June 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX Newsletter and The Next Women's Basketball Newsroom, joins Sarah to talk about his book Becoming Caitlin Clark, putting Clark’s meteoric rise in context, his experience covering women’s sports, and his role guiding young writers in the evolving women’s sports media landscape.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're avoiding
cracks in the sidewalk, being careful around mirrors, and staying
far away from ladders. Just in case. It's Friday, June thirteenth.
Happy Friday the thirteenth to everybody except my Triskadeca folks.
On today's show, we'll be skipping the need to know
and jumping straight into my conversation with Howard Meggill, founder
(00:21):
and editor of The Nine Newsletter and the Next Women's
Basketball Newsroom. He's got a new book coming out on
June seventeenth, titled Becoming Caitlin Clark, The Unknown Origin Story
of a Modern Basketball Superstar. So we talked about how
we approached putting Clark's meteoric rise in context, the research
he did to tell the history of women's basketball and
dig up the stories of past women's soups grates, and
(00:42):
his role guiding young writers in the evolving women's sports
media landscape. It's all coming up right after this, joining
us now. He's the founder and editor of The Nine
Newsletter and the Next Women's Basketball Newsroom, a staff writer
(01:03):
for Baseball Prospectives, and senior contributor at Forbes dot com.
He's published eight books, including his latest, Becoming Caitlin Clark,
out June seventeenth. He'll take the occasional break from women's
sports to down a Metz Cheese steak, egg roll, or
witness the glory of the Philly fanatic hot dog Cannon.
It's Howard Magdoll.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi, Howard, Hi, Sarah. Great to be with you always.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, great to have you. Congrats on the book. Before
we get to that, I want to back up a
little for our listeners that might not know your extensive
history in the women's sports space. So can you give
us a sort of condensed version of how you got
here and how you've been such a big part of
women's basketball and women's sports.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I appreciate that, you know, for me, it has been
our journey over the course of my career. I've been
in sports journalism about twenty years. And as soon as
you get involved and you know this that you can
see this gap between how men's sports and women's sports
are covered, and you can't unsee it. And so the
question is in my mind and has been what do
(02:00):
you do about it? And I've covered women's sports at
legacy publications for many years, always felt like I was
building in sand, and so how do you go about
building the infrastructure that creates the everyday coverage Number one
and number two creates opportunities for others to be doing
the work as well. And so in twenty eighteen started
(02:21):
The Nine, which is a women's sports newsletter. It was
three sports, then we're up to six now one per day,
and then in twenty twenty the newsroom the next, which
is a women's basketball twenty four seven, three sixty five
newsroom where we have over one hundred reported pieces every
single month on women's sports. We have a WNBA beat
(02:43):
reporter or sometimes two on every single team. We try
to cover with the fierce urgency that you can really
take for granted when it comes to men's sports. And
so that's essentially the thumbnail version of how I'm here.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I love it, and it's so true, and it's something
of course we think about a lot here at this show.
The only daily podcast is what can we bring to
people consistently and with regularity that they can't find anywhere else,
so that they can keep up and connect all the
stories in different stars across the space. For those who
want to subscribe The Nine is like title nine the
Roman numerals IX, so if you're searching forward, it's the
(03:18):
IX newsletter and then the next Women's basketball so you
can subscribe to those and get all the goodness in
your inbox. I want to talk really quickly about that,
because it's great to have those goals. It's great to
want to create something. But did you actually want to
be a boss, an entrepreneur, someone who had to handle
a staff and manage payroll and like all those other things,
(03:41):
because I don't. So I'm very impressed that you are
helping so many other young reporters and journalists in the space,
because that's a lot of extra work on top of
the stuff you actually want to do, presumably, which is
the journalism side.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I appreciate that question. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
What I have found is being able to create these
opportunities and build this infra structure with permanence makes it
worth doing those other things. I can't tell you that
I love the process of taking on payroll by hand
every single month, but absolutely to be able to reward
the folks who are doing it is also really significant
(04:15):
to me. And being a mentor in this space is
something that's really important to me. So there's enough that
I love out of it that, Yes, the place where
I feel most at home is in a pressure room
or sitting in a one on one interview, but being
able to do those things as well important in something
that I've come to really find joy in.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
What's the toughest part about managing folks, especially folks that
they're maybe in one of their first gigs learning the
ropes as journalists.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The most difficult? Then? That's hard to say.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You know, everyone comes with certain strengths and certain weaknesses,
and it's sort of identifying what are the best ways
that I can support a young journalist, you know, as
she makes your way forward in this work. So I
wouldn't say that there's one thing that stands out most
of all. You know, they're different challenges for different people,
But the joy of seeing somebody figure it out is
(05:10):
my favorite thing. I may enjoy that more than doing
the work itself.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Honestly, Oh, that's amazing. That's probably why you're in the
position that you're in. That's that's a really good quality
to have to care so much about watching other people
as they rise. I find what's interesting to me moving
across different spaces is even at ESPN, at different spaces
at ESPN, how the newsroom, whether that was a radio
or a TV or a written kind of newsroom operated differently,
(05:36):
And I wonder for you how that works. You've got
sort of whatever you make and create is the rules
for how you operate. But then you're working with journalists
who might have jobs at other places. You're working with
folks who maybe have never worked in an official journalistic
capacity anywhere. What do you tell them about how to
handle themselves in the women's sports space, particularly as it
(05:56):
changes so much, because it went from sort of pay
your own way, show up if you care about it,
sometimes too sick a phantic coverage because you're trying to
make sure you connect with the athletes and continue to
get access to Now where there's an expectation to really
be professional in the space and to potentially be able
to and have access to ask tougher questions. How do
(06:18):
you help them adjust to that?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
There's no simple answer to that, but the way you
framed it is exactly right. I mean reflects obviously the
work that you do in this space all the time. Right,
there's a baseline we have to set up professionalism of
an understanding of you are there to cover and a
lot of people come from and this is not a
criticism from a place of we love the sport. We
(06:42):
care about the sport. You may even have fandom that
you bring into it, and we check that at the
door and we say, look, this is what we need
to do, and you do it for not just the
reasons of being able to maintain that distance, to be
able to cover, so that our audience understands we are
you can trust.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Because we are here to inform.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And ultimately our relationship is with the reader, the viewer,
the listener in all these cases, but also so that
there is that space to allow a writer to be
critical when necessary, not critical in a way that you
cannot look that person in the eye when you see
her the next day at practice, but to make sure
(07:24):
that you are telling the truth about what's happening. And
I think we've found a lot of success with that.
Being able to provide people the access to do the
work is something that is of course a fight in
and of itself sometimes but critical part of making sure
that people are there, people are showing up. And then
(07:45):
the flip side of that is is that the people
who we have covered through the years. Understand we will
be there. We will be there when they're winning, we
will be there when they're not. We covered the Indiana
fever when they were five and thirty one, no less
than we cover the Indiana fever today.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part
of this space in general, is how are teams and
leagues and pr people and comms folks adjusting to the
new normal, and in some cases, I think not always
that great. I was talking to a local sports person
who said that their access to the women's teams in
(08:20):
their city is significantly less than the men's that they
are trying to give them more coverage. But whether it's
bandwidth resources that you know, not long tenures of the
folks working there who don't have relationships in the city
the same way, or whether it's the athletes themselves who
are rightfully gunchy about some of the coverage. How have
you seen the players in the w change over the
(08:43):
last couple of years, Because I do think that they
have a good reason to wonder about some of the
reporters parachuting in for the first time and asking dumb questions,
But they also need to be ready to make the
transition from fan like reporters to higher level journalists asking
tougher questions that are fair.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I think it's less binary than this. I think you've
identified a lot of critical parts of the issue that
we see right now, and it's severalfold. And one is
that not all teams and not all leads have come
to the conclusion we don't need to credential literally everyone,
(09:24):
whether or not they're.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Doing the work.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And as a result, players are not going to necessarily
know whether somebody is parachuting in without a lot of information,
somebody is coming to cover, or somebody is there in
a fan capacity but credentialed as if they are media.
And when you don't know where the next question is
coming from, I don't just mean physically, but I just
(09:49):
mean from what perspective you can meet unshy as a result.
And so there's a lot of work that needs to
be done on multiple levels. Right The media needs to
come in an informed way and that needs to happen.
Needs to be work at the team and lead level
to understand who ought to be in those spaces, and
(10:10):
then for players, you know there's an information and understanding
of who are the people as individuals who are covering
me rather than the media as a monolith, I mean
those of us. And you've been in these rooms too,
where you just you want to bang your head against
the wall when you're a question from another quote unquote
(10:31):
media member. And unfortunately even it's even binary hpray area.
