Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the issues of sports. I am Emac Evan Makofsky and joined by the Rude dog, Rudy Reyes. Baseball season is here. Springtime is in full effect. The NFL draft is a coming. The NCAA tournament has just passed, and that's where I want to start here. And that is we saw UConn win the men's the night after Caitlin Clark in Iowa lost to an undefeated South Carolina team for the women's championship. And we're not going to on this podcast, you've heard the stats, you've heard whatever.
A big debate. The women had a much better tv rating than the men. It's the first time ever they had 18 and change million, where the men had 14 and change million viewers tuning in to the final game. And that, no question, is the Caitlin Clark effect. But this is now snowballed as she was the first pick in the WNBA draft, and now the Indiana Fever have signed her, and she's getting a low WNBA salary, like a lot of the picks, which comes out to, I believe, 70 something thousand dollars a year, whereas Web Yama last year for the San Antonio spurs got $12 million. So women's women are coming. And this is a good thing for the world, for everything. I'm not. I'm not against it at all. I'm all for equality. But let me now make this statement, okay? And women's basketball may be catching men's basketball. I don't think it's going to catch it, per se, but it's definitely gaining steam. And stars help that somebody like Caitlin Clark. But what's going on now is since those salaries came out, and Caitlin Clark is the outlier because she got a $20 million deal from Nike, she supposedly has another $3 million elsewhere in endorsements. So she's not going poor with her salary. But other players don't make close to what the NBA players make. I have the breakdowns here. The average, you know, I said, no, no numbers, but average. This is 2022. Athlete compensation by gender and basketball. NBA versus WNBA. Men make $10 million. About women make $113,000. Golf, men make a million dollars.
Women make 346. It goes. It's that way in most sports, even though the only real, though, women's sport, and that's closer is tennis, where it's got men in 1.589 and women at 1.039. Okay.
Women don't make as much money as men. It has nothing to do, in my mind, with sexism or let me speak firsthand, okay? Just like hockey, I don't like hockey as much as I like basketball, okay. It doesn't mean I don't respect the game. Doesn't mean I don't respect how hard they play, how. How tough they are to do that on skates. It just doesn't entertain me as much as a fan. So take that analogy now to men's sports versus women's sports and the only real women's sport, although I did catch myself watching the NCAA women's final. So maybe I am turning a corner, and I don't have a daughter, but the only real women's sport that I like equal, maybe even better than men's sports, is women's tennis. I don't like women's basketball. To me, I like the, you know, the hard dunks. I like. I just like.
And if you really want to drill this down, it's not sexism.
And this could be changing women's sports. The WNBA doesn't generate the revenue that the NBA generates. It's just a business deal. And more people are into men's sports if this changes, okay, but that's why men get paid more. Significantly more. There's higher revenues for the leagues that they play for, and their teams make more money than women's sports.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to kind of go back a little bit, because men brought in last year $10 billion. That's with a b, not an m billion dollars. So what that means is that there's a greater share of that pie that's being distributed between the NBA franchises, and, in turn, all the front office. You think of all the trainers, the coaches, and then it gets trickled down into the players. Not to suggest the players get the last bit of what's on the plate. More porridge, please. This is really about the money that they are gaining because of the revenue sharing and the CBA associated with what they agreed to ultimately be paid for. Now, you have the CBA and all different types of sports. You have it in the NFL, you have in the WNBA. And all these group, you know, sports have these collective bargaining agreements, and you're. And you're right. I believe it's turning the tort, turning that. That specific corner has a lot to do with Caitlin Clark. It has a lot to do with even. I found myself very interested in watching WNBA. I found myself very interested in the women's basketball game. I also a fan of tennis, but I have turned that corner already. Matter of fact, I was steaming the day that I found out without obviously gathering all the facts. And, of course, I had to show in regards to that with Jeff Barnes. But it's really about the. It has nothing to do with male and females, got nothing to do with transgender. It's got nothing to do with any other component other than the money and the revenue and the collective bargaining agreement associated with all of that. And that's where we're at right now. Caitlin Clark is certainly going to turn everybody's heads. Her jersey sold out within an hour of her being drafted. She's getting even more endorsement deals. State Farm is endorsing without actually endorsing. They endorse greatness. Well, Caitlin Clark is certainly the associate of Howard. Greatness of all across the board. Now, oddly enough, when you look at the NBA, I think the NBA is a little. It's becoming a little bit watered down, at least from a defensive standpoint. And I mean that this is all about offense, not really about defense. Now, last night, the very last game that I watched, was a New Orleans Pelicans basically beating the Indiana Pacers. And it wasn't really even close. I mean, you. You found the. Excuse me. It wasn't the Pelicans and Pacers. It was the Pelicans at somebody else's house. But the Pelicans won. And oddly enough, it was about home teams, up until last night's game against the Pelicans, where I thought to myself, man, this is crazy. That was all about defense. But that was only one game. One game, and it's a playoff game. It's a playoff structure, playoff mentality. Playoff attitude and offense. Yeah, it's there. But women in the WNBA play massive amounts of defense. We seen a low score initially between the South Carolina Iowa game, and we seen that Kayla Clark was not getting the kind of shots that she's accustomed to making because they were doubling her whenever she would come into the perimeter play. And I think Caitlin, overall, recognized the game plan.