Welcome to good Game with Sarah Spain where we're not calling soccer superstar Lynn Williams, Lynn Biandolo. What we went over this no new names, We're not going to know them and we're not going to use them for like at least a year too. Many of you soccer girl who's got hitched this offseason? How are we supposed to keep up? Can't do it? Won't do it. Also, honestly,
fuck the patriarchy, keep your own names. It's Friday, January twenty fourth, and on today's show, we'll be talking Tampa Bay and how WNBA free agency might be affected by all the unrivaled players hanging down in Florida. Plus the latest in a wild college hoops season, transfer fees explained, and some new research that's no surprise to us, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating. It's all coming up right after this Happy Friday slices. Here's what you
need to know today in hockey news. Huge congrats to Northeastern University, winners of the forty sixth Women's bean Pot. The Huskies down to Boston University for nothing in front of thirteen two hundred and seventy nine people at TD Garden. That's good for the fifth biggest turnout in D one women's college hockey history. Freshman goalie Lisa Jansen was named MVP,
registering thirty saves in the championship game. The victory marks Northeastern's third straight bean Pot title and the twentieth in school history. In the on ice postgame interview, Husky's grad student defender Lily Jovitch took center stage and shared her thoughts with nesson on what we can learn from the bean Pot Take a listen. I think it's funny and when you add a little bit of money to a sport and you give some girls attention what they can
do with it. I think everyone should take a page out of our book.
And really put some more time and effort into women's everything.
Yes, Lily, Yes. In college hoops, there's a critical top five clash between number five LSU and number two South Carolina tonight at Colonial Life Arena, a battle of the last two NCAA champs and two of the coaches with the most green in the game. That game tips off at five pm Eastern. We'll have more on the matchup and the fit off between Don Staley and Kim Mulkey later in the show. In Pro Hoops, Unrivaled got a double header tonight action tipping off at seven to fifteen
pm Eastern with my Phantom BC facing mist BC. Still looking for our first stub. Come on Ghost Gang. Then it's a battle of two and OHO teams, the Laces BC playing Vinyl BC at eight to fifteen pm Eastern or whenever that first game ends. You can catch those matchups live on TNT and streaming on Max. There are two other Unrivaled games on Saturday as well, so check
the schedule link in our show notes. Elsewhere in Pro Hoops WNBA, Star Sawtu Sobly has inked a deal with Adidas after four years with Jordan brand Shall now rep the Three Stripes alongside players like Eliah Boston, Chelsea Gray and Cheneyan neck Ogoom Mackay some more WNBA. The Atlanta Dreams sold out all their season tickets for the second season in a row four months before the start of
the twenty twenty five season. They've also sold out four home games so far, two matchups with the Chicago Sky and one apiece with the Fever and Aces. If you're hoping to catch a game A limited number of single game tickets for the rest of the twenty twenty five Dream Season will go on sale in February. We'll link to where you can get yours in our show notes to Tennis. The Australian Open final is set. Top ranked Arena Sablenka and world number nineteen Madison Keys will play
for the title on Saturday. If Keys wins, this would be her first title at a Grand Slam tournament. If you're wondering, The Australian Open is called a Grand Slam because it's one of the four major tennis events every calendar year. Meanwhile, Sabalank is chasing her third straight Australian Open title. The last time these two met in a Grand Slam was twenty twenty three in the US Open semifinal. Sabalanka won that match in three sets. We've got pro
vibes happening tonight too. Love Madison plays Love Omaha at eight pm Eastern. That one will stream live on ESPN Plus and over in the PVF the Omaha Supernova's take on the Columbus Fury at seven pm Eastern, streaming on YouTube. That'll be followed by the India IG Night against the San Diego Mojo at ten fifteen Eastern on Volleyball World TV. Lots more pro vibes happening over the weekend, so we'll link to the love and PVF schedules in our show
notes to Lacrosse aka the Lax to our Vibes. On Thursday, the Women's Lacrosse League rebranded as the Mabeline Women's Lacross League after the cosmetics company stepped in as a title sponsor. The league also announced its inaugural rosters for its upcoming Championship Series debut in February. We'll link to those in the show notes. Beyond that, we still don't really know what's happening with the wl sorry, the Mabeling Women's Lacrosse
League beyond that single one week tournament just yet. So in Mabeling parlance, maybe it'll be a full time lacrosse league. Maybe we still don't have any information. So I want to take a quick second to talk about the big
Naomi Germa to Chelsea News. So as of this taping, it's still not official, and Germa did report to the NWSL's first day of preseason training as expected, but it really feels like only a matter of time before the eyes are dotted and the teaser crossed and Germa ships off to jolly old England, which brings us to a really great question from a slice about Gurma's historic transfer fee. So Kaylee wrote, quote, just wondering if you could explain
what the transfer fee means for Nami Germa. Is that to get her out of her contract with San Diego? Does it have anything to do with how much she'll get paid? Just figured more people like me might not know what all that means. Love the podcast so much.