It's not old media versus new media. It's not print
versus digital. You know, there's it's always complishing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Case by case really yeah, And I think like one
of the things that stood out to me was talking
to a veteran player who said, it's as simple as
being able to tell by someone's question that they don't
know that they were just traded this year, or they
used to be an MVP, or they've won a title before,
and I think.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Their name is pronounce right. I mean, there's a lot
of basics.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, And I think a lot of that though, is
also like there's a real fear and I've been there
of walking into male professional league locker rooms and worrying
what the other media will think about you if you
haven't done your homework. And in the women's space, there
are far too many media who stroll in having done
zero homework and feel perfectly fine. Asking dumbshit questions that
(11:23):
the people who do know recognize as dumb shit immediately.
On the other hand, I do think it's more helpful
you are allowed to be mad about that, and where
does that get you as a player if your reaction
is frustration as opposed to can you choose instead, especially
if someone seems to be coming with good intention and
just maybe needs to learn how to better prep to
(11:45):
help them through that. It's not their responsibility or their job,
but for their response to be offering a little bit
of grace, we'll probably serve them in the coverage of
them better than to get frustrated and shut down. So
I think there's like a little bit of both sides,
where again it's not the player's responsibility to do that,
and also does it help them or the league or
their team to essentially be mad and not do media
(12:07):
anymore because they want everybody to show up and ask
better questions, you know, like what's the end goal? The
end goal is more coverage, better coverage, you know, and
teaching those people with the dumb shit questions.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I think it's important to note as well that we
want to see places that haven't necessarily covered. The WNBA
or room in sports in the past to cover it.
But a lot of times that means that the editorial
structure in place doesn't even have folks who are able
to bring people along to do it the right way,
(12:40):
and so they are forced to learn on the job.
It's something that I'm really conscious of at the next
where we're trying to build people up to the point
that for those who stay with us, that's amazing. And
for the people who end up at a lot of
other places and they have they're coming in with the
training to be able to do it the right way,
but that type of modeling is not there in the
(13:02):
way that it is for a lot of men's sports,
just because the structures have not covered it before. So
I just think it's significant, and I, you know, I
just wanted to mention it as well.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, no, I agree, And like I think that's why
in the end, everybody has allowed their feelings. But what
ends up getting us to the best place, and that's
a little bit of grace on both sides, right and
understanding that some of those people got assigned to you
an hour before drove out. They're trying to do their
best and when you help them, the coverage is better
than when you stonewall because you're frustrated. And we talked
(13:35):
to athletes about that too, and how they're ready for
the fair and tough questions. They just want them to
be well researched, which I understand. Let's talk about the book,
because you've written a number of books. Why, Caitlin Clark?
Why right now?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It's several years in the making, to be frank, And
it goes back to even just seeing her as an
initial phenomenon and seeing an understanding that as she blew
up and I mean that before she blew up in
an audience sens so she just blew up as a player,
which you could see right from the start, right from
(14:09):
day one as a freshman at Iowa, there was this
legacy clearly tied not just to the previous few years
at University of Iowa, but going back a century. And
you know, I've had the privilege of covering and writing
about Molly Kashmir, who was Molly bowlan machine dun Molly,
(14:30):
dating back to the nineteen seventies in the WBL, and
you just couldn't help but see those parallels right away.
And so just the more I dug into it, the
more it was just very clear to me this is
a multi generational story. And then the more she blew up,
the more it was clear and obvious that there's a
large audience out there who may not know why this
(14:54):
is happening now. And I think that's what's really important.
That's what drove me when I wrote Rare Jam, which
is about effectively four generations of women's players in Minnesota
and where that came from, and to see this history
in Iowa, it goes back even further and there are
these direct links. You know, Jan Jensen is the lead
assistant coaching Caitlin Clark, and her grandmother was a star
(15:18):
in girls six on six basketball, not only in the
nineteen twenties, but writing about it, and I had access
to her journals in a way that no one had
ever seen before writeing about it in ways the language
parallels the way Caitlin talks about living as a basketball
player today. And so the more you see that, the
more you just feel like, you know, Wow, this is
(15:38):
a story that runs so much deeper than I'm going
to be able to get to in one story or
one podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
We got to take a quick break when we come
back more with Howard mgdal hang tight. I loved the
history that was in the book because it's Caitlin Clark
has done a lot, but her story is still relatively short.
So the idea that you connect that short story that's
(16:08):
been broadcast on the highest and biggest stages alongside this
lengthy history. And you talk mostly about Iowa and how
Iowa's had this incredible support for women's basketball dating back
to even previous iterations of the sport, and you do
compare it to other places and how it's different, And
of course the part about Illinois is stuck with me,
(16:29):
but it was uniform across many states. But this is
the example you used from Illinois, you write, as historian
Scott Johnson Chronicle quote. Not long after the introduction of
basketball as an athletic activity for high school girls, all
levels of the educational hierarchy were engaged in a debate
over its merits. As a simple playground game, girls basketball
had prompted few objections. However, when girls started developing interscholastic
(16:53):
programs that rivaled those of the boys, basketball quickly turned
into a nightmare for school administrators. While students and empathetic
teachers push for more interschool play, school principles, and professional
educators marshaled their resistance to what they perceived as the
masculinization of the female athletic program. This scenario played itself
out in practically every state during the early twentieth century. Now,
(17:15):
this is not surprising to folks who have been in
the women's sports space. In fact, it feels weirdly reminiscent
of some of the reactions to the w last year,
for folks who hadn't watched before, who said, oh, this
is mma. They're boxing out there, this is too physical,
everyone's mean, they're targeting Caitlin, and we're all like, this
is basketball, bro, Like, why have you been watching? But
the idea that girls playing is fine until people come
(17:40):
to watch, or tickets get sold, or the stakes get high,
or it becomes similar to the boys or surpasses the boys.
And there were plenty of examples in early Iowa basketball
that you cite where thousands of people are going to games,
where there's a tiny town of just a couple hundred
and two thousand people show up to celebrate when they win,
lining down the street. And what was the big takeaway
(18:03):
for you of the waves of fighting that are required
to push women's sport forward from the eighteen hundreds to
the early nineteen hundreds and carrying on.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So this is a big takeaway for me from this book,
but frankly, this is a big takeaway for me from
Rare Gems. This is a big takeaway for me from
covering women's sports with a historical lens, and that is
that every time you see a gap between outcomes with
men's and women's sports, you can always trace it back
(18:33):
to process. And the thing that I think frustrates me
the most is where I hear people mistake process for outcome,
and to your point, and this is the most significant
part of it. Every time there's an elevation, every time
there is growth, there is a backlash to what we're seeing. Look,
(18:55):
we're seeing it in women's sports. We're seeing it, and
we've seen it at every wave of feminism that we've
had in this country throughout the world as well, you know,
again and again and again a pushback. And so that
for me is the big takeaway for people to understand
that women were playing basketball as soon as there was basketball,
(19:16):
just the same as men were. So everything that we've
seen for the EBB and flow and the fact that
there is not a parallel rise in men's basketball and
women's basketball is everything to do with efforts made to
stop the progress of women's basketball.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, one thousand percent. I talk about that all the time,
that if you don't understand the intention behind holding back
women's sports, you will continue to blame the product. And
the product has never been the problem. It has always
been the infrastructure and the people around it who are
trying to hold women back or keep women in a
specific lane. And it's frustrating to see that ebb and
flow and come back and repeat itself over the course
(19:54):
of time. We're currently fighting our way still in this
massive moment of growth, but of course we look at
some larger administration and other folks, the Trump administration, other
folks looking to push us back into yet another eb
What was the most surprising thing you learned about Caitlin
in the process of writing this book, because you sort
of tell these parallel stories of the history and then
(20:16):
her history as well.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The most surprising thing to me is that she never
had a moment of breaking. If that made sense, there
was something and it made sense within the context of
understanding that in a lot of ways she was born
and raised to meet this moment. But she did not
have a moment where her game failed her. She didn't
(20:41):
have a moment where she wasn't able to handle what
has been a gradually rising but clearly attention that she
has been receiving dating back to her high school days
and even before that. You know, she's playing at seventh
and eighth grade in these AAU tournaments in front of
you know, people like Lisa Bluter, and at no point
(21:01):
did she falter. And that is astonished.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So she is a robot.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I mean, it's astonishing, right, I mean, this is a
twenty three year old woman, and I just think about
myself at twenty three and what we are all prepared
to handle, and for her to handle this hurricane around
her that gets more and more intense, seemingly.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
By the day.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And there was no moment where publicly she cracked. And
that to me is amazing because she would be understandable,
she would be human, she would be forgiven for having
done so. But we haven't seen it, yeah at all.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You talk about the coverage and conversation around her in
the book and on our show, we have struggled to
both address the problems that result from some of the
toxic discussion around her, and also embrace and acknowledge how
conversation around the league itself has changed and grown as
a result of her arrival. And I always describe her
(22:04):
as the match that lit the bonfire. You needed this
giant stack of sticks for that match to do anything,
but the match also expedited the fire in a way
that we'd never seen before. And you write in the
book the WNBA had existed as a safe space for
marginalized people for nearly three decades because broader American culture
(22:26):
so often ignored it. That trade off was felt in
ways large and small that filled the league's players, coaches, executives,
in long tenured fans with ambivalence. So this feeling of
we don't know how to feel about this growth because
we love it, and it's also bringing with it a
whole new kind of conversation that wasn't here before and frankly,
is not welcome. Ultimately, I loved that you came to
(22:49):
the conclusion that we have here, which is that you
can't name one thing or one reason as to why
Caitlin blew up the way she did. You can't name
one thing or one reason as to why the reaction
to Caitlin blowing up became so problematic? Can you talk
about some of the things that when writing this you
really recognized about how Caitlin became such a for many people,
(23:13):
black and white evil or good villain or hero sort
of character or avatar in the league.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And I would be remiss not to point out, as
a Rabbit listener that I am very appreciative of the
way you guys frame this on a regular basis, as
well as it relates to the question you asked. It
is mind boggling to me that people are trying to
come up with a single answer or to assign singular
(23:42):
motivations to how people even ought to feel about it.