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: She still had a stellar career, regardless of how you look at it. Even in that championship game, she hit, I think, over 32 points in that game. And the bottom line to all this is, without boring, all the minutiae of the. Of the numbers associated with all of that. Kayla Clark will pull in more viewers to the WNBA this coming season, and then any other female has ever done exiting college into the WNBA or any other.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: I support that. That is not what. I support that. I support the shift. I support what's going on. But we're talking about why we are where we are, okay? Why men's sports is, like you just said, collective bargaining agreements. Obviously, there's more tickets sold, bigger tv contracts, more of a desire for men's sports. If you want to say that we've been holding women, I mean, we can go down that rabbit hole. And I really don't want to get into college because that's a whole other, with the transfer portal. I want to try and stay with professional sports here, but I don't think at this point that it's just what I was saying at the top about, I only like women's tennis. I'm just drawn to it. I can't explain it. Why do some people like, you know, going antiquing and some people don't? Why do some people like NFL football and other people don't? It's not that, you know, the men play a faster game. I had a friend 20 years ago who liked women's basketball, make a case to me that they're more fundamentally sound women, that they have crisper passes and that they, because they don't necessarily have the, you know, of course they started dunking and, you know, the Britney Griners of the world and whatnot, but they don't. They have to focus more on the, I still like men's basketball better than women's basketball any day of the week. I don't know what to say. I'm all for what Caitlin Clark's doing, and I was more intrigued during the women's final than I was during the men's, maybe because it was more competitive, but even though South Carolina took them in the second half, but I found myself watching it. I'm saying I'm part of this little wave going to women's sports, but I don't know if feminist is the right word and you don't want to offend, but the people in the media, I've seen, Megyn Kelly, I've seen going up in arms about the different disparity between women's salaries and men's salaries.
There's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. Women don't generate the money to pay those salaries.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Well, not yet. Don't forget, CBA will be expiring at the end of this upcoming season so that that tide can turn, that tide can actually change and move in the direction that will benefit women's salaries. Moving forward from a rookie contract now, is Caitlin Clark crying and whining about $76,000 being capped as a rookie player in the WNBA? No. What she's saying is, is that moving forward, she wants to be the catalyst to help renegotiate. She would.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: She could be. We don't know her. She could be crying if she didn't have, I'm not saying publicly crying, but she could be crying if she didn't have all these, if she wasn't Caitlin Clark. If you're, if you're the, you know, 8th woman on a WNBA roster, you're probably making whatever, $70,000 and you don't have endorsements, and it's still hard. I forgot there's 100 and something players that make it to the, it's still very hard to make it to the WNBA. I'm not.
I just think it all starts with these sports have to become more popular. And a lot of times, I mean, if you really want to get into, like, you know, evolution and genetics, mental sometimes can play a rougher health, more physical sport, or at least, you know, because they had their, they're built. This is not news, trust me. I don't want to get in a fight with Serena Williams, but I would not want to. There are women that would kick my ass. But in general, men are stronger. When you saw, you know, Bobby Riggs versus Billie Jean King, that was, you know, what, 50 years ago. But that still, they say, probably holds true today, that the hundredth ranked men's tennis player can beat the number one woman's tennis player. And it just has to do with serving speed and just, just physical gifts. So unless you're going to start changing that, I don't think it has to be like a competition. I think people should be, which they are happy because, yes, the needle's been moved by Caitlin Clark. So to me, that's the accomplishment, screaming and whining, why it's not equal pay.
It makes you sound stupid.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Well, here's bottom line. But before making Kelly and anyone else who has never played it down in any football league or ever touched a hardwood court and played against some of the best in college or in the WNBA in general, unless you educate yourself, you have no room to stand on. And as I stated prior to that was kind of me from the onset. And then I started investigating in it instead of allowing my emotions to lead the way. Just like Caitlin Clark could have whined to the media and say, well, why me? Poor me, why didn't I get all that money? Well, she did it. She took the higher road. She recognized and educated herself throughout the totality of a WNBA career. From a rookie position all the way through the end of their career, they're really not getting paid a whole lot. And my argument initially during my show segment was talking about how the CBA was not set up by the. By its predecessors in such a way that allows for women to have a better shot by getting paid more money. Now, was it a failure on their part? We'll really never know because we weren't there, and we don't vote on it because we don't play the WNBA. I don't know anybody that plays in the WNBA, but I know this, that that corner will be turned, and when it does, it will change it dynamically. I can see. And even still, as minimized as people are trying to make it, this could end up leading to $100,000, potentially for women in a rookie contract. Yeah, it should case, then they have really no argument because they'll still scream.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Men make, you know, x millions dollars, and we make 200 grand instead of.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: NBA hasn't been around nowhere near as long as.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: It's all about the maturity process. What does that look like? What part is that process going to appeal to those viewers?
