Shut up and play

 Even Caitlin Clark's dad is fed up with it.

Read something the other day that, as his daughter pissed and moaned her way through Iowa's second-round NCAA Tournament win over West Virginia, Brent Clark appeared to yell at her to shut up and play. And, yeah, OK, apparently he didn't say exactly that, but he did appear to say "Stop" or something along those lines.

In the days since, social media has taken its cue from Dad, and, because it's social media, it's been far less gentle about it. And now there's talk in some precincts that Caitlin is only getting ripped for it because she's a woman and women aren't supposed to be quite so, um, fierce about things, and therefore the criticism of her is a misogynistic double standard.

Let me first say that tends to be true when society reacts to the way men move through the world and the way women do. You can deny it, but you'll just sound silly and, well, misogynistic if you do.

Now let me say something else:

In this particular case, there is no double standard. And it's a load of horse pucky to say there is.

Look. I get it. I'm just a male of the species, so what do I know. But I'm also a male of the species who spent almost 40 years working the sports beat, and I have an intermittently good memory. So when I say ripping an athlete for constantly bitching and moaning is an ecumenical proposition, I have data to back it up.

In other words, I remember Christian Laettner.

Who was, like Caitlin Clark, an incandescent talent. And who was, or could be on occasion, an absolute horse's ass. And was duly slammed for it with as much vehemence as Clark is being slammed for it now.

As was Bill Laimbeer, a notorious whiner and flopper. As was Rick Barry, whose prima donna bitching at the zebras was legendary. As were any number of other male whiners and floppers down through the years. 

No one I can recall said they were all just fierce competitors, as some of the double-standard people are claiming ("If Caitlin were a man, she'd just be a 'fierce competitor'"). No one's saying anything about Clark they didn't say about Laettner or Laimbeer or anyone else. They were cut no more slack because they were men than Clark has been because she's a woman.

The lesson here is nobody likes a whiner, and that sentiment is not gender specific. The other lesson is when you reach a certain level of fame, the number of people who call you out on your whining -- and the volume with which they do so -- is going to rise exponentially.

Right now Caitlin Clark is the face of college basketball, men's or women's. With that comes a level of scrutiny that is sometimes unfair but not exclusive to either gender. And social media has raised that level of scrutiny to heretofore unimagined heights.

 And you know what?

That's not going to go away.

It comes with the territory when you lift public awareness of your game the way Clark has for women's college buckets. The women's game is experiencing an unprecedented surge of popularity which has been a long time in coming, and good on that. But with more popularity comes more exposure, and with more exposure comes the realization that the women's game is just as fierce and competitive and entertaining as the men's -- and that those who play it are just as prone to being jerks sometimes.

America picking on Caitlin Clark for being a whiner?

That's not misogyny. That's success.

Because once upon a time, no one would have cared enough to pick on her.