And I spoke to players and coaches and gms all
around the lead. You know, I do that anyway in
the day to day course of my work, but for
this book, specifically in the idea that a player cannot
simultaneously be thrilled that the media rights deal is going
to be worth between eight and nine times what the
(24:03):
last media rights deal is, but also to want to
go out there and beat the hell out of her opponent,
whether it's Kitlan or anybody else, it doesn't make sense.
Both of these things are obviously significant motivations in a
professional athlete. You know, the idea that Caitlin is doing
this now and breaking through now is very much a
(24:26):
consequence of what we have seen in terms of growth
of the lead in the years leading up to it.
If we look at the number of games on national
television when Kathy Engelbert took over as commissioner, compared to
where we are now, it's exponentially larger.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When you look at the fact that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
There is shoulder programming around WNBA games, that was a thing,
Oh my god, a WNBA pregame show. No, you couldn't
imagine it in a million years. Now we see it
at ESPN, we see it at ION and CBS it
just last week. And you know, all of these things matter.
We know, for instance, that when shoulder programming was built
(25:09):
and there was cross promotion leading up to the twenty
fifteen Women's World Cup, that is when the US women's
national team in soccer broke through into the larger culture.
And so there are all of these elements that play apart.
But yes, absolutely there is this awful, ugly undertone that
reflects where the country is here in twenty twenty five.
(25:32):
There are people who are new to the WNBA space
who are fans, and there are people who have entered
the WNBA space because it is part of broader culture
and using this as an opportunity to attack women who
are overwhelmingly black women in the WNBA. And those two
things are both true at the same time, and pretending
(25:55):
one or the other doesn't exist is doing a disservice
to the current moment that we're in.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Completely agree. I really liked what you had to say
about DJ Carrington being assigned to guard Caitlin Clark and
then afterwards being asked about her in a way that
felt in congruous with the job she'd just been assigned.
You wrote, was it difficult for Carrington to effusively praise
Clark even as she fulfilled the obligation of her job
to battle her fiercely on the court? Of course? Why
(26:22):
was that even her responsibility? And I think that's something
that stands out to me is players can be grateful
for the attention Caitlin brings and also be frustrated if
that's the only thing they're asked about. I've heard of
players in the league tell reporters, I'm happy to sit
down with, you know, Kaitlin Clark questions, And maybe that's
going too far. And I can get why that's frustrating
(26:44):
for the reporter, but also maybe if you don't say that,
you sit down and you answer ten straight questions about
another player and not yourself, and you ask, what are
we getting at here? Are we really trying to uplift
the league, spotlight other players, get everyone to watch more,
or are we operating to idolize a single individual and
keep her separate from the whole. And I think that's
(27:05):
a job that's still happening now. I think that's a
conflict we're all still feeling. I got frustrated last year
when I wanted to get excited about Caitlin, and if
I did, I was accused of being quote unquote on
a side of the larger thing. And then if I
didn't cover her, then I was accused of being on
the other side and actively working against her. So we're
so sick of that. And I think it's gotten better
(27:27):
this year, but maybe just because she's been injured, so
there's been fewer opportunities for people to lose their shit
over stuff. That's just basketball. Has writing the book changed
your coverage of Caitlin day to day at all?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
No, not at all, which has been a delightful part
of it. And it reflects the mission that we have
over at the next which is to make sure that
the type of coverage that Caitlin Clark deserves is the
type of coverage that we need to see throughout the league.
And the stars are going to get more coverage than
the role players, but to make sure that everybody is
being covered is something significant.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And this is a critical story.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I mean, to your point that you just made is
very amusing to me to be in the middle of
writing a book about Caitlin Clark and to say, oh wow,
I feel like these people are going too far in
terms of isolating focus on Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
There's a very.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Strange moment to be in. But you know, again, it
comes back to are we treating Caitlin Clark like she
is the sum total and the only reason for anyone
to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
To this league.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
That's insane And we know this is and I know
this is someone who's been privileged to cover this lead
for over a decade, and so it's getting the opportunity
to see she is growing an audience. I mean, listen,
I wrote about this in the book, but one of
the most satisfying things for me was at Caitlin Clark's
pro debut.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Two point one million.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
People also got to see Alssa Thomas put up a
triple doll, which is for some reason normal for Lysa Thomas,
but for you know, those of us were humans instead
of immortals. That's a crazy thing to conceive of. And
so you know, there are all these ancillary effects, and
for positive and for negative as well, right, and and
(29:16):
so I do I think about someone like a Djna
Carrington who had to work her way into this regular opportunity,
somebody who had the privilege of covering dating back to college,
and so what kind of player she was, you know
in championship teams. She is now at a moment where, yeah,
like you said, simultaneously, she's going to get more opportunity,
(29:38):
She's going to get more financial reward. The league is
going to right size financially to where it needs to be,
where it ought to have always been. But yeah, I
could also see her being very tired of the tenth
Caitlin Clark question and when it's when it's framed in
poor in bad faith, then.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
That's a whole other question.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
For sure. You know, I actually wrote a coll thesis
on Michael Jordan and his intersection with cable becoming global
and global capitalism and how his arrival was as much
about him being an unbelievable player, being charming, telegenic, all
the other things, but also that the world was pivoting
(30:17):
at this moment, at the right time for him to explode.
And I think writing about Caitlin Clark in this moment
is that conversation. It's not just singling out one person,
but it's this one person in this moment is having
this impact. And you mentioned Molly Bolan earlier. There's a
great espn. I think it's one of the nine for
nine stories about her, and if you don't know about her,
(30:42):
you would have your mind blown by the statistics and
the ability. And she was Kaitlyn Clark, but she didn't
end up like Caitlin Clark because she didn't arrive in
the same moment that Caitlyn did. And that's why I
think the conversations about Caitlin and the moment that we're
having in women's sports are so necessary and shouldn't be
shy away away from because we're afraid of putting a
spotlight in one player. But I wanted to just read
(31:03):
this quickly. A biography in a program for a tournament
in nineteen eighty three that Molly Bolan played in. Read
three year pro a high school All American. Molly averaged
fifty four point eight points per game and hit a
record high of eighty three points as a senior. Just
an unbelievable score. Whatever you think Caitlin Clark is doing,
(31:27):
she's not averaging fifty four point eight points per game.
And there's a really incredible story around Molly having to
try to sell calendars and other things to help promote
her ability to play so she could keep playing. The
end of her bio says she's working construction and Riverside,
And that was your point. That's what it meant to
(31:47):
be Caitlin Clark in nineteen eighty three, is you're working
construction in Riverside and then when you go hoop you
get fifty plus points. And the difference between what it
means to be great now and what it meant to
be great then is something to celebrate. And when we
can strip away all the bullshit around Caitlin. We can't
celebrate it, which is I think what you're trying to
do with this book. Here's a whole bunch of context
so that when I tell you about Caitlin you could
(32:09):
enjoy it. Did you get to talk to Caitlin much
for the book.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, And she understands that she is standing on the
shoulders of the people who came before her, and she
knows about stories like Molly's, and she knows.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
About and there's pictures of them together.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
And to see that come full circle, I mean that
moment you talked about. I've had the ability to talk
to and cover Molly for many years, and we dedicate
a significant portion of our coverage to the WBL and
to those stories of that lead, which there is no
WNBA without the WBL from nineteen seventy eight through nineteen
(32:47):
eighty one. And we have a special section over at
the next about it. And I say all that to
say I knew Molly, I knew her story, I.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Know it well.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
And yet I'm in the Iowa Women's Center researching for
this book. I come across this clip as part of
the molleyball and papers that are in there, and it
just it hits you just to see that that after
all this she's working as a house painter, what is
the prime of her basketball career. And so yes, there
there Again, I think there is a misunderstanding of the
(33:20):
way in which most people are processing this Caitlin Clark moment.