End quote. Great questions, Kaylee, and you got it right. Basically, the transfer fee is a negotiation between two clubs, so money paid by Team A to get the rights to a player currently under contract with team B. It's completely separate from the salary that the player is going to get from their new team, which is a different negotiation
between club and player. In fact, the two clubs might come to an agreement on the transfer fee and the player could still refuse to sign with the new team, in which case they'd stay put on their current team and finish out their deal. The FIFA Women's Football Transfer window this is the period of time when clubs can buy or sell or loan out players. There's two of them. One of them is right now in January and one
is in the summer. So Naomi Germa is under contract with the San Diego Wave through the end of twenty twenty six. Else wants her now, so since she's not a free agent, Chelsea are willing to pay the Wave one point one million dollars to take her rights aka have her play for their team starting now, instead of waiting for her to become a free agent and sign
with them. Then, Chelsea's undefeated midway through the Women's Super League season out in England which runs September to May, and they lost star Canadian back Kadisha Buchanan to an ACL jury last November, so they'd really like to shore up their defense with Germa, and they'd like to do it now. Per sources, Gurma's pursuing the move as well, so they're aligned and wanting to make it work now.
In the past, things would have been more complicated because the NWSL basically tried to live in a bubble where they operated separately and differently from how FIFA and World Football operated in the old draft system. The NWSL allowed teams to acquire and hold on to rights to players without their consent, like a lot of other American sports. But the new NWSLCBA basically makes the NWSL rules more
aligned with FIFA and World Football. So an NWSL team can only hold player rights pursuant to a con so both a team and a player have to agree they want to be together. So now when a team in another league, say Chelsea, wants to do a deal with the team in the AMWSL, in this case the Wave both are operating with the same rules, same transfer window, all that jazz. Now you're seeing transfer fees happen a
lot more than before in women's football. Previously there just wasn't as much money at play, and contracts, at least in European women's football were typically shorter than on the men's side, so they were like a year or eighteen months, and it made more sense to wait out a player's contract and go after them at free agency. But in recent years, as contracts have gotten longer, valuations have gone up, investments have poured in attendance, viewership records all those getting broken,
more and more transfer fees have been paid. In fact, eight of the top nine richest transfer fees in women's soccer all happened last year, and make that nine of the richest ten in the last thirteen months once Kermis deal is done. Now something to think about as transfer fees become more common, especially in light of some related negotiations currently going on in the MLS, the men's professional soccer league in the US, think about what their players
should get a percentage of that transfer fee. It's their value driving up that dollar amount, so shouldn't they see a part of it, especially when I look at contracts for players. So if Chelsea thinks Nailmi is worth one point one million dollars plus whatever salary they pay her, they clearly value her way more than the dollar amount
that she's going to see. So remember on the show, we've talked about the pyramid of value in women's sports, like it feels like male athletes are top of the pyramid. They're recognized as the product and the most valuable thing in the sport, while women are in the middle of the pyramid or sometimes near the bottom. Consider that pyramid when thinking about how much money clubs are willing to send each other in transfer fees while not paying that
amount in salaries. To the players. This will be interesting to watch as the NWSL moves forward with this new CBA and as money continues to pour in into women's football across the world. Thank you for the question, Kaylee. I actually learned a lot researching that too. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Big Citrist is talking a whole lot of hoops. Don't go anywhere, Welcome back slices. Big Citrus ready to convene to talk a whole lot of hoops, and we want to start
with WNBA free agency. Now, this is none of our jobs or wheelhouses, and in fact, we'll probably be having someone whose job it is to understand itself on the show to talk more about the biggest moves in WNBA free agency and how all of it works. But in the meantime, Mish is our expert on this, the closest thing we've got to it. So Mish, can you kind of tell us, like what's happening and what does it mean to be in this WNBA free agency period?
