IF WE WONDER HOW GREGG DOYEL BECAME A COLUMNIST, HE CAN BE FIRED

The Indianapolis writer shamed himself at Caitlin Clark’s first local press conference, and rather than read his painful apologies, his editors should consider hiring someone with professional sanity

     The sports director of the Indianapolis Star is Nat Newell. He says he has “no taste in music or food” and grew up reading Bill James, who developed sabermetrics and helped kill baseball. And the executive editor of the site is Eric Larsen, who recently asked how he should spend $1 million while expanding news coverage.

     They did not hire Gregg Doyel to write sports columns in 2014. But at some point, the executives who run these operations have to stop explaining what they do and who they are — and start maintaining professional sanity. If it means firing Doyel, then have at it, because in the first local news conference for Caitlin Clark, he shamed his paper, his city, his state, his craft and, if anyone still cares, himself.

     Rather than simply introduce himself and ask a question, Doyel became a yokel. We’ve seen Clark’s gesture with her heart and hands during and after games. That is her thoughtful expression, not his, and for him to deliver it to her Wednesday is mindlessness beyond any Hoosier hokum.

     “You like that?” Clark said.

     “I like that you’re here,” said Doyel, already heading down a personal road.

     "Yeah, I do that at my family after every game,” said Clark, sensing what was coming at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

     “Start doing it to me,” said Doyel, “and we’ll get along just fine.”

     If you respond by calling him sexist, it’s too soft. Misogynistic works, or he’s trying to publicly hit on Clark in a nationally televised imbroglio. Whatever Doyel was doing, let’s remind him that he has little worth in Indiana and none in the United States. Any attempt to gain notice is a reminder of one columnist — Bob Kravitz, who behaved and wrote well and should have remained at the Athletic — saving face in a sports media town that produces crackpots like Pat McAfee and Dan Dakich. Too bad for Clark, who is building the WNBA with the Fever and leading women’s sports to new acclaim, that she has to deal with a faux heart-and-handser.

     Unless — his bosses realize he’s wrong for the gig. I’d have told the Star about him years ago, when his sophomoric rip jobs of me in press-box situations — he didn’t like me as a daily ESPN analyst — forced me to sit away from him when we were assigned side-by-side seats in an arena. What, you want me to engage in a loud argument with a fool? Such nonsense happened with folks who were envious, but instead of ending up on national TV for years, Doyel makes news in an ugly way.

     Quickly, as social media discomfort soared about his antics, he apologized. “My comment afterward was clumsy and awkward,” he wrote on X. “Please know my heart (literally and figuratively) was well-intentioned. I will do better.”

     The first try failed. So he came back with a column in the Star, in which he wrote, “On the one hand, yes absolutely, male and female athletes should be treated the same. I’m talking about coverage, respect, compensation, terminology, you name it. Stories have been written about idiots who say or act otherwise.  And then, along comes a story about another insensitive man, which goes viral on social media, and I decided to write about that idiot. Me.”

     If he wasn’t aware of 2024 reality hours earlier, the belief suddenly didn’t kick in before a piece intended to save himself. He mentioned two possible reactions on his part, including, “Denial: I didn’t do anything wrong! I gave Caitlin her signature heart-shaped hand gesture as a way of introducing myself and welcoming her to town! I did this during a nationally televised press conference! What kind of idiot acts creepy on national television! (Me.)”

     Then he offered, “Anger: This is how I talk to everyone! Had that been the male equivalent arriving to energize team and town — since I’ve been here, the closest thing Indianapolis has had is Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson — I’d have shown him the heart gesture and reiterated, ‘I like that you’re here.’ ’’

     For me to quote from his column is beneath me. He failed and will suffer, which should weigh on the editors who hired him, Jeff Taylor and Ronnie Ramos. Once, in another context, I spoke out to a subject at a news conference. On a snowy Christmas Eve in Chicago, I walked into the Bulls’ facility as Jerry Krause was firing Tim Floyd as coach of the wreckingballed post-Jordan dynasty. The general manager yelled at me, on live TV, and said I should wipe a smirk off my face. Actually, my look came from removing large white flakes from my overcoat.

     “Merry Christmas,” I told him.

     He deserved it. Caitlin Clark did not.

     ###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.