Within the game of women's basketball, there is an understanding
of a yes and mentality when it comes to it,
you know, And so from that perspective, I think it
was important that people understand, you know, we talk about
all the time at the next but we want to
live within the dray area that it's okay if the
(33:43):
player you're going to cover goes, doesn't go for forty
or has an offer or anything like that, that's okay.
We're not telling the story of player axes amazing or
player axes the worst.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
It's here's what's.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Going on with player X right now, and so making
sure that we're able to do that again, the broader
context time is Caitlin Clark comes of age at a moment,
the first moment that ESPN broadcasts all of the women's
NCAA tournament, the entirety that doesn't happen until twenty twenty one.
This comes at a moment where we are seeing understanding
(34:20):
the gaps between the men's and women's Final four, right
up to the point that the logo had to be changed.
It was the final four in the women's Final four,
and the NCAA finally got around to, oh, yeah, we
can actually call it the men's instead of making it
obvious in our branding that women's is the other.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
And speaking of.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Branding, March Madness branding was finally being used by the NCAA.
What an owned goal for the NCAA say, we're going
to not use that branding on our own women's basketball tournament.
So all of which is to say, this is Caitlin's moment.
Caitlin is the transcendent athlete who has taken advantage of this.
I spent a lot of time thinking about my time
(35:00):
covering Brianna Stewart, and if it had been Brianna Stuart
when this happened, she would have broken through. If it
had been in twenty ten, it would have been maya more.
If it had been in twenty oh four, it would
have been Diana Taraji. And if it had been nineteen
seventy eight, it would have been Molly Bowling.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I want to ask, there's a I don't know if
competing is the right word, But there's another Caitlin Clark
book from Christine Brennan coming on around the same time.
Why are the covers basically identical? Can you explain to
us is there some sort of like photo rights only
using this particular game uniform ball position, because they're almost
(35:37):
the same covers.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
It's amusing to see, I know the truth that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Is amusing the word you first thought of, or have
you come around defining an amusing?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It is?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
No, No, I like what I think it's funny to
be honest with you. No, I just I haven't had
any contact. You know, Christine, someone who I've certainly been
in contact with in the past, and you know I
would anybody and everyone Locke covering women's basketball. There needs
to be more. I'm not of the belief there needs
(36:07):
to be one book anymore than we want to have
one reporter who is covering at any given time. But no,
it's as I understand it, it's a coincidence, but I
haven't been able to speak to that specifically.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Well, we're excited for everybody to get to read it.
June seventeenth is the date that the book comes out. Howard,
Thank you so much, not just for coming on, but
for all you've done for the game and for furthering
what we try to do here as well, which is
how do we give everyone the stars, stake, stats and
stories every single day to keep up with and care
about women's sports. And you've been doing that for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Well, Sarah, thank you for everything you guys do.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Thanks so much to Howard for taking the time to chat.
We got to take another quick break when we come back.
What the fact that puts the discrepancy between WNBA and
MNBA salaries in perspective? Welcome back slices. It's time for
(37:08):
another What the fact? As folks who've been around the
women's sports space for some time now, we've seen all
sorts of gender pay gaps from soccer to tennis, to
golf and more. Women and nonsense, male athletes always seem
to get the short end of the stick. This, of course,
parallels the traditional labor market, where women still earn only
eighty four cents for every dollar a man earns. Today,
(37:31):
I want to talk about the pay gap in pro basketball.
Claudia Golden, a labor economist, economic historian, and Harvard professor,
wrote a guest essay in The New York Times last
week laying out just how underpaid WNBA players are, and
she brought the data and facts. Y'all, let's start with
one of those facts. The average MNBA player's salary, approximately
(37:53):
ten million dollars in the twenty twenty five season, is
eighty times the average WNBA players salary about one hundred
and twenty seven thousand for the twenty twenty four campaign
eighty times eight zero. And here's another from Golden quote.
A key fact is that the NBA and WNBA resemble
(38:13):
a joint venture in which the league's individual finances are
not transparent to the public. The NBA owns around half
of the WNBA and helps a portion money between the
two leagues. Last year, the NBA negotiated joint television contracts
for the leagues, in which Disney, NBC and Amazon Prime
Video agreed to pay the two leagues roughly seventy seven
(38:34):
billion dollars for the right to show their games over
eleven years. The gap in player salaries appears to reflect
the highly unequal way that NBA owners divide the league's
revenue end quote. So Golden worked with the WNBA Players
Association over the past year to dive into the relationship
between player salaries and the revenue, viewership and attendance numbers
(38:57):
in the MNBA and WNBA, using those numbers to decipher
what a reasonable gap between the salaries might be. The
most significant factor she looked at in each league's revenue
is viewership, which is what makes big networks pay big
bucks to sell ads during games. From Golden's article quote,
the average WNBA game recently drew about seventy seven percent
(39:17):
of the eyeballs for the average NBA game. The gap
in total eyeballs per player is much larger because the
NBA has more games per season and longer games. Taking
into account all of these differences shows that the WNBA
attracts about thirty percent, or roughly one third as many
eyeballs per player as the NBA does. This ratio is
a reasonable estimate of the actual relationship between WNBA and
(39:41):
NBA broadcast revenue per player, and by extension, what WNBA
players should receive in salary relative to NBA players end quote.
Another important factor in the dollars and cents is attendance.
So here's what Golden had to say about how butts
in seats should affect money in pockets. Quote. In twenty
twenty four, for example, the WNBA's total attendance was about
(40:02):
one tenth as large as the NBA's attendance. Adjusting for
the fewer teams in the WNBA shows that it attracts
about one quarter of the attendants per player in the NBA.
All these numbers suggest that the average WNBA salary should
be roughly one quarter to one third of the average
NBA salary to achieve pay equity end quote. We've all
(40:22):
known that WNBA players were not making enough of a
percentage of revenue when compared to their MNBA counterparts, but
Golden has laid it out with facts and data. It
should be one quarter to one third, not one eightieth
what the guys are making.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Link to Golden's essay at our show notes so you
can read it for yourself. Her concluding paragraph really hammers
the point home she wrote. Quote, the world of women's
professional basketball is ripe for an economic update that better
reflects its influence and irresistibility, but it has not happened.
Yet the people who run the NBA and WNBA are
instead badly underpaying the women who enter tain and thrill
(41:00):
us with their feats of athleticism. End quote. Yet again, y'all,
I'm screaming, what the fact? This what the fact? Brought
to you by Elf Beauty. And here's another fact. When
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of decision making. ELF Beauty, who has delivered twenty five
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everyone wins. Learn more about what Elf Beauty is doing
to help diverse by corporate boards visit changethboardgame dot com.
We always love that your listing slices, but we want
you to get in the game every day too, So
here's our good game play of the day pre order
Howard's book, we'll link to a site where you can
snag your copy. In our show notes and we always
love to hear from you, so hit us up on
(42:05):
email good game at wondermedianetwork dot com or leave us
a voicemail at eight seven two two o four fifty
seventy and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review. It's easy.
Watch the ultra runner who stopped to breastfeed three times
and still one, rating ten out of ten. What Can't
Women Do? Review? At the recent Ultratrail Snowdonia one hundred
(42:27):
kilometer race in northern Wales, forty two year old runner
and new mom Stephanie Case paused at three different times
during the race to breastfeed her six month old daughter,
and not only still finished, she placed first among female competitors.
That's sixty two plus miles of running six months after
baby and balancing both roles at once with grace. Case
(42:47):
told NPR of the photos of her mid race that
went viral, they show quote an athlete being a mom
at the same time, and those things not actually competing
with one another. We don't have to lose ourselves in
becoming a mom, and we can keep setting big goals
for ourselves end quote. The course has thirteen hundred and
twenty five feet of elevation gain, with runners traversing the
tallest mountain in Wales and traveling rough and tough terrain.
(43:11):
Case stopped at checkpoints at twenty fifty and eighty kilometers
to nurse her daughter, Pepper, and then jump right back
into the race and the story somehow gets better. Case
ran while on parental leave from her job working for
the United Nations as a human rights lawyer per NPR quote.
Running long distances helps Case cope with the stress of
working in a humanitarian crisis end quote. Case's experiences inspired
(43:35):
her to found Free to Run, a nonprofit that empowers
girls and young women in conflict areas through running and
other outdoor activities. So if you want to show love
to a woman holding it down for moms, for women
over forty and human rights advocates, go check it out
free toorun dot org and you can read the whole
NPR article. We'll link to it in our show notes.
(43:55):
Now it's your turn, rate and review, y'all. Thanks for listening.
See you next week. Good game, Howard, good game, Stephanie Case.
You tech Nik from writing for hours and hours and
hours on Deadline. I'm telling y'all write a book for yourself.
You'll see. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
(44:18):
You could find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rudder, Brittany Martinez, Grace Lynch, and
Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones and I'm
(44:39):
your host Sarah Spain
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're avoiding
cracks in the sidewalk, being careful around mirrors, and staying
far away from ladders. Just in case. It's Friday, June thirteenth.