Yeah?
I am learning all this stuff, but as I understand it, there are a few categories of players in free agency. So first up, there is reserve players and the people who are eligible for this, or any player with three years of service or fewer and whose prior team extended them a reserved qualifying offer between very recently January eleventh
and the twentieth. So basically what this means is that that player's prior team as sole negotiating rights to that player, and if their team didn't offer them a contract, they just become an unrestricted free agent on February first, so that's coming up. An example of a player with this designation would be the New York Liberties Marien Johannes, who a lot of people are high on, but she's currently a reserve player for.
Them, meaning that the Liberty are the only people can extend her an offer because they did extend that reserve qualifying offer from the eleventh to the twentieth exactly. So now they'll negotiate with each other and she'll be on the Liberty and they'll agree to some deal. Yep, okay. So that's only players with three years of service or fewer though, so those are sort of newer players to the league. What's a restricted free agent?
So this is any player with four years of service whose contract has expired and who receives a qualifying offer from their previous team. So basically, that player's previous team has the right to match any contract offer that they get from another team, which sometimes people call it the
first refusal. So in that scenario, if the restricted free agent were to sign an offer with another team, then their prior team gets four days from when they're notified to determine whether or not they're going to match that offer to try to keep that player. If they do decide to match, then that player is going to stay with their previous team, pretty simple. But if they don't, then that player will be under contract with the new team who's extended that offer.
Example.
Dj A Carrington, we all love her, Noah lover, She's currently a restricted free agent because she got a qualifying offer from the Connecticut Sun during that window.
Okay, so the point of a restricted free agent is basically like, maybe the team had a four year deal plus an option, meaning they're on the team for four years, and then in the option year they have more rights to the player, but not all the rights, Like, there's still an opportunity for the player to leave for somewhere that will pay them more and wants the more, but the team that's had them on a contract has the
first chance to try to keep them exactly. Yeah, okay, so it's like they're kind of a free agent, but the team they're currently playing for has a little bit of Say, yep, then there's unrestricted free agent. What's that?
These are players with five or more years of service they're getting up there, getting old, or players with fewer than five years of service who don't receive qualifying offers during the window that they can receive those. So basically, this means that a player is free to sign with any team, no hindrance, as long as they haven't been designated a core player by their prior team.
It's getting complicated, mes, Yeah, okay, so real quick, just to clarify everyone we've talked about before, this has gotten some sort of offer from the team they were on during this January eleventh to twentieth window, correct, And the unrestricted people have gotten no such offer from anyone. Correct, But tell us about this core player thing.
Yeah, so, folks who are eligible for this, this is where it's like, all right, we're getting in the leeds. But I understand it to be any unrestricted or restricted free agent excluding so not including players who've already played on a core designation for two or more seasons. So when a player is cored, it basically means that the team that they were cored by becomes the only team that that player can sign or negotiate a contract with during free agency. But that doesn't mean that a move
to another team can't be figured out. It has to be something that both parties want and then they'll work together to make that happen. So, for example, Dallas Wings forward Satusaboli just told everybody that she played her last game in the Dallas Wings uniform, but she and the Wings are now working together to find her a new team and find the best deal for the franchise.
And the thing about core players is it's kind of like a franchise tag if you've ever heard of that in other sports. You can't just give them to everyone. You get one or per season. So you get to pick one player and that's a fully guaranteed one year deal worth the supermax, and if you're unrestricted or restricted, you could be eligible for it, but it's just a one year deal on the maximum base salary, and then
that team cannot core anybody else. YEP, that's right. Okay, So it's a good deal because you're making the most money possible, but it's hard if you want to go somewhere else because you don't really have any choice.
Right.
Well, so that's why I bring up Satu, because if you have a good relationship with your front office, like you can work with.
