Before Caitlin Clark and Dawn Staley…

April 8, 2024

The epic story of the 2007 Rutgers team ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 8, 2024

Hey there, Meteor readers,

Happy Monday! We’re bringing you a short and sweet send today to start your week off right. Our offices will be closed tomorrow in observance of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan (and also Shannon’s fast).

Happy eclipse,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT’S GOING ON

A terrific run: A historic season of college women’s basketball came to a close yesterday when South Carolina’s Gamecocks emerged victorious in an undefeated (39-0!) season over the Iowa Hawkeyes. You’ve probably seen the numbers: Twelve million viewers watched last week’s match between Iowa and LSU, with its infamous (and media-invented) rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. As The New Yorker reported over the weekend, that game had more viewers than any Major League Baseball game, almost every college basketball game, and any game in the NHL from the last year. “More people watched the women play…than watched any regular-season college football game last year, except for Ohio State versus Michigan,” Louisa Thomas wrote. And all that happened not because of some tremendous new influx of marketing money but despite a longtime lack of investment in women’s sports.

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark—who broke the record as the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer and was all over your TV with her ads for Nike, Gatorade, and State Farm—had something to do with the viewership, of course. South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, winning her third title yesterday, thanked her personally in her emotional victory speech, saying, “She carried a heavy load for our sport, and it’s not going to stop here on the collegiate tour. When she’s the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, she’s going to lift that league up as well.”

But this was not a one-woman show—far from it. Staley herself is a GOAT: as a player, as a coach, and as a voice for diversity on the court. Last week, she said she believes trans women should be allowed to play the sport. (Nonetheless, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics voted today to ban transgender women from competing.) She also issued a powerful call for racial justice in the summer of 2020, writing, “People are mad because NOTHING HAS CHANGED.”

Beyond Staley and beyond Clark, there were thousands of other reasons this season shone: the players of NCAA hoops and the audiences who are truly ready for them. This generation of viewers grew up playing sports (or seeing their sisters and daughters do so)—they get it, marketing budgets or not. Like the T-shirts say: Everyone watches women’s sports.

And while you’re watching, we have an incredible story on the In Retrospect podcast this week. It’s about the 2007 Rutgers women’s basketball team, which 17 years ago this month had a Cinderella season, powering their way to the Final Four in an extraordinary triumph. But instead of being celebrated, they were attacked by popular radio host Don Imus, who used racist slurs to describe them. (That kind of racism is alive and well, as the conversation this season about Angel Reese reminds us.) Hosts Susie Banikarim and Jessica Bennett revisit the 2007 season with two women who were there: former Rutgers captain and WNBA star Essence Carson and journalist Jemele Hill, who reported on the story in real time. Hill told them, “To see how it went from people celebrating them to them just being degraded in the next moment—it was disheartening, to say the least. I just really felt for those young people because they had achieved something really, really spectacular, and it just felt like the moment was stolen from them.”

THE 2007 RUTGERS TEAM AT A PRESS CONFERENCE IN NEW JERSEY HELD IN RESPONSE TO DON IMUS’S COMMENTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

AND:

Not that anyone asked, but the Pope has decided to weigh in on gender transitioning (and gender fluidity and surrogacy) as affronts to god. According to a document released this morning, “sex change intervention…risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” (Maybe he should watch this.)
Trump posted to his bizarro platform Truth Social this morning that he believes abortion rights should be “left up to the states” but that he is “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.” Don’t be fooled! Exceptions don’t really work; Trump has bragged about overturning Roe; and this is a blatant attempt to deal with the very real fact that women’s votes will be a deciding factor this fall. Sad!
President Biden announced a new student loan forgiveness program, this time targeting interest that has accrued on long-standing loans. Many lenders owe more than their initial loans because of predatory interest rates. (Me. I’m many lenders.) If this bill were to make the unlikely journey through Congress, up to 23 million Americans could see their balances wiped clean. If there is a god, now is your moment to show yourself to me.
NYC has to pay up to the tune of 17.5 million dollars for forcing women to remove their hijabs to take their mugshots.
Speaking of NYC, are the recent incidents of women being punched connected to MAGA-fueled hatred of women? Amanda Marcotte says yes over at Salon.
Black women patients in New England are more likely to experience complications during pregnancy and birth—by a lot.

KRISTIN DAVIS, SARAH JESSICA PARKER, CYNTHIA NIXON, AND KIM CATTRALL IN SATC PROMO IMAGE FROM 2000 (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Sex and the City is back…on Netflix, and if you breathe on the internet, everyone is wondering how “Gen Z” will react to a show that was made at the literal turn of the century. I have news for you: If you are just discovering that maybe it didn’t answer every single existential question about dating and gender–it didn’t. And a lot of it didn’t age well. But it’s nice to see it being memorialized across the internet because after several rewatches, I still enjoy the heck out of the show and will argue to my death (as Emily Nussbaum did many years ago) that it was a groundbreaking contribution to television, especially (listen closely here) in capturing complex women who weren’t always likable. So, if you are just discovering that Carrie is sometimes toxic, we already know that! That’s what made the show good. And, FWIW,…And Just Like That’s effort to appeal to Gen Z by introducing more diverse characters and sexual identities didn’t land particularly well, either. Sometimes, it’s great just to see a creation in its original form, even if to celebrate how far (or not) we have come.