Happy Friday the thirteenth to everybody except my Triskadeca folks.
On today's show, we'll be skipping the need to know
and jumping straight into my conversation with Howard Meggill, founder
(00:21):
and editor of The Nine Newsletter and the Next Women's
Basketball Newsroom. He's got a new book coming out on
June seventeenth, titled Becoming Caitlin Clark, The Unknown Origin Story
of a Modern Basketball Superstar. So we talked about how
we approached putting Clark's meteoric rise in context, the research
he did to tell the history of women's basketball and
dig up the stories of past women's soups grates, and
(00:42):
his role guiding young writers in the evolving women's sports
media landscape. It's all coming up right after this, joining
us now. He's the founder and editor of The Nine
Newsletter and the Next Women's Basketball Newsroom, a staff writer
(01:03):
for Baseball Prospectives, and senior contributor at Forbes dot com.
He's published eight books, including his latest, Becoming Caitlin Clark,
out June seventeenth. He'll take the occasional break from women's
sports to down a Metz Cheese steak, egg roll, or
witness the glory of the Philly fanatic hot dog Cannon.
It's Howard Magdoll.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi, Howard, Hi, Sarah. Great to be with you always.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, great to have you. Congrats on the book. Before
we get to that, I want to back up a
little for our listeners that might not know your extensive
history in the women's sports space. So can you give
us a sort of condensed version of how you got
here and how you've been such a big part of
women's basketball and women's sports.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I appreciate that, you know, for me, it has been
our journey over the course of my career. I've been
in sports journalism about twenty years. And as soon as
you get involved and you know this that you can
see this gap between how men's sports and women's sports
are covered, and you can't unsee it. And so the
question is in my mind and has been what do
(02:00):
you do about it? And I've covered women's sports at
legacy publications for many years, always felt like I was
building in sand, and so how do you go about
building the infrastructure that creates the everyday coverage Number one
and number two creates opportunities for others to be doing
the work as well. And so in twenty eighteen started
(02:21):
The Nine, which is a women's sports newsletter. It was
three sports, then we're up to six now one per day,
and then in twenty twenty the newsroom the next, which
is a women's basketball twenty four seven, three sixty five
newsroom where we have over one hundred reported pieces every
single month on women's sports. We have a WNBA beat
(02:43):
reporter or sometimes two on every single team. We try
to cover with the fierce urgency that you can really
take for granted when it comes to men's sports. And
so that's essentially the thumbnail version of how I'm here.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I love it, and it's so true, and it's something
of course we think about a lot here at this show.
The only daily podcast is what can we bring to
people consistently and with regularity that they can't find anywhere else,
so that they can keep up and connect all the
stories in different stars across the space. For those who
want to subscribe The Nine is like title nine the
Roman numerals IX, so if you're searching forward, it's the
(03:18):
IX newsletter and then the next Women's basketball so you
can subscribe to those and get all the goodness in
your inbox. I want to talk really quickly about that,
because it's great to have those goals. It's great to
want to create something. But did you actually want to
be a boss, an entrepreneur, someone who had to handle
a staff and manage payroll and like all those other things,
(03:41):
because I don't. So I'm very impressed that you are
helping so many other young reporters and journalists in the space,
because that's a lot of extra work on top of
the stuff you actually want to do, presumably, which is
the journalism side.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I appreciate that question. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
What I have found is being able to create these
opportunities and build this infra structure with permanence makes it
worth doing those other things. I can't tell you that
I love the process of taking on payroll by hand
every single month, but absolutely to be able to reward
the folks who are doing it is also really significant
(04:15):
to me. And being a mentor in this space is
something that's really important to me. So there's enough that
I love out of it that, Yes, the place where
I feel most at home is in a pressure room
or sitting in a one on one interview, but being
able to do those things as well important in something
that I've come to really find joy in.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
What's the toughest part about managing folks, especially folks that
they're maybe in one of their first gigs learning the
ropes as journalists.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The most difficult? Then? That's hard to say.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You know, everyone comes with certain strengths and certain weaknesses,
and it's sort of identifying what are the best ways
that I can support a young journalist, you know, as
she makes your way forward in this work. So I
wouldn't say that there's one thing that stands out most
of all. You know, they're different challenges for different people,
But the joy of seeing somebody figure it out is
(05:10):
my favorite thing. I may enjoy that more than doing
the work itself.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Honestly, Oh, that's amazing. That's probably why you're in the
position that you're in. That's that's a really good quality
to have to care so much about watching other people
as they rise. I find what's interesting to me moving
across different spaces is even at ESPN, at different spaces
at ESPN, how the newsroom, whether that was a radio
or a TV or a written kind of newsroom operated differently,
(05:36):
And I wonder for you how that works. You've got
sort of whatever you make and create is the rules
for how you operate. But then you're working with journalists
who might have jobs at other places. You're working with
folks who maybe have never worked in an official journalistic
capacity anywhere. What do you tell them about how to
handle themselves in the women's sports space, particularly as it
(05:56):
changes so much, because it went from sort of pay
your own way, show up if you care about it,
sometimes too sick a phantic coverage because you're trying to
make sure you connect with the athletes and continue to
get access to Now where there's an expectation to really
be professional in the space and to potentially be able
to and have access to ask tougher questions. How do
(06:18):
you help them adjust to that?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
There's no simple answer to that, but the way you
framed it is exactly right. I mean reflects obviously the
work that you do in this space all the time. Right,
there's a baseline we have to set up professionalism of
an understanding of you are there to cover and a
lot of people come from and this is not a
criticism from a place of we love the sport. We
(06:42):
care about the sport. You may even have fandom that
you bring into it, and we check that at the
door and we say, look, this is what we need
to do, and you do it for not just the
reasons of being able to maintain that distance, to be
able to cover, so that our audience understands we are
you can trust.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Because we are here to inform.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And ultimately our relationship is with the reader, the viewer,
the listener in all these cases, but also so that
there is that space to allow a writer to be
critical when necessary, not critical in a way that you
cannot look that person in the eye when you see
her the next day at practice, but to make sure
(07:24):
that you are telling the truth about what's happening. And
I think we've found a lot of success with that.
Being able to provide people the access to do the
work is something that is of course a fight in
and of itself sometimes but critical part of making sure
that people are there, people are showing up. And then
(07:45):
the flip side of that is is that the people
who we have covered through the years. Understand we will
be there. We will be there when they're winning, we
will be there when they're not. We covered the Indiana
fever when they were five and thirty one, no less
than we cover the Indiana fever today.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part
of this space in general, is how are teams and
leagues and pr people and comms folks adjusting to the
new normal, and in some cases, I think not always
that great. I was talking to a local sports person
who said that their access to the women's teams in
(08:20):
their city is significantly less than the men's that they
are trying to give them more coverage. But whether it's
bandwidth resources that you know, not long tenures of the
folks working there who don't have relationships in the city
the same way, or whether it's the athletes themselves who
are rightfully gunchy about some of the coverage. How have
you seen the players in the w change over the
(08:43):
last couple of years, Because I do think that they
have a good reason to wonder about some of the
reporters parachuting in for the first time and asking dumb questions,
But they also need to be ready to make the
transition from fan like reporters to higher level journalists asking
tougher questions that are fair.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I think it's less binary than this. I think you've
identified a lot of critical parts of the issue that
we see right now, and it's severalfold. And one is
that not all teams and not all leads have come
to the conclusion we don't need to credential literally everyone,
(09:24):
whether or not they're.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Doing the work.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And as a result, players are not going to necessarily
know whether somebody is parachuting in without a lot of information,
somebody is coming to cover, or somebody is there in
a fan capacity but credentialed as if they are media.
And when you don't know where the next question is
coming from, I don't just mean physically, but I just
(09:49):
mean from what perspective you can meet unshy as a result.
And so there's a lot of work that needs to
be done on multiple levels. Right The media needs to
come in an informed way and that needs to happen.
Needs to be work at the team and lead level
to understand who ought to be in those spaces, and
(10:10):
then for players, you know there's an information and understanding
of who are the people as individuals who are covering
me rather than the media as a monolith, I mean
those of us. And you've been in these rooms too,
where you just you want to bang your head against
the wall when you're a question from another quote unquote
(10:31):
media member. And unfortunately even it's even binary hpray area.
It's not old media versus new media. It's not print
versus digital. You know, there's it's always complishing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Case by case really yeah, And I think like one
of the things that stood out to me was talking
to a veteran player who said, it's as simple as
being able to tell by someone's question that they don't
know that they were just traded this year, or they
used to be an MVP, or they've won a title before,
and I think.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Their name is pronounce right. I mean, there's a lot
of basics.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, And I think a lot of that though, is
also like there's a real fear and I've been there
of walking into male professional league locker rooms and worrying
what the other media will think about you if you
haven't done your homework. And in the women's space, there
are far too many media who stroll in having done
zero homework and feel perfectly fine. Asking dumbshit questions that
(11:23):
the people who do know recognize as dumb shit immediately.