Them, you're a really terrible one real though, because if it's really bad, they're like fine, like we're it's not gonna work to keep you because you're not gonna want to be here and it's gonna be pretty miserable, like sort of what's going on with Jimmy Butler in the MNBA, Like it's so bad that at this point they're just extending various suspensions to keep them from playing because the
vibes are terrible. So, yeah, Satu is working on it in a positive way, but potentially also it could be so bad that you're like, your core, help me get out of here, and then it's kind of a benefit to both sides if they know it's going to be a really miserable existence. Okay, I think I get this. So Satu, soably, for instance, is a core, but since she wants to leave, she and the Wings will try to work to send her somewhere else. Meanwhile, you look
at someone like Kennedy Carter of the Sky. She's an unrestricted free agent. She's never been cored. The Sky did not give her a qualifying offer to come back to the team she's been on before the deadline, So she is a freeze bird. Yep, anywhere she wants to go if they want her back. Bird. Yes, she's like a bird. I was going to sing it, but she's like a
bird fly away. Come. But as we mentioned, Kennedy needs to find a team that wants her and that she will be on and be a positive member of society on while also being a tremendous basketball player, which has been somewhat of the problem. Okay, Alex, I'm sure your brain is working one thousand miles an hour. What is it doing right now when you're thinking about all of these different types of players.
Frest thing I did, as means she were going through all of that, was I pulled up her hoopstats to see what Caitlin Clark's contract looks like down the road. Because rookies totally different world where you know, they typically get signed anywhere from a one year to a three year contract. I was curious, at what point for Caitlin will she become a player that has the ability to
negotiate with other teams. Now, it's also very much complicated by the fact that WNBA players just decided to opt out of their current CBA and so the rules that will go into effect next year likely will be different, probably than what Caitlin's contract currently says.
But yeah, that's where my mind initially went to your point about the new CBA. I'll be interested to see what it looks like because back in the day, one of the biggest complaints from WNBA players is you would get drafted, so then you would have X number of years to play for whatever team drafted you, so you had no say. Then if you got cord then you had more and I think back in the day it
might have even been more years than one. I'm not posit, but I just remember, particularly Elena Deladon had a valid complaint that she had no say over the first seven years of her career. And depending on how long your career is, to wait that long before you get to decide where you want to live, who you want to play with, who you want to play for whether you
have a shot at a title. All of that, particularly even just five or six years ago, when the haves and have nots was much more pronounced like you're on a perennial loser that doesn't invest and has bad facilities, and you're stuck there for your entire career, straight up
horrible time. Yeah, and so they're definitely making a lot of changes so that players have more ability to move around, and we've seen that obviously some of the biggest names like Brianna Stewart taking into titles in Seattle and being like, all right, let me bring some fun to New York. Before there was not nearly as much movement in the league.
Some people don't like that. It's nice to see a player wear one uniform their entire career, but if you're somewhere that isn't getting the right players and putting in the money and giving your players a good experience, the idea that you'd be stuck there for a whole career or almost all of it, that sucks NICs.
I think it's especially interesting when you see what the NWSL did and making essentially every player an unrestricted free agent at the end of their contract. Also getting rid of the draft. But the NWSL has now set the bar when it comes to player free agency and player rights. When it comes to that specific issue, I think the WNBA is different because the season is so much shorter that what we see as WNBA players don't necessarily live
in market. They have more flexibility to establish their life somewhere else and then kind of fly into market for that four five month window, depending on how long the season is. But it makes me curious is that something that WNBA players are talking about as the CBA negotiations continue to say, Hey, if the NWSL is doing this, why can't we.
Two fascinating things that you made me think of, Alex. Number one is not only in women's sports, but in American sports. The NWSL is now one of the few places that's like, good draft, We're going to let you go where you want to go. This is all about player rights, which is very European and global. You know, we don't want the Europeans colonizing our players, like we said, but we are sort of into the rules that they
have that give players a lot more rights. Secondarily to what you said though about you know, players picking where they want to live and maybe living in market for
some sports and not in others. One thing that has historically been a part of women's sports has been trying to give players what they want, understanding that the leagues that they're in don't pay enough to hold them hostage, and that in men's sports, like you're going to millions of dollars, suck it up, go live and fill in the place that I won't say aloud, because then people who listen there will be sad meantime, in women's sports,
especially if somebody's husband or wife or family was somewhere, they would work really hard to get them to where
they want to be. As money goes up, as investment goes up, as the demand to be professionalized and treated and respected like other professional athletes in our country, it'll be interesting to see if there's a reticence to some of those demands that come along with that, because if players get used to their interests and their personal lives being prioritized and they want to cling to that while also getting the fruits of being a high funded endeavor, there might be some conflict.
Definitely tricky, and that brings to mind a couple who's no longer a couple in the NWSL who played for the Orlando Pride, ally Krueger and Ashlyn Harris. I remember when they left Washington Spirit and went to the Pride.
It was like a packaged deal kind of situation that happens a lot.
