This week, a columnist for The New York Times’ The Athletic called for the Indiana Fever to part ways with Sophie Cunningham.
“She’s too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark,” Candace Buckner wrote in the headline.
“[I]f the Fever ever want to go back to being a basketball team again and follow the lead of rivals openly clashing with the forces trying to hijack their league, then Cunningham has to go,” she added.
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The column portrays Cunningham as an outspoken agitator whose growing profile has become a distraction for the Fever. As evidence, Buckner cited comments Cunningham made earlier this year in an ESPN article about trans athletes competing against girls.
For background, Cunningham said she “loves” all communities but believes it is important to “protect young girls” and that they “shouldn’t have to go against biological men” in sports. WNBA players and members of the media subsequently framed those comments as transphobic.
We emphasize that particular comment because, beyond it, Cunningham has hardly been the political lightning rod her detractors depict her as.
Most of Cunningham’s public persona consists of playing basketball, dancing on TikTok, and trying on outfits. One could argue that her personality and attractive appearance have contributed to her supposed polarizing status. As Sydney Sweeney could attest, a certain corner of the media and social media seems uniquely irritated by attractive blonde women who refuse to apologize for it.
The second-most controversial thing Cunningham has said recently was telling A’ja Wilson to “grow up” after Wilson charged toward a courtside fan who pointed at her during a playoff game. Teammates had to restrain Wilson before arena security intervened.
And yet, The New York Times’ sports vertical has seen enough. It’s time for the Fever to move on, the reporter declared.
One might find The Athletic’s position more persuasive if it were consistent. But it’s not. It never has been.
Consider soccer player Megan Rapinoe.
Unlike Cunningham, Rapinoe spent years making politics central to her public identity. She knelt during the national anthem and later said she would probably never sing it again. She claimed during the 2019 World Cup that she was “not going to the f—ing White House” if President Donald Trump invited the team. She publicly supported Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. She described Trump as “sexist,” “misogynistic,” “small-minded,” “racist,” and “not a good person.”
Rapinoe also condemned the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade as “sad and cruel,” became a prominent supporter of Black Lives Matter, repeatedly advocated for transgender women to compete in women’s sports, and once dismissed concerns about competitive fairness as “total bullshit.”
More recently, she called for traditional WNBA media to make room for people who “understand queer culture.”
After tearing her Achilles in the final match of her career, Rapinoe said afterward that the injury was “proof that there isn’t” a God.
Whatever one thinks of those positions, no reasonable person could describe Rapinoe as reluctant to inject politics, religion, and contentious social issues into sports.
Yet the sports media never mounted a campaign for Rapinoe’s teams to part ways with her because she was too “turbulent.” Her activism was not treated as an impediment to her team getting “back to being a soccer team.”
Quite the opposite.
Rapinoe became one of the most celebrated athletes in American sports media, in no small part because of her willingness to speak about politics – the right side of politics, that is. Her activism was incorporated into her public brand and routinely presented as evidence of courage and leadership.
That is the double standard.
The sports media rarely treats athletes who espouse liberal or progressive political views as problematic, even when those views are provocative, divisive, or factually incorrect. The latter is quite common.
Rapinoe is not the only example. LeBron James has spent years commenting on presidential politics, policing, and race all in favor of Democratic positions. Colin Kaepernick turned an anthem protest into the defining feature of his public identity. Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart and Natasha Cloud have routinely spoken about progressive political causes. Steve Kerr has addressed topics ranging from gun control to presidential politics and supported Kamala Harris for president on stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2024.
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We can’t find a single article from The Athletic, New York Times, ESPN, The Ringer, Washington Post, or CBS Sports critical of any of those statements.
Meanwhile, the same reporters and commentators treat Cunningham saying that girls deserve protected athletic categories, Harrison Butker promoting traditional marriage, or Jaxson Dart introducing Trump on stage as grounds for condemnation or even action from their teams and business partners.
See, the perspectives of many sports writers are shaped by the bubble in which they operate. In their world — virtual newsrooms, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram and sports blogs — saying that men and women possess meaningful biological differences can qualify as an outrageous offense. Outside that bubble, the position is decidedly mainstream. National polling consistently shows that between 75-80% of voting Americans oppose biological males competing in women’s sports.
The disconnect between the sports media and the average American is stark
To one group, Sophie Cunningham is a combustible firebrand and Megan Rapinoe is a courageous activist. To the other, Cunningham is expressing a common-sense position shared by most of the country, while Rapinoe is a divisive political figure.
Unfortunately, the people with the largest megaphones in sports media overwhelmingly represent the smaller of those two groups.
Buckner knew her column about Sophie Cunningham would score her the culture war points she seeks. However, its premise also illustrates the very ideological hypocrisy that has alienated much of the public from the press.
She finds Cunningham “turbulent.” The Fever, its fans, and most of America do not.
