, to your point, I mean, to your point earlier of saying, this is really not about sports and it was never about sports.

It's never been about sports. And what Kate is saying is twofold. One, at least I think what Kate's saying is that one, we are at a moment in time when it very easily can be about sports. It should be about sports. You don't have to do the shit that they had to do in the 70s to sort of get people interested in women. You got to do the T and A thing to get them interested just to get them under the tent.

The tent is here. Right. But my point is done. My point was. And men are still doing this shit. They're still doing this shit. My point was, wasn't to stop there. My point was, and striking that comparison was to say, for the average sports fan, who is not tentos deep leading up on every NIL deal? It might come as a bit of a shock that the highest paid NIL athletes.

I know we all know this because we're jaded and we've been in this, but it might come as a shock to a large portion of the country that likes sports, that the best of us, the best paid among them, is not Keith Lindclore. It's not Angel Reese. It's this girl that averaged 12 points a game and that girl that averaged 4 points. So why would that come that little bit, but that's even a free tense. That's a little bit of a free tense because you don't think hold on. I'm sorry, it's okay not to cut you out, but how it's a why is that a shot? You don't think in the

conversation about sports We would assume that the best athlete is the one or the the best among us is the one that's making you know I wouldn't and the reason why I wouldn't is because as you said at the beginning We're not talking about sports Hear me out the reason is That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. You're me out. The reason is there's one conversation when you're talking about sports.

There's another conversation when you're talking about women. They're not the same thing. If you're talking about men's sports, absolutely, okay, the best player gets the most money. But when you're talking about women and sports, you're back to this hot girl stuff that we're reading about, right? That we're talking about right now. Let me just show them here because I think that this is

again back to kind of my, my at the top talking about like the laziness of this particular piece that ran in the free press. And another layer of that to your point, I mean of like, do I think the casual sports fan would be like, yes, these two somewhat mediocre players are making a lot of money in NIL. Would that maybe surprise me? I'd be like, wow, yeah, NIL, that seems like, that's weird. Maybe that would be the predominant reaction.

I can allow for that. But what the article doesn't do, and why I think it's a false pretense to say the Cavendor twins are just like head and shoulders above everybody is because Caitlin Clark could easily make more than the Cavendor twins Page-beckers could easily make more than the Cavendor twins number of players from LSU could possibly be up there

I don't even actually know there wasn't even the reporting done in this He can't even kind of like in between two M-dashes is like, well, Caitlin Clark's the best player and then he name checks another player. But like, there's actually not any reporting done to say, Caitlin Clark makes this amount on NAL, but she's decided because of her, in some way, it might be like just her personal preferences,

family, religion, to not go any further in NIL. Or when Angel W Reese makes this amount. Like we're just, we are just supposed to take it at face value that the Cavendor twins are far and away like number one. And he's not even looking at like the true depth of like what some of the best players have decided to do and like where that lands. There is no reporting on that. Well, and that Kate, that is the dance around.

That's what I mean about. If this is the conversation in this piece, it's a very, very different piece. That is the very dance around. And I will add one other thing since I know you've got a heart out. So let's just finish this up. I will add one other thing to a mean question about the idea of looking at sports and having it be that sort of, well, yes, obviously, NIL, this would be meritocracy. One is that NIL, by definition, doesn't have anything to do with talent.

Its name, image, and likeness is the cell of those. It's not skill, value, hardware. Exactly. It's not skill, value, and talent. It's name, image, and likeness. And so there's that. And the second thing is, is that what you have to factor in to, to that question of the Serena Williams-Corner-Colva-Sharapova thing, is the inbred, the inbred instinct, or impulse for men to obviously say that women aren't any good in the first place. Well, yeah, Serena's

really great, but she can't be a man, right? So this piece of it also automatically undermines their value when it comes to talent, just the pure who's the best, that who's the best when we're talking about women's sports always comes with a NASS to risk anyway. So that piece of it, you know, will steer you toward a different conclusion, which is, okay, who's the hottest who gets the most money, who's the person who has the most, you know, I mean, and that exists in the men's game too, because there was a time you could make an argument that Jim Duncan was the best player in the NBA, but he also didn't have the it factor too. So those things also do come into it. It is, it is four minutes away from Kate's hard

out. I want to mean. Yeah. No, I mean, you haven't seen me. Final, I mean, I got to go final thoughts, because you get to get out of here. So I mean, final thoughts real, real quick. This conversation existed. I want to say 20 to 25 years ago, in English professional football, the EPL, plan named David Beckham, who was ridiculously, ridiculously famous for being good looking. These are players, a good player, but he was known from many marital spice girls.

He was known for being so ridiculously handsome doing the underwear ads, the eBay auction of a toilet seat that he sat on, which went for six figures, that's what he was known for. And do you know what all the players of the day said at the time, he's not even that good? They may not set it out loud, but that was the prevailing feeling. It's like, I can't believe all the attention,

all the money, all this is going to this guy. Now obviously, I'm not trying to compare the men's game to women's game. Obviously, women have to deal with this a lot more. Obviously, this is something to this guy now obviously I'm not trying to compare the men's game to women's game obviously women have to deal with this a lot more obviously this is something that is prevalent but I don't see the issue with writing about something that is real and is there and may not be a parent I feel like we're we're jaded because we're in it but it may not be a parent to the average American sports fan that the way this thing is divvied up

isn't quite the way you think it would be. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the issue I have is not that he wrote about it. It is how he wrote about it. That's it. It's not an off-limit topic. It's not something I think, why are we even talking about how NIL is impacting

female athletes. It's really interesting. The way he did it left so much to be desired. Yeah, and for me, final thoughts on this is that the minute I saw where it appeared, saw where it appeared, immediately at Side-I and that side-I was realized, because the free press, I do not trust that it has a very specific anti-woke, as they say, in the destroying of that word, agenda. It's a culture or site, and the story is right in on it. We could we could we could do this next week too. We could have Ethan on and do this next week. We could, but next week is another week. And we'll see what we do next week. Uh, next week will be the Ted Hendrix episode number 83 Oakland Raiders. More amino has and and Kate Fagan. I am Howard Bryant. We will see you next week. Thanks. Y'all. That was fun.

and Kate Fagan. I am Howard Bryant. We will see you next week. Thanks y'all. That was fun.