Yeah, yeah, and so if that's gone away, mm hmm.
Had We had a lot of habs, as I call them, husbands and boyfriends on the Red Stars, and the fear was always like, does Julie Ertz want to go where Zach Ertz is? Does Kleeah Watt want to go closer to where jj Watt plays? Does Mallory Swanson need to be where Dansby swantson?
Is?
Like it's a fun thing to have all the habs and try to get them to show up to games and watch. It's a little bit scary when you're worried that they might leave anyway. Those are all interesting things to think about. Also interesting to think about as this free agency in the WNBA is happening for the first time ever. Most of the best players in the league are all hanging out together in Miami, or, as I
called it on a previous show, Tampa Bay. It's not actually Tampa Bay, but I called it Tampa bay because for those not familiar, tampering is when you go chasing after someone on another team that is technically under the rights of someone else. So in say the WNBA before the free agency period is open. In theory, you can't be calling up players if you're the president of one team and saying wouldn't you rather play for us? You have to wait for the window to open and then
the negotiations. And there are some rules to this, but Alex, you did the research. None of them are actually publicly available right on WNBA tampering.
Yeah, as far as I can find, and I searched a lot of keywords Tampa persuading.
Decided Alex read the whole damn CBA looking for this.
I really did you know how much I love a good PDF and a control f function, And I couldn't find the exact rule, And that surprised me because we do know that the WNBA has previously fine teams for tampering violations. There was a pretty funny one a couple of years ago when the Seattle Storm got fined for tampering for tweeting about Sue Byrd returning to the city. Even though everyone and their mama knew that Suta ways
returning to Seattle. They did not wait for the deadline to actually announce it.
You got to do what every other league does, where you leak it to a reporter and then they post it, and then everyone goes so much for tampering because it comes out before the window ends. But everyone knows that's how it works. You just can't do it if you're the team.
Itself, exactly exactly. If you're the social media manager, you better be real, real careful here. And so we know that the WNBA has these rules. I'm pretty sure the players have to be made aware of them based on things that players have previous said, But we're not totally sure where that line is of what is considered persuading somebody or just having a nice conversation and telling them how good life is in New York.
Let's say I'm gonna do some research on this. I'm going to reach out to my contacts and see if somebody can provide us in black and white what the actual tampering rules are. But for the purposes of this discussion, all you need to know is that tampering exists. You
can get in trouble. If you're any member of an organization, coach, player, executive owner, if you're trying to talk to a player on another team and lure them into joining your team, I don't know me if they've got the saunas bugged and the cold baths miked up, and you could tell which people are talking to the right people and who's
crossing the lines and who's doing it right. All I know is that it's a wild experiment to have essentially thirty six of the best players in one place right when all of this is going down.
Yeah, it's chaotic, But at the same time, I think this is something that could save a lot of people, a lot of time and a lot of energy, a whole lot of money. Because think about how many stories, not just in the WNBA, but in other professional leagues we've heard about, Oh, yeah, we're gonna put so and so and so and so together, and we're gonna have the best team in the league, and so and so and so and so end up not liking each other at all.
Their personalities don't mesh.
And these are things that when you're just calling up people or you're not actually spending extended periods of time with people you can't really tell how you vibe and then not to mention unrivaled is giving players on opposite in different teams the opportunity to learn how they train, learn how you lead and practice, learn what your communication style is, like all these very integral, kind of intangible things that matter to players who want to be teammates and excel at.
An elite level in the WNBA. So who knows such a smart point? Like, it's like a trial run, m it's like a little four you're actually committing. And to your point, like, not only do we sometimes put players together and it turns out to hate each other, we often have the reverse where we're like, oh, we can't believe that trade happened their enemy is and then they show up and they're the besties and we're like, well, we read that one wrong. It turned out you know,
they're a fit when they're on the same team. Alex, what do you make of this, particularly in the sense of players being able to actually be honest with each other about how their experience is at the team that they're on.
Yeah, I'm super curious about what those kind of behind the scenes conversations look like. And I'm also super curious. I don't know, you're in the locker room and your teammate's phone buzzes and you see b Hammon appear on the screen. It's like, Ooh, what's going on over there. So I think the fact that they're all in the same place while these conversations go down is pretty interesting.
But I also think it's fascinating because WNBA players have historically, especially compared to other athletes and women's sports, have had salary transparency where they know, because of databases that exist, how much anyone on any given team is making per year.