On the other hand, I do think it's more helpful
you are allowed to be mad about that, and where
does that get you as a player if your reaction
is frustration as opposed to can you choose instead, especially
if someone seems to be coming with good intention and
just maybe needs to learn how to better prep to
(11:45):
help them through that. It's not their responsibility or their job,
but for their response to be offering a little bit
of grace, we'll probably serve them in the coverage of
them better than to get frustrated and shut down. So
I think there's like a little bit of both sides,
where again it's not the player's responsibility to do that,
and also does it help them or the league or
their team to essentially be mad and not do media
(12:07):
anymore because they want everybody to show up and ask
better questions, you know, like what's the end goal? The
end goal is more coverage, better coverage, you know, and
teaching those people with the dumb shit questions.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I think it's important to note as well that we
want to see places that haven't necessarily covered. The WNBA
or room in sports in the past to cover it.
But a lot of times that means that the editorial
structure in place doesn't even have folks who are able
to bring people along to do it the right way,
(12:40):
and so they are forced to learn on the job.
It's something that I'm really conscious of at the next
where we're trying to build people up to the point
that for those who stay with us, that's amazing. And
for the people who end up at a lot of
other places and they have they're coming in with the
training to be able to do it the right way,
but that type of modeling is not there in the
(13:02):
way that it is for a lot of men's sports,
just because the structures have not covered it before. So
I just think it's significant, and I, you know, I
just wanted to mention it as well.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, no, I agree, And like I think that's why
in the end, everybody has allowed their feelings. But what
ends up getting us to the best place, and that's
a little bit of grace on both sides, right and
understanding that some of those people got assigned to you
an hour before drove out. They're trying to do their
best and when you help them, the coverage is better
than when you stonewall because you're frustrated. And we talked
(13:35):
to athletes about that too, and how they're ready for
the fair and tough questions. They just want them to
be well researched, which I understand. Let's talk about the book,
because you've written a number of books. Why, Caitlin Clark?
Why right now?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It's several years in the making, to be frank, And
it goes back to even just seeing her as an
initial phenomenon and seeing an understanding that as she blew
up and I mean that before she blew up in
an audience sens so she just blew up as a player,
which you could see right from the start, right from
(14:09):
day one as a freshman at Iowa, there was this
legacy clearly tied not just to the previous few years
at University of Iowa, but going back a century. And
you know, I've had the privilege of covering and writing
about Molly Kashmir, who was Molly bowlan machine dun Molly,
(14:30):
dating back to the nineteen seventies in the WBL, and
you just couldn't help but see those parallels right away.
And so just the more I dug into it, the
more it was just very clear to me this is
a multi generational story. And then the more she blew up,
the more it was clear and obvious that there's a
large audience out there who may not know why this
(14:54):
is happening now. And I think that's what's really important.
That's what drove me when I wrote Rare Jam, which
is about effectively four generations of women's players in Minnesota
and where that came from, and to see this history
in Iowa, it goes back even further and there are
these direct links. You know, Jan Jensen is the lead
assistant coaching Caitlin Clark, and her grandmother was a star
(15:18):
in girls six on six basketball, not only in the
nineteen twenties, but writing about it, and I had access
to her journals in a way that no one had
ever seen before writeing about it in ways the language
parallels the way Caitlin talks about living as a basketball
player today. And so the more you see that, the
more you just feel like, you know, Wow, this is
(15:38):
a story that runs so much deeper than I'm going
to be able to get to in one story or
one podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
We got to take a quick break when we come
back more with Howard mgdal hang tight. I loved the
history that was in the book because it's Caitlin Clark
has done a lot, but her story is still relatively short.
So the idea that you connect that short story that's
(16:08):
been broadcast on the highest and biggest stages alongside this
lengthy history. And you talk mostly about Iowa and how
Iowa's had this incredible support for women's basketball dating back
to even previous iterations of the sport, and you do
compare it to other places and how it's different, And
of course the part about Illinois is stuck with me,
(16:29):
but it was uniform across many states. But this is
the example you used from Illinois, you write, as historian
Scott Johnson Chronicle quote. Not long after the introduction of
basketball as an athletic activity for high school girls, all
levels of the educational hierarchy were engaged in a debate
over its merits. As a simple playground game, girls basketball
had prompted few objections. However, when girls started developing interscholastic
(16:53):
programs that rivaled those of the boys, basketball quickly turned
into a nightmare for school administrators. While students and empathetic
teachers push for more interschool play, school principles, and professional
educators marshaled their resistance to what they perceived as the
masculinization of the female athletic program. This scenario played itself
out in practically every state during the early twentieth century. Now,
(17:15):
this is not surprising to folks who have been in
the women's sports space. In fact, it feels weirdly reminiscent
of some of the reactions to the w last year,
for folks who hadn't watched before, who said, oh, this
is mma. They're boxing out there, this is too physical,
everyone's mean, they're targeting Caitlin, and we're all like, this
is basketball, bro, Like, why have you been watching? But
the idea that girls playing is fine until people come
(17:40):
to watch, or tickets get sold, or the stakes get high,
or it becomes similar to the boys or surpasses the boys.
And there were plenty of examples in early Iowa basketball
that you cite where thousands of people are going to games,
where there's a tiny town of just a couple hundred
and two thousand people show up to celebrate when they win,
lining down the street. And what was the big takeaway
(18:03):
for you of the waves of fighting that are required
to push women's sport forward from the eighteen hundreds to
the early nineteen hundreds and carrying on.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So this is a big takeaway for me from this book,
but frankly, this is a big takeaway for me from
Rare Gems. This is a big takeaway for me from
covering women's sports with a historical lens, and that is
that every time you see a gap between outcomes with
men's and women's sports, you can always trace it back
(18:33):
to process. And the thing that I think frustrates me
the most is where I hear people mistake process for outcome,
and to your point, and this is the most significant
part of it. Every time there's an elevation, every time
there is growth, there is a backlash to what we're seeing. Look,
(18:55):
we're seeing it in women's sports. We're seeing it, and
we've seen it at every wave of feminism that we've
had in this country throughout the world as well, you know,
again and again and again a pushback. And so that
for me is the big takeaway for people to understand
that women were playing basketball as soon as there was basketball,
(19:16):
just the same as men were. So everything that we've
seen for the EBB and flow and the fact that
there is not a parallel rise in men's basketball and
women's basketball is everything to do with efforts made to
stop the progress of women's basketball.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, one thousand percent. I talk about that all the time,
that if you don't understand the intention behind holding back
women's sports, you will continue to blame the product. And
the product has never been the problem. It has always
been the infrastructure and the people around it who are
trying to hold women back or keep women in a
specific lane. And it's frustrating to see that ebb and
flow and come back and repeat itself over the course
(19:54):
of time. We're currently fighting our way still in this
massive moment of growth, but of course we look at
some larger administration and other folks, the Trump administration, other
folks looking to push us back into yet another eb
What was the most surprising thing you learned about Caitlin
in the process of writing this book, because you sort
of tell these parallel stories of the history and then
(20:16):
her history as well.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The most surprising thing to me is that she never
had a moment of breaking. If that made sense, there
was something and it made sense within the context of
understanding that in a lot of ways she was born
and raised to meet this moment. But she did not
have a moment where her game failed her. She didn't
(20:41):
have a moment where she wasn't able to handle what
has been a gradually rising but clearly attention that she
has been receiving dating back to her high school days
and even before that. You know, she's playing at seventh
and eighth grade in these AAU tournaments in front of
you know, people like Lisa Bluter, and at no point
(21:01):
did she falter. And that is astonished.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So she is a robot.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I mean, it's astonishing, right, I mean, this is a
twenty three year old woman, and I just think about
myself at twenty three and what we are all prepared
to handle, and for her to handle this hurricane around
her that gets more and more intense, seemingly.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
By the day.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And there was no moment where publicly she cracked. And
that to me is amazing because she would be understandable,
she would be human, she would be forgiven for having
done so. But we haven't seen it, yeah at all.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You talk about the coverage and conversation around her in
the book and on our show, we have struggled to
both address the problems that result from some of the
toxic discussion around her, and also embrace and acknowledge how
conversation around the league itself has changed and grown as
a result of her arrival. And I always describe her
(22:04):
as the match that lit the bonfire. You needed this
giant stack of sticks for that match to do anything,
but the match also expedited the fire in a way
that we'd never seen before. And you write in the
book the WNBA had existed as a safe space for
marginalized people for nearly three decades because broader American culture
(22:26):
so often ignored it. That trade off was felt in
ways large and small that filled the league's players, coaches, executives,
in long tenured fans with ambivalence. So this feeling of
we don't know how to feel about this growth because
we love it, and it's also bringing with it a
whole new kind of conversation that wasn't here before and frankly,
is not welcome. Ultimately, I loved that you came to
(22:49):
the conclusion that we have here, which is that you
can't name one thing or one reason as to why
Caitlin blew up the way she did. You can't name
one thing or one reason as to why the reaction
to Caitlin blowing up became so problematic? Can you talk
about some of the things that when writing this you
really recognized about how Caitlin became such a for many people,
(23:13):
black and white evil or good villain or hero sort
of character or avatar in the league.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And I would be remiss not to point out, as
a Rabbit listener that I am very appreciative of the
way you guys frame this on a regular basis, as
well as it relates to the question you asked. It
is mind boggling to me that people are trying to
come up with a single answer or to assign singular
(23:42):
motivations to how people even ought to feel about it.
