For the executives at ESPN, it was probably a no-brainer.
Airing a 3-minute tribune to Megan Rapinoe, the most recognizable — and divisive — women’s soccer player in the country and focusing heavily on her leftist politics probably must have played well in a network that has put sports on the back-burner for years.
But Clay Travis, the host of “Outkick the Coverage” on Fox Sports Radio and founder of the conservative website Outkick, had a different take, and a social media post he published Monday was a lot more on target than Rapinoe’s final kick in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
“Megan Rapinoe airmailed her penalty kick & the US women’s soccer team had their worst World Cup performance ever,” Travis wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known at Twitter.
“Here’s how @espn covered Rapinoe and the US women’s choke job. This isn’t sports, it’s left wing propaganda.”
Trending:
Megan Rapinoe airmailed her penalty kick & the US women’s soccer team had their worst World Cup performance ever. Here’s how @espn covered Rapinoe and the US women’s choke job. This isn’t sports, it’s left wing propaganda: pic.twitter.com/O0MbporFLB
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 7, 2023
Travis, of course, nailed it.
In 20 years as one of the United States best-known athletes, Rapinoe, 38, established an undeniable record of achievement in the sport of soccer before announcing she would retire at the end of this year’s Women’s World Cup. But the network dispensed with that in the first third of the tribute. The lion’s share of the segment had other points to make.
Is Megan Rapinoe “patriotic”?
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It dwelt on her insulting the “The Star-Spangled Banner” — which started in slavish imitation of the now-former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem. (“Patriotism” the ESPN narrator called it. “Bullying” is more like it, to hear former teammate Hope Solo tell it.)
It saluted her baseless claims for “equal pay” for women soccer players, who don’t draw anywhere near the revenue — or interest — as the men’s game.
And it glorified her self-proclaimed sexuality as a lesbian while trumpeting her abandonment of women athletes for the cause of men who want to compete against women by simply claiming they were born in the wrong bodies (bodies that are naturally stronger, faster and more enduring than those of the women they are defeating).
It was, in short, exactly what Americans should have come to expect from a network so far gone into the leftist worldview that it used a man’s accomplishments to celebrate Women’s History Month.
Check out the segment here. It’s called “Unapologetically Rapinoe”:
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Travis wasn’t alone.
Disgraceful by ESPN, but not surprising.
— TurtlePower98 (@sstaedtler98) August 7, 2023
@espn is the a joke just like Rapinoe
— Kate Austin (@KateAus1976) August 7, 2023
Leave it to ESPN pic.twitter.com/h2Tzw86YlE
— DEDRIC WILLIAMSON (@DEDRICWILLIAM20) August 8, 2023
When politics are more important than the game. So sad.
— DronePro (@DronePro) August 7, 2023
Even for conservatives whose skin crawls at the idea of a woman like Rapinoe representing the country on the world stage, Rapinoe has been part of some notable accomplishments.
Her teams have won two World Cups — even if Rapinoe’s behavior during the 2019 celebration was a disgrace.
Her Olympic teams have won the gold, silver and bronze medals. Sure, Americans would prefer three golds, of course, but medals are medals.
And as an individual, she was named Best Women Player in the World by FIFA, soccer’s international governing body. There’s no doubt her politics played a role in that selection — but it’s still nothing to sneeze at.
ESPN could have focused on all, or any, of those aspects of Rapinoe’s career and the athleticism that made them possible, with an inevitable nod to the unavoidable politics. But in true ESPN form, it chose her political activism as the highlight of what is supposed to be an athlete’s legacy.
One of the responses to Travis’s post put it perfectly:
Propaganda. That’s the right word.
— Carolina (@carolina_bonita) August 7, 2023
For the suits at ESPN, which long ago surrendered even the pretense of making sports its primary interest, it must have seemed obvious.
For the rest of the country, it was a disgrace.