And I think that's a really important thing. You know, in jobs that include people of all genders, one of the things that is known to help close the wage gap is having salary transparency, because if you know that your coworker who does have as much work as you is making twenty thousand dollars more a year, you are way more likely to go to your boss and demand
a promotion. And so I think when we see it in the WNBA, you can kind of pull up your stats, or your agent could do it on your behalf and say, hey, look at how much I contributed this year. I deserve this much money, and so I'm also curious, like how much players are helping.
I don't know.
I think the friends that I have in my own professional life who say, hey, you're worth Moore, and so I think when you're able to be in an environment with the best players in the world, I'm curious what those kind of behind the scenes conversations sound like and look like.
I finally just got a chance to watch the Off Season, which is the reality show that Midge Purse executive produced and put together, and it ran on Twitter slash x. You can go watch it. It's really enjoyable. It was really fun to get to know a lot of the players.
But low Labanta is on their complain most of the show, and I think she very wisely used it as like a propaganda arm for her to complain about how she's been underpaid her entire career, particularly because at the time, the highest played player in NWSL history, Maria Sanchez, was also there and she walked in right after that deal talking about buying a house for herself, and Lowe's like, damn,
and my salary sucks. But while she's at the dinner table, they're asking her like, who's your agent, and she's like, I don't have an agent. I've been raw dogging it the full time, which is debrais that she actually used. And then at the end of the show there's those little codas about how everyone's doing it. It's like low got an agent and she's getting paid and it's like, yeah, duh. It's like everybody there was like what are you doing? Like get you deserve more? And I feel like that's
one thousand percent what's happening here. You mentioned Sachiusabli so Sue Bird on a Touch More Suebirds podcast with Meghan Rapino basically said she could not imagine the kind of chats that were going down at Unrivaled and Megan was like, yeah, I'd be buying Sato some coffee, Like you know, everybody's going after the most highly sought after people. After Satu said she didn't want to be with the Wings anymore.
You know, she's looking to go somewhere else, and Satu told Front Office Sports, it's true, you're able to talk to other players directly and you could figure out what do they have, what type of resources, how important is their team to the owners. If you have an owner of a team that doesn't prioritize the women's team. They're going to talk about it, and that's a place where I would less likely like to go. And I've received a couple of coffees. I'm allowed, I'm allowed. End quote.
I don't know if she is allowed because we don't have the actual tampering rule. You can't share no beans, right. Is it like the NCAA where it's like you can have a bagel, but you got that cream cheese on it, and now you're in violation. Like either way, it's pretty fascinating to think about what's going down and which of these conversations might result in players even if it's not right now, Maybe it's a year later when their contract is up and they are a free agent. Maybe it's
that slow build toward a super team. Sup Bird said. Usually these conversations would happen during Team USA camps. That was one of the only time that a lot of these great players would get together and think about the relationships that you form and how fun would it be for Stooja to be doing this, you know, during the regular season too, like that kind of thing.
Yeah, it's interesting. All I'm saying is SA too low. If you want to come on the show and tell us all about our experiences in the journey.
Come on down. We would love to have you. So you want them to Satu in particular, incriminate herself. Name all the people who have bought the coffees. Get them all fine for tampering.
No, just use us, use us as a vessel to make your desires known.
Before mentioned propaganda arm could be us. We can be propaganda pinky. That's us. Oh my god. Yeah. Fascinating, very very fascinating. And to the point we've made the opposite might be true to you. Get down there, You're so excited to play with someone you love their game from afar, and then you're like, absolutely not. Actually you're a term right.
It's like when people move in together and then the lake up comes pretty quick after and they're like, no, no, you just never was familiar with your game and I do not want a part of it. Yeah, okay, speaking of hoops, we got one last thing I wanted to touch on in meiche particular. I want to get your take on this. We've got a huge matchup tonight, Number five LSU taken on number two South Carolina. The last three NCAA titles have been won by one of these
two teams. We've got the two big dogs in the coaching game. Obviously there's Gino and there's others, But like Kim Malkey was getting the biggest bag, they have Kim Malkey look alike contests at the games. Her fit is always something to talk about. It's a great way and then thank you. And then there's Don Staley, who just recently passed Kim Malky with the biggest bag, also a
fit to talk about for entirely different reasons. And this is like one of those games you've got circled on calendar at the beginning of the season, and it has only gotten more interesting as we've gotten closer to it. So what's the big thing that you're looking for?