And I spoke to players and coaches and gms all
around the lead. You know, I do that anyway in
the day to day course of my work, but for
this book, specifically in the idea that a player cannot
simultaneously be thrilled that the media rights deal is going
to be worth between eight and nine times what the
(24:03):
last media rights deal is, but also to want to
go out there and beat the hell out of her opponent,
whether it's Kitlan or anybody else, it doesn't make sense.
Both of these things are obviously significant motivations in a
professional athlete. You know, the idea that Caitlin is doing
this now and breaking through now is very much a
(24:26):
consequence of what we have seen in terms of growth
of the lead in the years leading up to it.
If we look at the number of games on national
television when Kathy Engelbert took over as commissioner, compared to
where we are now, it's exponentially larger.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When you look at the fact that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
There is shoulder programming around WNBA games, that was a thing,
Oh my god, a WNBA pregame show. No, you couldn't
imagine it in a million years. Now we see it
at ESPN, we see it at ION and CBS it
just last week. And you know, all of these things matter.
We know, for instance, that when shoulder programming was built
(25:09):
and there was cross promotion leading up to the twenty
fifteen Women's World Cup, that is when the US women's
national team in soccer broke through into the larger culture.
And so there are all of these elements that play apart.
But yes, absolutely there is this awful, ugly undertone that
reflects where the country is here in twenty twenty five.
(25:32):
There are people who are new to the WNBA space
who are fans, and there are people who have entered
the WNBA space because it is part of broader culture
and using this as an opportunity to attack women who
are overwhelmingly black women in the WNBA. And those two
things are both true at the same time, and pretending
(25:55):
one or the other doesn't exist is doing a disservice
to the current moment that we're in.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Completely agree. I really liked what you had to say
about DJ Carrington being assigned to guard Caitlin Clark and
then afterwards being asked about her in a way that
felt in congruous with the job she'd just been assigned.
You wrote, was it difficult for Carrington to effusively praise
Clark even as she fulfilled the obligation of her job
to battle her fiercely on the court? Of course? Why
(26:22):
was that even her responsibility? And I think that's something
that stands out to me is players can be grateful
for the attention Caitlin brings and also be frustrated if
that's the only thing they're asked about. I've heard of
players in the league tell reporters, I'm happy to sit
down with, you know, Kaitlin Clark questions, And maybe that's
going too far. And I can get why that's frustrating
(26:44):
for the reporter, but also maybe if you don't say that,
you sit down and you answer ten straight questions about
another player and not yourself, and you ask, what are
we getting at here? Are we really trying to uplift
the league, spotlight other players, get everyone to watch more,
or are we operating to idolize a single individual and
keep her separate from the whole. And I think that's
(27:05):
a job that's still happening now. I think that's a
conflict we're all still feeling. I got frustrated last year
when I wanted to get excited about Caitlin, and if
I did, I was accused of being quote unquote on
a side of the larger thing. And then if I
didn't cover her, then I was accused of being on
the other side and actively working against her. So we're
so sick of that. And I think it's gotten better
(27:27):
this year, but maybe just because she's been injured, so
there's been fewer opportunities for people to lose their shit
over stuff. That's just basketball. Has writing the book changed
your coverage of Caitlin day to day at all?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
No, not at all, which has been a delightful part
of it. And it reflects the mission that we have
over at the next which is to make sure that
the type of coverage that Caitlin Clark deserves is the
type of coverage that we need to see throughout the league.
And the stars are going to get more coverage than
the role players, but to make sure that everybody is
being covered is something significant.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And this is a critical story.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I mean, to your point that you just made is
very amusing to me to be in the middle of
writing a book about Caitlin Clark and to say, oh wow,
I feel like these people are going too far in
terms of isolating focus on Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
There's a very.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Strange moment to be in. But you know, again, it
comes back to are we treating Caitlin Clark like she
is the sum total and the only reason for anyone
to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
To this league.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
That's insane And we know this is and I know
this is someone who's been privileged to cover this lead
for over a decade, and so it's getting the opportunity
to see she is growing an audience. I mean, listen,
I wrote about this in the book, but one of
the most satisfying things for me was at Caitlin Clark's
pro debut.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Two point one million.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
People also got to see Alssa Thomas put up a
triple doll, which is for some reason normal for Lysa Thomas,
but for you know, those of us were humans instead
of immortals. That's a crazy thing to conceive of. And
so you know, there are all these ancillary effects, and
for positive and for negative as well, right, and and
(29:16):
so I do I think about someone like a Djna
Carrington who had to work her way into this regular opportunity,
somebody who had the privilege of covering dating back to college,
and so what kind of player she was, you know
in championship teams. She is now at a moment where, yeah,
like you said, simultaneously, she's going to get more opportunity,
(29:38):
She's going to get more financial reward. The league is
going to right size financially to where it needs to be,
where it ought to have always been. But yeah, I
could also see her being very tired of the tenth
Caitlin Clark question and when it's when it's framed in
poor in bad faith, then.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
That's a whole other question.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
For sure. You know, I actually wrote a coll thesis
on Michael Jordan and his intersection with cable becoming global
and global capitalism and how his arrival was as much
about him being an unbelievable player, being charming, telegenic, all
the other things, but also that the world was pivoting
(30:17):
at this moment, at the right time for him to explode.
And I think writing about Caitlin Clark in this moment
is that conversation. It's not just singling out one person,
but it's this one person in this moment is having
this impact. And you mentioned Molly Bolan earlier. There's a
great espn. I think it's one of the nine for
nine stories about her, and if you don't know about her,
(30:42):
you would have your mind blown by the statistics and
the ability. And she was Kaitlyn Clark, but she didn't
end up like Caitlin Clark because she didn't arrive in
the same moment that Caitlyn did. And that's why I
think the conversations about Caitlin and the moment that we're
having in women's sports are so necessary and shouldn't be
shy away away from because we're afraid of putting a
spotlight in one player. But I wanted to just read
(31:03):
this quickly. A biography in a program for a tournament
in nineteen eighty three that Molly Bolan played in. Read
three year pro a high school All American. Molly averaged
fifty four point eight points per game and hit a
record high of eighty three points as a senior. Just
an unbelievable score. Whatever you think Caitlin Clark is doing,
(31:27):
she's not averaging fifty four point eight points per game.
And there's a really incredible story around Molly having to
try to sell calendars and other things to help promote
her ability to play so she could keep playing. The
end of her bio says she's working construction and Riverside,
And that was your point. That's what it meant to
(31:47):
be Caitlin Clark in nineteen eighty three, is you're working
construction in Riverside and then when you go hoop you
get fifty plus points. And the difference between what it
means to be great now and what it meant to
be great then is something to celebrate. And when we
can strip away all the bullshit around Caitlin. We can't
celebrate it, which is I think what you're trying to
do with this book. Here's a whole bunch of context
so that when I tell you about Caitlin you could
(32:09):
enjoy it. Did you get to talk to Caitlin much
for the book.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, And she understands that she is standing on the
shoulders of the people who came before her, and she
knows about stories like Molly's, and she knows.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
About and there's pictures of them together.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
And to see that come full circle, I mean that
moment you talked about. I've had the ability to talk
to and cover Molly for many years, and we dedicate
a significant portion of our coverage to the WBL and
to those stories of that lead, which there is no
WNBA without the WBL from nineteen seventy eight through nineteen
(32:47):
eighty one. And we have a special section over at
the next about it. And I say all that to
say I knew Molly, I knew her story, I.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Know it well.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
And yet I'm in the Iowa Women's Center researching for
this book. I come across this clip as part of
the molleyball and papers that are in there, and it
just it hits you just to see that that after
all this she's working as a house painter, what is
the prime of her basketball career. And so yes, there
there Again, I think there is a misunderstanding of the
(33:20):
way in which most people are processing this Caitlin Clark moment.
Within the game of women's basketball, there is an understanding
of a yes and mentality when it comes to it,
you know, And so from that perspective, I think it
was important that people understand, you know, we talk about
all the time at the next but we want to
live within the dray area that it's okay if the
(33:43):
player you're going to cover goes, doesn't go for forty
or has an offer or anything like that, that's okay.
