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       lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
       
       
       ARTICLE VIEW: 
       
       /
       
       Sports columnist apologizes for ‘oafish’ comments directed at
       Caitlin Clark. The controversy isn’t over
       
       By Michael Nam, CNN
       
       Updated: 
       
       3:23 PM EDT, Thu April 18, 2024
       
       Source: CNN
       
       A male columnist has apologized for a cringeworthy moment during former
       University of Iowa superstar and college basketball’s highest scorer
       Caitlin Clark’s first news conference as an Indiana Fever player.
       
       The Wednesday exchange went viral on social media, and critics said it
       underscored the difficulties many female athletes have in gaining
       respect and equal treatment from sports journalists, who are frequently
       male.
       
       The discussion began with Gregg Doyel, a columnist for The Indianapolis
       Star newspaper’s IndyStar website, making a heart with his hands to
       Clark, a gesture Clark often used during her college basketball career.
       
       Clark responded, “You like that?” Doyel replied, “I like that
       you’re here,” and Clark explained, “Yeah, I do that at my family
       after every game.” Then Doyel added, “Start doing it to me and
       we’ll get along just fine.”
       
       Doyel apologized later that same day.
       
       “Today in my uniquely oafish way, while welcoming @CaitlinClark22 to
       Indy, I formed my hands into her signature [heart hands emoji],” he
       wrote in shortly after the incident. “My comment afterward was clumsy
       and awkward. I sincerely apologize.”
       
       , he added: “Caitlin Clark, I’m so sorry. Today I was part of the
       problem,” the title of his apology column that published Wednesday.
       
       Even though Doyel posted his apologies to the social media platform,
       and in , for the sexist remarks he made to the basketball phenom, the
       discussion he provoked about misogyny in sports hasn’t come to a
       close.
       
       Doyel’s back and forth with Clark was almost universally panned
       online. Media figures from of The Athletic and NBC to (whose own
       Barstool Sports has been accused of upholding a sexist culture) slammed
       Doyel after the clip spread across the internet.
       
       Meanwhile, the Indy Star writer went so far as to use the stages of
       grief to illustrate how he arrived at his moment of clarity.
       
       “After going through denial, and then anger — I’m on the wrong
       side of this? Me??? — I now realize what I said and how I said it was
       wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean it was just wrong,” he wrote in his
       column. “Caitlin Clark, I’m so sorry.”
       
       But users on X accused him of using the incident as a way to produce
       content and of missing the point of the offending behavior.
       
       The controversy also comes as conversations about heat up and as the
       reaches unprecedented heights.
       
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