Indianapolis Star gets it right by sidelining reporter after Caitlin Clark incident

Fresh off a historic NCAA Tournament that drew record viewership, the women's game is in an unbelievably healthy place. Ticket demand for the WNBA is through the roof, and many teams have had to move their games to larger arenas to accommodate this unprecedented surge in popularity. The level of play in the women's game has never been higher, and there are more recognizable stars in the game than ever before. We really are living in the golden age of women's basketball.

It's been called "The Caitlin Clark Effect," and for good reason. The former Iowa Hawkeyes superstar has captured the imaginations of fans with her charisma and basketball ingenuity, and even though she hasn't played a regular-season WNBA game yet, she's already positioned herself as the face of the sport.

As phenomenal as Clark is, her ascension to superstar status has also shown us the uglier side of sports, though it's through no fault of her own. In her introductory press conference after being drafted by the Indiana Fever with the first overall pick, Clark was subjected to a bizarre interaction with Indianapolis Star writer Gregg Doyel in which Doyel mimicked the "heart hands" gesture Clark uses to communicate with her family in the crowd and said, "Start doing it to me and we'll get along just fine."

Clark has been nothing but professional in the face of such creepiness and idiocy, and she again handled herself well after a different reporter asked her recently if her "bae" was at the game.

It came out yesterday that Doyel was suspended for two weeks for his off-putting press conference behavior. Not only that, he's been taken off the Indiana Fever beat and won't be covering the team this season. This is great news for Clark and anyone who wants to see the WNBA succeed because, with all of the positive things happening for Clark and women's sports (such as the WNBA announcing two days ago that teams would be using chartered flights for this upcoming season), there should be no room for that kind of coverage.

Gregg Doyel's suspension is a small sign that maybe the coverage of women's sports is ready to evolve

Clark isn't the only one that has dealt with foolishness in the media and the population at large, with Brittney Griner and Megan Rapinoe being just two of the prominent female athletes that have dealt with hatred and bad faith arguments in recent years. Even Clark's opponent in the last two NCAA Tournaments, Angel Reese, has seen it up close and personal, as she tearfully disclosed in LSU's press conference after her Tigers lost to Clark's Hawkeyes in the Elite Eight this year.

The rivalry between Clark and Reese is undoubtedly good for the sport, and it will continue on June 1 when Clark's Fever meets Reese's Chicago Sky this upcoming season. While Clark and Reese have been antagonists on the court, though, the way they've been pitted against one another (even as they've professed respect and admiration for one another) has been taken too far. No player should have to endure death threats, or be likened to a "cowardly dog" like Reese was by Fox Sports' Emmanuel Acho, for example.

We need to be platforming champions of the women's game, like Holly Rowe and Chiney Ogwumike, not giving airtime to people like Doyel and Acho who either don't understand how to interact with women or just want to use them as a springboard for terrible hot takes.

As a society, we still have a long way to go in how we treat women in general, and we certainly have a long way to go in how we cover women's sports. Female athletes have been treated as second-class citizens for far too long, but hopefully the explosion in popularity of women's basketball will usher in a new era of coverage that excludes the Gregg Doyels and Emmanuel Achos of the world and instead focuses on the simple fact that these women are amazing athletes and representatives of their sport. Maybe that will be the real "Caitlin Clark Effect."