I mean, I think this is probably going to be the game of the year, Like I'm just gonna put it out there. I do think it's the game of the year. The thing I'm most looking forward to, though, is this matchup between LSU senior Anissa Morro and South Carolina freshman Joyce Edwards, who's currently leading them and scoring. Anissa Morrow is like a double double machine and Joyce is just one of those players. You think three years
from now, she's going to be terrifying. I wouldn't even want to suit up against her if I was still in college, Like she's musty TV. If people like physicality in the post, you're welcome. This is gonna give you everything you need. And then the other kind of personnel battle I'm looking at is LSU's you know, Flaje Johnson and Mikayela Williams versus South Carolina's Raven Johnson and Malesia full Wiley. That is going to be straight up highlight reel and one mixtape type shit. Like my heart rate
is going up just thinking about it right now. But both teams also have like X factors up and down the roster, so you really just don't know who's going to explode, who's going to have a big game.
But those are the two personnel matchups that I've got my eye. Yeah, and you have to imagine that when you've got someone on the other side that you know is putting up those highlight reel moves, you might be a little bit more interested in making sure you put up one of your own in this game. You're not letting the sc top tens well, the other squad. We going bar for bar. We're going to play for play,
just like that. And I also think, to state the obvious, there are a lot of folks who love Kim Molke. I would say most folks agree. She's a tremendous basketball coach. She has been able to get a lot out of players. She turned around this LSU program when she arrived. And there's also a lot of folks that aren't a fan of a variety of things that she has done and said in the past. Correct held up against Don Staley.
Mm hmmm, who I almost never hear a bad word about You find me someone saying a bad word about Don Staley. I would like to talk to them out of curiosity. Maybe they have a good reason to, but you don't hear it. She stands for so much. The players love her, the game loves her. It is such a distinct I almost said black and white.
I mean such a distinct difference that it almost feels like rooting for a side beyond basketball, which is hard because there are LSU players that I really love their game.
I'm friends with Lage. She's awesome. She was a real fun hang in France. I want her to succeed. But man, I really struggle to see good things happening for gim.
And it's tough for things to be like framed that way too, because it's it's not unique, right like this is we've talked about Gino as much as we talk about about the players on Yukon's roster. We've taught like that's just kind of how it goes.
But what do you mean by that?
I mean I wish that I want our coaches in the college ranks to have personalities, to be people that bring casual fans or fans from the schools in, but I don't want them to overshadow the players who are on the team, basically the same thing that you're saying, Like, I wish there was a way too.
It's hard to separate.
Yeah, I wish there was a way to separate it out because those LSU players, they're not the ones who said all that shit about Brinick, Like that's not on them. So it's just tough. But yeah, I can't wait to see what they show up to the arena in I know Kim, I can't.
I can't think of who tweeted it, but when she had the basketball basket, outfit on somebody tweeted and quoted a picture of her and was like, anybody who runs into Kim today is getting called.
For basket interference. Yep, And I thought I was gonna pass laughing at that. But we are definitely putting a link to that particular outfit in the show notes. If you search Kim Malkey's name, you're going to get a lot of images that come back that explain a lot of things about what we're talking about with Kim Malki's fits. But the basketball one, I don't know. It was in a universe of its own for a variety of reasons.
I want you to know. And I don't know if by the time this comes around, I'll still feel so compelled. But I saved in my Google calendar at the beginning of October Halloween slash Kim Malky question mark to potentially dress as a basketball hoop because that outfit was so offensive to me in every possible way. WHOA, Alex, what are you watching for this one? Man?
Well, I want to go back to one thing that you are just talking about when it comes to the juxtaposition of Kim Milk and Don Staley, and I will never not think about how they both handled Britney Griner being detained in Russia so differently, the context here being, of course, that Malki was Griner's coach when she was at Baylor and said absolutely nothing, and don Staley going out of her way time and time again to make sure that Britney Griner was front and center when they
needed her name to be, you know, in.
Heaven once they decided it should be.
Yeah, And so I can never not think about that
with the juxtaposition of them, Sarah. I also want to go back to something that you said that you know, everyone agrees that she's a great basketball coach, and I agree, but I think that the word college basketball coach needs to be put in there somewhere in the sense that I think one thing that we have seen time and time again is that Don Staley knows how to prepare her players for what comes after college in a way that I don't think we've seen quite as much from
Kim Malki. Are there exceptions to that?
