With the sports world in an uproar over Caitlin Clark's omission from the USA women's basketball team at this summer's Olympics, Mike Valenti wants to know: "Why am I supposed to care?"
"Why am I supposed to have this huge opinion about Caitlin Clark in the Olympics? I don’t care. DGAF. At all. Someone help me, as a middle-aged man who loves sports but cannot watch the WNBA ... it’s a terrible product, from a TV standpoint. I watch a game above the rim in the NBA. That is the game I am conditioned to watch and enjoy and love. It is not that WNBA players are not skilled; they’re incredibly skilled. It’s not fun to watch ... I want to know why I’m supposed to care.
"I want to why the media is jamming this down my throat and my eyeballs and my ears all at the same time. To the point where now I’m supposed to get on the radio today and have this huge take: Oh my god, Caitlin’s not on the Olympic team."
Valenti says the coverage of the story is "all narrative: Caitlin Clark represents these things that really don’t have much to do with sports, and I’m not interested." And he thinks "there's a lot of us" who feel the same way:
"I can’t turn anywhere without hearing about the WNBA and the problem is, I can’t find anyone who watches it. I can’t find anyone who cares. That doesn’t mean people don’t care. Maybe it just means it’s my particular circle. But I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone who watches it, I don’t know anyone interested in it, and I’m just at a loss for the amount of coverage that is being heaped upon it, when -- flow chart -- I can’t find anyone watching it."
Listen to Valenti's full take in the audio player above.