Indy Star bars its sports activities columnist from Caitlin Clark’s video games

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The main sports activities columnist on the Indianapolis Star can’t cowl the most important sports activities story on the town this summer season.

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Gregg Doyel, a longtime voice on the newspaper, won’t be allowed to cowl the Indiana Fever, which drafted Caitlin Clark final month, the Star confirmed Tuesday. The newspaper’s choice adopted an ungainly second at Clark’s introductory information convention final month during which Doyel made a coronary heart gesture along with his arms, mimicking one thing Clark has completed along with her household, and advised her he was glad she was in Indianapolis.

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“Indianapolis Star sports activities columnist Gregg Doyel won’t be protecting the Indiana Fever,” Star spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton wrote in an electronic mail to The Put up.

The paper didn’t provide any additional remark, saying it doesn’t touch upon personnel issues. In keeping with an individual with information of the scenario, Doyel won’t attend Fever video games in particular person this season however should write in regards to the staff.

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Earlier Tuesday, Bob Kravitz, a former Star columnist himself, reported on Doyel’s ban on his Substack e-newsletter and stated Doyel is within the midst of a two-week suspension. The particular person accustomed to the scenario confirmed the suspension to The Put up and added that it’s unpaid.

Reached for remark, Doyel referred The Put up to the Indianapolis Star.

The numerous punishment for Doyel creates an uncommon scenario in Indianapolis, the place one of many best-known sportswriters out there can write in regards to the metropolis’s most vital sports activities story solely from a distance. Clark captivated the nation throughout a record-setting senior yr at Iowa, during which she drove record-setting viewership of ladies’s basketball and spikes in tickets gross sales wherever she performed.

The Fever snapped her up with the primary choose within the WNBA draft, bringing along with her a flurry of pleasure. Six thousand followers packed the Fever’s area simply to look at the choice. She was launched in Indianapolis to the native media on April 17, the place her interplay with Doyel shortly turned nationwide information.

“You want that?” Clark requested after Doyel made the center gesture along with his arms.

“I like that you simply’re right here,” Doyel replied.

“I do this at my household after each sport,” Clark stated, to which Doyel responded: “Begin doing it to me and we’ll get alongside simply high quality.”

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Doyel, who has a historical past of being a lightning rod on social media, apologized in a subsequent column. “In my haste to be intelligent, to be acquainted and welcoming (or so I assumed), I offended Caitlin and her household,” he wrote. “After going by way of denial, after which anger – I’m on the incorrect aspect of this? Me??? – I now understand what I stated and the way I stated it was incorrect, incorrect, incorrect.”

A Fever spokesman didn’t reply to a request for remark. A WNBA spokesman declined to remark when requested whether or not the league or staff had spoken to the Star about Doyel.

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