[00:14:08] Speaker A: I want the equal rights people to go away. It's not even an equal right. It's not an equal right. Nobody is holding them down. There are different companies that pay differently.
There are two different entities, the WNBA and the NBA, and they have different revenues that they generate. Nobody. What I'm trying to say is, it's a great thing. I want women to get paid more. I'd like that gap to close. I think it would be great. But I don't think the gap is because men are trying to hold women down. That's what I'm saying. So there are people on feminist perches right now that are, Caitlin Clark, this. She outranked, you know, she. She did. She outranked the men, blah, blah. Okay, so let's. We're going to open up things and look at things, but, you know, they're not looking at the overall, you know, amount of revenue that men have grossed in professional athletics versus women.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: That's correct. And you know what's even more interesting? When you look at the NFL and the fact that women's flag football is becoming a thing, uh, again, that is going to be the next, you know, they're going to look at this draft, and you're going to rear view mirror this in about three years and say, you know what? This is what Caitlin did for our sport. This is what Caitlin did for all kinds of other sports. Not that she intentionally or purposefully said, you know what? This is exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to put the emphasis on other sports. No, by defacto because she's a part of that process, will help kind of correlate bigger paydays, larger audiences, more awareness for the female sport and for those that are, again, going back to what I said earlier, if you're not educated and you're a feminist or you're not educated and you're a neo Nazi or whatever the case might be, without educating yourself, you have no leg to stand on, and there is no argument to be had on any subject, sports or otherwise. For those that are watching, for those that are listening, this is Rudy Reyes, joined by Emac Evan Makoski on the issues of sports. I'm here to say this, that when it's all said and done, changes will be felt, changes will be seen, changes will be noted. And for those that are not educating themselves in order to see the propensity of what that change looks like for future players, for future leagues that involve women and men, then you're missing the boat.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: I'll tell you this just before we get out of here, pseudo switching gears, it starts in two weeks or a little over two weeks. The WNBA, she better be a star or else that's gonna. If she's not, I mean, listen, I haven't watched her play a ton, and I'm not a female talent, I'm not a male talent evaluator, but she better.
I mean, I don't know what her expectations are, and she can't worry about them. She's got to go out and play. I assume she's got the talent to do this or whatever, but if she's not at least a very good player in the WNBA, it shouldn't hurt the pay gap or the argument we're talking about. But I think that that's the last component here, is she needs to really, which she should. Usually, players are, you know, good at the next level, but I'd be lying to say, you know, like, you go back to the South Carolina Dawn Staley, Tameka catchings. I don't, you know, Rebecca Lobo. I mean, I remember these players. I can't tell you. Lisa Leslie.
You know, I still can. Look, I can name. Well, yeah, Candace Parker. She played for Houston, I think. I want to say Cheryl swooped. Yes, in. Cheryl swoops was another one. So, I mean, I'm just saying she needs to step up, but what's going on is a good thing, I don't think. And we'll wrap things up here. I don't think that people need to bang on the. It's a man's world and blah, blah, blah. We know sports has been that way. I don't also think, sure, Michael Jordan's gone. I'm not sure that the WNBA is going to pass the NBA in popularity, but college basketball did it. You never know. Maybe that's something that could happen. If, I mean, if Caitlin Clark is really a superstar. I don't, I don't know. Or she's doing.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: I think she is. There, there are, there's no player, at least historically, from my understanding, where women have downplayed the expectations that other people had set for them. Now, with that being said, why would you, why would you, why would you, why would you think about playing down your expectations that other people have for you? Play your expectations. Play your game. Do you? And when you don't, do you, others will creep into your head, and that is a distraction and that prevents people from greatness. Michael Jordan said that, speaking of one of the greatest players of all time, and any if not that matter, without, forget just being basketball, if he was just the best sports athlete ever of all time. Of course, all credit due to Muhammad Ali and everybody else. I got you, Tom Brady and such. But it's not about the shots you take. It's about the shots you make, and those are the ones that counts. And I think Caitlin Clark is certainly going to be one of those that will make it count every single time she's on the court.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Well, the shot or final shot or point that I want to make is root for Caitlin Clark because this is an amazing story. She's likable. This is good. Women's sports is on the up. Don't sit there and poo poo. Women not making. This is not a, I don't see it as an equality issue. I see more as like a money and a popularity issue. I think that the end, the WNBA here has, like you said, I think people are going to come to it. So there's a chance for Rudy rude dog Reyes. I am Emac. Evan Mikovsky. Thanks for the quick hitter listening to the issues of sports, and we will see you on the next episode.
