Cari Champion on the Culture War Around the WNBA: "This Is All a Distraction"

"Whenever you bring in politics, there will always be this fight. It happened with Colin Kaepernick. It's happened many times before, and now we're dealing with it with the WNBA," says Cari Champion on the latest episode of Marie Claire's "Nice Talk" podcast.

Champion knows her sports history. If you aren't familiar, the TV broadcaster has hosted multiple shows for ESPN, including SportsCenter, as well as the The Cari Champion Show for Amazon Prime Video. Today, she hosts the podcast Naked Sports with Cari Champion and co-hosts another podcast, Flagrant and Funny, with Jemele Hill.

Naturally, Champion is well-versed in what’s happening in the WNBA. After a major surge in popularity over the past few years, the league has increasingly become a flashpoint in the broader debate over transgender athletes. Anti-trans media figures, politicians, activists, and members of the public have argued that trans participation presents a problem for the WNBA. Two former NBA players even said they planned to enter the WNBA draft after falsely declaring themselves women in an apparent attempt to make an anti-trans point

"This is all a distraction," Champion tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on "Nice Talk." "And it's also a distraction for the ladies."

She explains, "Men who've never even watched the WNBA, but have political leanings and/or big platforms are weighing in. And it's just unfortunate that with all of this—I mean, the money and the lights and the attention, the good attention and the growth—that someone has to come and rain on these ladies' parades and try to divert attention from the great work that is happening on the court."

Not only that, but Champion says that there isn't actually a fight to have.

"I just wish the 'we just are trying to protect women' crowd would just be quiet and let these women play sports. And if they are quiet, they will soon find out there are no transgender people trying to come in and take away the rights of these women. It's not even an issue on the NCAA level—they've banned it."

The ban, Champion explains, makes the objections to trans women playing in the WNBA not just hateful, in her view, but irrelevant.

"You got everything you wanted. There's no way in the world that a transgender athlete is going to go from high school to the pros, there are just too many different levels in between that they are banned from before they could even make it there," she says.

"There are a lot of athletes in the WNBA who are speaking out against the hatred and the response from a certain group of people is, 'Oh, you must want men in women's sports.' You're like, 'How did you go? How did we get?' ... Where's the nuance? Literacy is dead. No one can pay attention anymore. It's maddening."

Still, Champion remains optimistic that the players and fans can move on.

"We hope now that we are entering playoff season that the main thing can stay the main thing, which is some great basketball," she says. "We have some amazing players, and these ladies have name recognition, and they're selling their jerseys, and they're signing autographs, and they're signing major deals, and they never thought they'd see this day."

For more from Champion—like how being “unapologetic about being curious” made her career—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.