Case in point: former ESPN host Elle Duncan.Hours after our column was published, Duncan blamed the drama on — wait for it — Caitlin Clark and her fans.Who else? According to Duncan, it's Clark's responsibility to denounce fans who allegedly co-opt her name to serve their own agendas.SOME WNBA PLAYERS ACT LIKE THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO RECEIVE MEAN SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGES"I would love for it to be very clear to the people who think they are her fans but are using her, if she would say, ‘stop that sh--, I don’t want it, I’m tired of it.’ As opposed to what we’ve seen, which is ‘the media makes up these narratives, the media makes up this discourse,'" Duncan said on "The Sports Gossip Show" podcast.Duncan was referring to Clark telling ESPN over the weekend that the media "controls the narrative" around her and is "sometimes so far out of touch with what is reality.""The media highlights the stories, and they show it, but at the same time, like, the media did not make up that members of Congress are trying to get literal government intervention into whether you get fouled too hard," Duncan continued.
"Like, this stuff has to stop."Elle Duncan attends The 7th Annual Sports Power Brunch: Celebrating the Most Powerful Women in Sports at Four Seasons San Francisco on Feb.4, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif.
(Jeff Schear/Getty Images)Duncan's attempt to defend the media's role in the hostility surrounding Clark is especially telling, coming less than a week after USA Today published an op-ed arguing that Clark's style of play could get Black and queer women lynched like Emmett Till.No, that's not satire.
The outlet really published that story.You almost have to laugh at Duncan's proposed solution.In her view, the way to calm things down is for Clark to denounce the very fans defending her while players drive forearms into her throat and television analysts smear her character.Moreover, Duncan completely ignores that Clark has repeatedly done exactly what Du...