Former ESPN anchor Cari Champion is facing sharp backlash this week after launching a sweeping critique of Caitlin Clark’s fan base, accusing the Indiana Fever star’s supporters of racism and claiming the WNBA is “looking the other way” to protect its business interests.
Champion, who co-hosts the “Flagrant and Funny” podcast with Jemele Hill, made the remarks during an appearance on “The Bakari Sellers Show,” where she described Clark’s followers as “entitled” and “extremely nasty” while arguing the league has mishandled its biggest star.
“The WNBA is trying to balance this entitled fanbase,” Champion said. “I think they’re mishandling Caitlin in a time that is so polarizing… You’re coddling her and you’re ignoring this extremely nasty base” .
Champion framed Clark as “an avatar for middle America — white people who want to see white women doing well and playing in a sport that is traditionally Black” . She accused the league of prioritizing the revenue Clark’s popularity generates over accountability.
“They look the other way when this fan base behaves like MAGA,” Champion said. “They look the other way when this fan base is wholly inappropriate to other players who are just doing their jobs” .
On a separate podcast appearance with Hill, Champion described the vitriol she claims to have personally received.
“I’ve never been called so many n-words, and see you next Tuesdays and jealous,” she said. “Some of her fans are so unhinged” .
The response was swift and severe. Critics accused Champion of painting millions of Clark supporters with a broad brush, relying on anecdotal evidence, and inflating online troll behavior into a defining characteristic of a fan base that has shattered attendance and television ratings records across the WNBA.
Columnist Matt Calkins noted that Clark’s rise is unprecedented not because of her race but because “she played college hoops unlike any person had before,” and pointed out that Black sports icons like LeBron James and Tyrese Haliburton have openly supported Clark . “The racial narratives the media manufactures with her are as absurd as the maligning of her fan base,” Calkins wrote. “Who’s really the hateful one here?”
Others noted the lack of concrete evidence for real-world harassment by Clark fans. Brittney Griner and Angel Reese have both alleged racist incidents, but the WNBA could not substantiate Reese’s claim after reviewing audio and video .
Clark herself addressed the issue in 2024, stating plainly: “People should not be using my name to push those agendas. Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments and threats. Those aren’t fans; those are trolls” .
The controversy arrives amid heightened racialized discourse surrounding Clark, including a July USA Today column by Nancy Armour that invoked Emmett Till and described a “white nationalist faction” within Clark’s fandom . USA Today later updated the column with an editor’s note, and Armour admitted the Till comparison was “inartful” .
Champion’s comments have drawn criticism from across the sports media landscape, with some accusing her of leveraging racial grievance for relevance. OutKick host Dan Dakich argued sports media has created “an industry” out of race-based complaints about white athletes .
Clark, for her part, has consistently credited the Black women who built the WNBA and named Maya Moore as the reason she wanted to play basketball — gestures Champion herself acknowledged while still criticizing the fan base’s overall conduct .
The debate touches a genuine tension in the WNBA: a historically Black league experiencing a massive influx of new, predominantly white fans, some of whom have behaved poorly online. But Champion’s critics argue that conflating the online behavior of trolls with an entire fan base, and doing so with sweeping racial characterizations, does nothing to advance the conversation — it only deepens the divide.
