Bob Costas believes race plays a major issue in Caitlin Clark’s foul getting more attention than the foul that was committed on Angel Reese a week earlier.
For many sports talk shows on Monday, the main topic was Chicago Sky guard’s hard foul on Clark over the weekend. The WNBA eventually gave her a flagrant foul for the act, and the incident has led to conversations about race and jealousy throughout the sports world.
In just a handful of days, that foul has already been discussed much more than the foul on Reese. During a game against the Connecticut Sun, Reese was pulled by the neck by Sun forward Alyssa Thomas and thrown to the ground. Thomas was given a Flagrant Foul Penalty 2, resulting in a automatic ejection.
Alyssa Thomas got ejected after throwing Angel Reese on the ground 😱 pic.twitter.com/oPork7hZyp
— WNBA Got Game (@wnbagotgame) May 26, 2024
On Monday’s episode of NewsNight, Costas argued that Reese’s foul wasn’t given as much attention because it was between two Black women as opposed to a White woman and a Black woman.
“The reason why that doesn’t spark as much conversation isn’t just that Caitlin Clark is a bigger star than Alyssa Thomas,” he said. “It’s because it’s a Black-on-Black incident and you don’t have that dynamic that people can comment on, yes, but also exaggerate and make the entire story sometimes.”
Former ESPN anchor Cari Champion agreed.
“No one cared about the WNBA when women of a certain color were beating up and bruising each other,” Champion said, “because it’s been happening since the league’s inception. We have this star, this person that people love. They wanna protect her.”
Watch above via CNN
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