Invoking a wounded innocence that their desire for sports to be simple, just like they used to be, conservatives for a decade and a half have dreaded the word “politics”. Now they cannot get enough.Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has spent 40 years in the National Football League unknown except for his defensive schemes, but last week opened his press remarks mocking the congressional testimony of Dr Anthony Fauci, jokingly invoking the Fifth Amendment before taking questions. Apropos of nothing, President Trump publicly surmised that LeBron James might be a racist. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is now in the act, accepting the role as the right’s anti-Black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador, the role originally intended for Caitlin Clark.If Clark has lacked the courage and dexterity to say anything beyond the milky and ambiguous, Sophie Cunningham does not suffer from such internal conflicts. Largely anonymous politically or otherwise during her eight-year career, Cunningham – she of the viral finger-point which has been adopted as a symbol of the white animosity toward the WNBA culture – is in her moment. Her comments in a lengthy 21 July ESPN profile stating her opposition to transgender athletes has earned her hero status of the specious “Protect Our Girls” movement, even though you’d need a microscope to find any critical mass of transgender women participating in sports at any level.Cunningham plays role of the blithe and bubbly iconoclast, oblivious to the world around as she unapologetically speaks her truths, but she is every bit as political as Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe, or her locked-armed, T-shirt wearing colleagues that defined the WNBA when she first entered the league in 2019. Cunningham forged a tough, take-no-prisoners-without-taking-herself-too-seriously persona, but was too meek to address the toxic roots of her newfound fame.Sophie Cunningham (right) and Caitlin Clark have become the WNBA’s most talked-about teammates for better or worse. Photograph: Jess Rapfogel/Getty ImagesSo too, was ESPN, which waited nearly 75 paragraphs just to sidestep the foundation of Cunningham’s rise: she is profiting from cultural fractures that may be good for her but are tearing her league apart:
Sophie Cunningham isn’t rejecting politics. She’s cashing in on them
Sophie Cunningham’s rise says less about basketball than the incentives of a sports culture where outrage, identity politics and attention have become lucrative commodities
1,344 words~6 min read
