Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel admitted he crossed a line with his bizarre interaction with Caitlin Clark during her introductory Indiana Fever press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
“After going through denial, and then anger – I’m on the wrong side of this? Me??? – I now realize what I said and how I said it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean it was just wrong,” Doyel wrote Wednesday.
“Caitlin Clark, I’m so sorry.”
Doyel made himself part of the story Wednesday for all the wrong reasons with an awkward back and forth with Clark that many felt was creepy.
He began the interaction by flashing the heart symbol that Clark displays to her family after games, to which Clark replied: “You like that?”
Doyel, with a weird tone, replied: “I like that you’re here. I like that you’re here.”
Clark, seemingly affected by the response, then looked down and grabbed the microphone while saying: “I do that at my family after every game, so pretty cool.”
Doyel then replied: “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”
To make matters worse, Doyel later awkwardly asked Fever coach Christie Sides about Clark while referring to her as “that” and “it.”
“You just were given the keys to that,” Doyel said with an emphasis on that. “What are you going to do with it?”
Those interactions earned Doyel a lashing from sports fans and reporters alike, with Barstool’s Dave Portnoy calling Doyel a “sexist pervert.”
Doyel apologized in a tweet Wednesday night, calling the comment “clumsy and awkward,” before penning a column to further address the incident.
“I’m devastated to realize I’m part of the problem,” Doyel wrote. “I screwed up Wednesday during my first interaction with No. 1 overall draft pick Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever.”
He explained that he’s known in Indianapolis for “having awkward conversations” and asking “brashly conversational” questions, citing examples with the Colts, Purdue and Indiana.
He then labeled himself an “insensitive man” and an “idiot.”
“What I’ve learned is that I need to be more aware about how I talk to people – not just athletes,” Doyel wrote. “I realized that only after my exchange with Clark went viral and I navigated the first two stages of grief during a discussion with the people I care about the most.”
Doyel wrote that a woman he respects told him he can’t talk to a young woman like Clark the way he would a young man, such as Colts second-year quarterback Anthony Richardson.
“And my heart dropped. Because now I saw it: After years of being so sure I was on the right side of these arguments, I was now on the wrong side, and for the oldest reason known to man and woman: Ignorance,” Doyel write. “You can say that’s absurd, that I should’ve known better, and I do. But here we are. I was just doing what I do, talking to another athlete, another person, and didn’t see the line – didn’t even know there was a line in the vicinity – until I crossed it.
“In my haste to be clever, to be familiar and welcoming (or so I thought), I offended Caitlin and her family.”
