NCAA women's final draws record viewership

But it's the "afters," including Jill Biden's remarks, that draw the most attention

On Saturday, LSU defeated Iowa to win the NCAA women’s basketball crown. The average viewership for the title game was 9.9 million, about double last year’s number. Peak viewership was 12. 6 million. Such was the drawing power of Iowa star Caitlin Clark.

The game didn’t live up to the hype. On the plus side, Clark excelled once again, scoring 30 points on 8-19 shooting from three-point territory. And LSU played a game worthy of champions, converting on 54 percent of its shots, dominating the boards, and playing rugged defense.

On the minus side, the game was rarely close (which probably depressed the average viewership numbers). And the refereeing, by an all female crew, was atrocious (and constantly criticized by the female color commentator).

There’s not much else to say about the game itself, but plenty has been said about what happened after the outcome was decided. Most of the commentary has focused on LSU star Angel Reese’s taunting of Clark.

Here’s how Candace Buckner of the Washington Post describes it:

With her team’s title in its grasp, Reese stared directly at Clark and waved her hand in front of her face — the “you can’t see me” gesture popularized by wrestler John Cena [and used by Clark]. Then, as the seconds ticked away to the celebration, Reese turned full heel. She briefly tracked her foe around the court and pointed at her ring finger — because hers, and not Clark’s, will soon be adorned with a championship bauble.

I’ve watched enough contemporary sports to understand that there’s usually more to a “taunting” story than meets the eye. In this case, Clark is known to be a trash talker who can be less than respectful of her opponents during a game.

However, from what I’ve seen, the antics Clark sometimes directs at opponents cease once the contest is decided. On Friday night, her post-game comments showed great respect for the South Carolina team Iowa had just vanquished.

This is consistent with modern sports etiquette. The days of displaying good sportsmanship during a game are long gone. But once a game has been decided, good sportsmanship almost always returns.

So Reese’s taunting went beyond Clark’s and beyond the norm in both men’s and women’s sports.

But so what? Reese is 20 years-old. Maybe she was caught up in the moment; maybe she wanted to draw attention to herself and increase the value of her image and likeness. (I think it probably was the latter because after “the moment” had passed, Reese doubled down on “look at me” while playing the race card to the hilt.)

Either way, her behavior was immature and classless, but barely worthy of notice.

And it might not have attracted much comment except for the fact that Reese is black and Clark is white. Some among the leftist commentariat claimed that criticism of Reese exemplifies a race-based double standard because Clark also talks trash. But, as discussed above, there was no double standard because Reese, in the words of Buckner who is black, “went out of her way to follow Clark and push[ed] the limits of acceptable trash talk and taunting.”

Nonetheless, it’s plausible to suspect that some of Reese’s critics, who included Keith Olbermann, wouldn’t have come down so hard on the LSU star if she was white or Clark was black.

Enough about race. Let’s turn to Jill Biden who was at the game. Afterwards, she invited the victors to the White House, which is a standard move. Then, she added that she’d like the Iowa team to come too.

This is not standard. Whatever the sport and whatever the gender, losing teams don’t get invited to the White House.

Angel Reese, by now a celebrity of sorts, was not amused by Jill Biden’s outreach to the losers. She took to Twitter to call the idea “A JOKE,” adding three laughing emoji.

Reese was right. Indeed, the White House was forced to walk back Jill Biden’s comment. Jill’s press secretary tweeted that her boss’ comments “were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.”

Having embraced the view that the Reese-Clark controversy is about race, I wonder whether liberals will suggest that Jill Biden’s unprecedented idea of inviting Iowa (a nearly all-white team) to the White House was a form of overt racism, or at least “unconscious bias.”

I doubt many will. Nor should they. The race card has already been overplayed in this affair.