We're not telling the story of player axes amazing or
player axes the worst.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
It's here's what's.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Going on with player X right now, and so making
sure that we're able to do that again, the broader
context time is Caitlin Clark comes of age at a moment,
the first moment that ESPN broadcasts all of the women's
NCAA tournament, the entirety that doesn't happen until twenty twenty one.
This comes at a moment where we are seeing understanding
(34:20):
the gaps between the men's and women's Final four, right
up to the point that the logo had to be changed.
It was the final four in the women's Final four,
and the NCAA finally got around to, oh, yeah, we
can actually call it the men's instead of making it
obvious in our branding that women's is the other.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
And speaking of.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Branding, March Madness branding was finally being used by the NCAA.
What an owned goal for the NCAA say, we're going
to not use that branding on our own women's basketball tournament.
So all of which is to say, this is Caitlin's moment.
Caitlin is the transcendent athlete who has taken advantage of this.
I spent a lot of time thinking about my time
(35:00):
covering Brianna Stewart, and if it had been Brianna Stuart
when this happened, she would have broken through. If it
had been in twenty ten, it would have been maya more.
If it had been in twenty oh four, it would
have been Diana Taraji. And if it had been nineteen
seventy eight, it would have been Molly Bowling.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I want to ask, there's a I don't know if
competing is the right word, But there's another Caitlin Clark
book from Christine Brennan coming on around the same time.
Why are the covers basically identical? Can you explain to
us is there some sort of like photo rights only
using this particular game uniform ball position, because they're almost
(35:37):
the same covers.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
It's amusing to see, I know the truth that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Is amusing the word you first thought of, or have
you come around defining an amusing?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It is?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
No, No, I like what I think it's funny to
be honest with you. No, I just I haven't had
any contact. You know, Christine, someone who I've certainly been
in contact with in the past, and you know I
would anybody and everyone Locke covering women's basketball. There needs
to be more. I'm not of the belief there needs
(36:07):
to be one book anymore than we want to have
one reporter who is covering at any given time. But no,
it's as I understand it, it's a coincidence, but I
haven't been able to speak to that specifically.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Well, we're excited for everybody to get to read it.
June seventeenth is the date that the book comes out. Howard,
Thank you so much, not just for coming on, but
for all you've done for the game and for furthering
what we try to do here as well, which is
how do we give everyone the stars, stake, stats and
stories every single day to keep up with and care
about women's sports. And you've been doing that for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Well, Sarah, thank you for everything you guys do.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Thanks so much to Howard for taking the time to chat.
We got to take another quick break when we come back.
What the fact that puts the discrepancy between WNBA and
MNBA salaries in perspective? Welcome back slices. It's time for
(37:08):
another What the fact? As folks who've been around the
women's sports space for some time now, we've seen all
sorts of gender pay gaps from soccer to tennis, to
golf and more. Women and nonsense, male athletes always seem
to get the short end of the stick. This, of course,
parallels the traditional labor market, where women still earn only
eighty four cents for every dollar a man earns. Today,
(37:31):
I want to talk about the pay gap in pro basketball.
Claudia Golden, a labor economist, economic historian, and Harvard professor,
wrote a guest essay in The New York Times last
week laying out just how underpaid WNBA players are, and
she brought the data and facts. Y'all, let's start with
one of those facts. The average MNBA player's salary, approximately
(37:53):
ten million dollars in the twenty twenty five season, is
eighty times the average WNBA players salary about one hundred
and twenty seven thousand for the twenty twenty four campaign
eighty times eight zero. And here's another from Golden quote.
A key fact is that the NBA and WNBA resemble
(38:13):
a joint venture in which the league's individual finances are
not transparent to the public. The NBA owns around half
of the WNBA and helps a portion money between the
two leagues. Last year, the NBA negotiated joint television contracts
for the leagues, in which Disney, NBC and Amazon Prime
Video agreed to pay the two leagues roughly seventy seven
(38:34):
billion dollars for the right to show their games over
eleven years. The gap in player salaries appears to reflect
the highly unequal way that NBA owners divide the league's
revenue end quote. So Golden worked with the WNBA Players
Association over the past year to dive into the relationship
between player salaries and the revenue, viewership and attendance numbers
(38:57):
in the MNBA and WNBA, using those numbers to decipher
what a reasonable gap between the salaries might be. The
most significant factor she looked at in each league's revenue
is viewership, which is what makes big networks pay big
bucks to sell ads during games. From Golden's article quote,
the average WNBA game recently drew about seventy seven percent
(39:17):
of the eyeballs for the average NBA game. The gap
in total eyeballs per player is much larger because the
NBA has more games per season and longer games. Taking
into account all of these differences shows that the WNBA
attracts about thirty percent, or roughly one third as many
eyeballs per player as the NBA does. This ratio is
a reasonable estimate of the actual relationship between WNBA and
(39:41):
NBA broadcast revenue per player, and by extension, what WNBA
players should receive in salary relative to NBA players end quote.
Another important factor in the dollars and cents is attendance.
So here's what Golden had to say about how butts
in seats should affect money in pockets. Quote. In twenty
twenty four, for example, the WNBA's total attendance was about
(40:02):
one tenth as large as the NBA's attendance. Adjusting for
the fewer teams in the WNBA shows that it attracts
about one quarter of the attendants per player in the NBA.
All these numbers suggest that the average WNBA salary should
be roughly one quarter to one third of the average
NBA salary to achieve pay equity end quote. We've all
(40:22):
known that WNBA players were not making enough of a
percentage of revenue when compared to their MNBA counterparts, but
Golden has laid it out with facts and data. It
should be one quarter to one third, not one eightieth
what the guys are making.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Link to Golden's essay at our show notes so you
can read it for yourself. Her concluding paragraph really hammers
the point home she wrote. Quote, the world of women's
professional basketball is ripe for an economic update that better
reflects its influence and irresistibility, but it has not happened.
Yet the people who run the NBA and WNBA are
instead badly underpaying the women who enter tain and thrill
(41:00):
us with their feats of athleticism. End quote. Yet again, y'all,
I'm screaming, what the fact? This what the fact? Brought
to you by Elf Beauty. And here's another fact. When
a company reflects the community it serves, it makes elf
in sense, especially when it starts in the highest seats
of decision making. ELF Beauty, who has delivered twenty five
(41:22):
consecutive quarters of net sales growth and market share gains,
is one of only five publicly traded companies in the
US with a board of directors that is sixty seven
percent women and forty four percent diverse. It is the
only cosmetics brand to grow market share every single quarter
for the past twenty five quarters. Elf is for every eye,
lip and face, and when you are for the every
(41:44):
everyone wins. Learn more about what Elf Beauty is doing
to help diverse by corporate boards visit changethboardgame dot com.
We always love that your listing slices, but we want
you to get in the game every day too, So
here's our good game play of the day pre order
Howard's book, we'll link to a site where you can
snag your copy. In our show notes and we always
love to hear from you, so hit us up on
(42:05):
email good game at wondermedianetwork dot com or leave us
a voicemail at eight seven two two o four fifty
seventy and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review. It's easy.
Watch the ultra runner who stopped to breastfeed three times
and still one, rating ten out of ten. What Can't
Women Do? Review? At the recent Ultratrail Snowdonia one hundred
(42:27):
kilometer race in northern Wales, forty two year old runner
and new mom Stephanie Case paused at three different times
during the race to breastfeed her six month old daughter,
and not only still finished, she placed first among female competitors.
That's sixty two plus miles of running six months after
baby and balancing both roles at once with grace. Case
(42:47):
told NPR of the photos of her mid race that
went viral, they show quote an athlete being a mom
at the same time, and those things not actually competing
with one another. We don't have to lose ourselves in
becoming a mom, and we can keep setting big goals
for ourselves end quote. The course has thirteen hundred and
twenty five feet of elevation gain, with runners traversing the
tallest mountain in Wales and traveling rough and tough terrain.
(43:11):
Case stopped at checkpoints at twenty fifty and eighty kilometers
to nurse her daughter, Pepper, and then jump right back
into the race and the story somehow gets better. Case
ran while on parental leave from her job working for
the United Nations as a human rights lawyer per NPR quote.
Running long distances helps Case cope with the stress of
working in a humanitarian crisis end quote. Case's experiences inspired
(43:35):
her to found Free to Run, a nonprofit that empowers
girls and young women in conflict areas through running and
other outdoor activities. So if you want to show love
to a woman holding it down for moms, for women
over forty and human rights advocates, go check it out
free toorun dot org and you can read the whole
NPR article. We'll link to it in our show notes.
(43:55):
Now it's your turn, rate and review, y'all. Thanks for listening.
See you next week. Good game, Howard, good game, Stephanie Case.
You tech Nik from writing for hours and hours and
hours on Deadline. I'm telling y'all write a book for yourself.
You'll see. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
(44:18):
You could find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rudder, Brittany Martinez, Grace Lynch, and
Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones and I'm
(44:39):
your host Sarah Spain
Host
Sarah Spain
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