![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/caitlin_fouled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019ve been watching sports for a pretty long time.\u00a0 My fandoms ebb and flow, and at various times it\u2019s safe to say that it fluctuates on what sport I am favoriting the most, but when it comes down to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life watching sports.\u00a0 Baseball, basketball, football and even a little bit of soccer and hockey, I\u2019ve watched enough sports in my life to generally know what I\u2019m talking about, as well as to have seen some things, that only other sports fans of an extended duration really know what I\u2019m talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n If there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s been pretty consistent throughout the history of sports, is that whenever a hotshot player arrives at a new level of competition, there\u2019s usually a degree of testing that they go through and endure, be it from their opponents, peers, rivals and even their own teammates, since peers, rivals and teammates aren\u2019t necessarily mutually exclusive.<\/span><\/p>\n When Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter were drafted and reported to duty in their early years, all of them went through a period of time where they were physically and mentally tested by everyone.\u00a0 In practices, scrimmages or spring trainings, their presence was a threat to veterans on their own teams, and ain\u2019t nobody want to lose their job to any young guns whose ears are still wet from the showers.<\/span><\/p>\n Against opponents, they were bullied, fouled, tackled, cheap shot and went to verbal warfare from their opponents, who wanted to see if they could exert some power of intimidation or get inside their heads and throw them off their games.<\/span><\/p>\n And they would go through these types of rituals and experiences numerous times throughout their early years, until they earned the general respect of those around them, to which the behaviors would taper off mostly, unless they were weak-willed and demonstrated that they could be rattled.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, everything that Caitlin Clark has been going through since the start of the WNBA season, with the hard fouls, the shit talking, the snipes from opponents in the media; this is not racism, this is not jealousy, this is not any form of discrimination.\u00a0 This is normal, this is ordinary, this is nothing that professional athletes in any sport of any gender have not had to endure themselves at early parts of their careers.<\/span><\/p>\n But let\u2019s not tell that to the legions of media and overnight women\u2019s basketball fans who have never been sports fans in their lives until Caitlin Clark had ignited their imaginations, and are up in arms over the supposed rough treatment that she\u2019s getting in the WNBA.\u00a0 It\u2019s partially their fault that they\u2019re so blind to it, because it really hasn\u2019t been since Caitlin Clark that this many people have been interested in the WNBA at all, and for everyone who is now claiming to be fans of women\u2019s hoops, where they fuck were they when Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo were launching the entire league, and when Britney Griner and Sabrina Ionescu were leading the quiet charge of the current generation?<\/span><\/p>\n Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly the most important player the league has come across in a long time, and this generalization is not lost on all the other girls in the league who have had to deal with the ridicule and general disrespect people have had for the WNBA in all the years prior to the arrival of Clark.\u00a0 It\u2019s natural for them to want to welcome the rookie with some tough love, and size up the nuclear hot shot who\u2019s being unofficially hailed as the flagbearer for the entire gender\u2019s sport, because if she demonstrates any weaknesses, then perhaps she\u2019s not the right person for the job.<\/span><\/p>\n The hard fouls and the criticism have nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with any general discrimination.\u00a0 There may be some jealousy involved, but I can\u2019t blame anyone for being jealous at least a little bit, considering the league has been around for over 20 years, and it wasn\u2019t until Caitlin Clark that people have been taking notice.<\/span><\/p>\n And if Caitlin Clark endures the season with a modicum of grace, respect, and an attitude of shut up and play ball, she\u2019s going to be just fine, and the rest of the league will take their foot off the gas at trying to break her for the sake of breaking her, and entrust her with the hope that she can help bring growth and positive change to the league and sport as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n And as for all the normies, welcome to sports.\u00a0 This is nothing out of the ordinary.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019ve been watching sports for a pretty long time.\u00a0 My fandoms ebb and flow, and at various times it\u2019s safe to say that it fluctuates on what sport I am favoriting the most, but when it comes down to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my … Continue reading It\u2019s fun watching all the non-sport fan normies get up in arms over Caitlin Clark<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,45,83,89,58,49],"class_list":["post-50005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-observations","tag-racism","tag-sports","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50007,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50005\/revisions\/50007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}