Absolutely.
You have an Angel Reese, who, you know, until she got injured this year, was making a name for herself potentially as a Rookie of the Year candidate. So I just think that that's something I've heard though, is that she's great when you're in college, but beyond that, it's not always a coaching philosophy that translates to the pro game.
Right, And I should say x's and o's because again, I don't know when I say coach if that means everything that comes with being a coach, because I bet you Brittany and others might disagree with the experience that they had, but it has been interesting to talk to some LSU players about the loyalty that they have to Kim. How many players do come out of that program and feel, you know, they revere her and they and they love
the experience that they had. So it's all very personal. Yeah, we'll leave it at that.
While we're on the topic of coaches, I think it's really important that this matchup is coming right on the heels of We Back Pat Week, so folks who don't know, We Backpat is an initiative to amplify the work of the Pat Some Foundation, which is helping to fight against Alzheimer's, and every year at We Backpat Week, I'm reminded that Pat would probably have so much to say about this specific era of basketball, like on so many levels, specifically
about Kim and Dawn and what they've done with their respective per I mean, we're talking about two teams that are undefeated at SEC play a conference that's got seven teams in the top twenty five. I just want to shine some light and say wow to the SEC as a whole. But these two teams that are at the top of the standings. I cannot wait for this game to tip off.
Like we said, number five Olus through number two South Carolina. That's five pm Eastern tonight and you can watch it on ESPN. This game was moved, remember because of the weather, but you can still catch it on ESPN. Okay, we got to take a quick break. When we come back. Research shows that the save women's sports crowd is actually more interested in keeping women down. We'll get into it next.
Welcome back, everybody. It's time for another what the fact and here it is a new study published in Sociology of Sport put data behind what lots of us have known for a long time. The people who aim to want to quote save women's sports by excluding transfolks usually have a negative perception of female athletes and are not otherwise interested at all in advancing women's sports. I can hear you all out there right now, duh, But we
actually have a study for this now. So the authors of the study took data from twenty eighteen and found that US adults who are opposed to transgender athletes are also more likely to have beliefs about how women should look, more likely to hold homophobic views, and more likely to have a negative perception of women's sports in general. We'll link to the full study so you can read it. You will again not be surprised by the results, but
that will make them no less infuriating. And here's another fact. Elf Beauty's recent report shows that gender diverse boards lead to positive business results.
S and P.
Five hundred companies with above average gender diversity on their boards saw a fifteen percent boost in return on equity and a fifty percent drop in earning's risk over a year. You could read the full report at elfbeauty dot com slash not So White Paper. We love that you're listening, but we want to get you in the game every so here's our good game play of the day. We're planning a future slices mailbag episode, a whole show of questions that y'all have for us here at Big Centris.
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rate and review. Shout out to the absolute mench who somehow read our minds and before yesterday's show even hit the airwaves, had already posted a simple review in response to the guy who gave us one star and wrote trump aunt Denata wrote Obama, Am I doing this right? End Quotelo. They gave us five stars, of course, so follow their lead. It's easy watch a planetary parade rating
four to six set of six planets brightly aligned. Review. Okay, so have you heard about this January planetary parade where six planets will all be in line? So cool? It's also always the case every single night without getting two into the weeds. Basically, the planets always appear in a line because they orbit the Sun in more or less a flat plane, so that line that we see is just a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional plane
of our Solar system. But the reason that things are actually extra cool this January is because four planets will be visible to the naked eye and two very faintly in what astronomers and stargazers are calling a planet parade.
When the parades form a straight line and look like they're sort of marching across the night sky, so most folks will be able to look up and see Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars super bright, and then Uranus and Neptune more faintly were with a telescope, So all month after dark, look for Venus and Saturn in the southwest for the first couple hours of darkness, while Jupiter shines brightly high
overhead and Mars is rising in the East. You're probably gonna need a telescope to see your RAINUS and Neptune. Now it's your turn, rate and review. Thanks for listening, See you next week. Good game Northeastern Hockey, Good game Atlanta Dream Fans. Few complicated free agency rules that I don't want to spend my time learning. Just to sign the players to teams and let them pick where they want to go, and then I'm going to watch the
basketball part. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Britney Martinez, and Grace Lynch.
Our associate producer is Lucy Jones. And I'm your host Sarah Spain
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