New York Times-owned Athletic podcast trashes female athletes who defend women’s sports

The New York Times-owned Athletic distributed a podcast this week in which one host dismissed a 12-time All-American swimmer as "not even a very good one," while another smirked and laughed at an eight-year WNBA veteran because she isn’t the best player in the league.

Quite the celebration of female athletes.

Charlotte Wilder and Madeline Hill made those comments on the latest episode of "The Sports Gossip Show," which is distributed through The Athletic Podcast Network.

Wilder went after Riley Gaines and Hill said Sophie Cunningham’s basketball career would only last so long because "she’s not the best player."

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Sophie Cunningham's eight-year WNBA career was mocked as podcast hosts accused her of launching a "right-wing grift" for defending women's sports. (IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect)

Then Hill smirked, gave a condescending laugh and repeated herself.

"She’s not."

Well, no. Cunningham isn’t the best player in the WNBA. Nobody said she was. She has merely spent eight seasons playing in the best women’s basketball league in the world, which apparently isn’t enough to earn respect from two people hosting a "sports" podcast.

Then the hosts accused Cunningham of launching a "right-wing grift," plotting a post-basketball conservative career and becoming a Republican "mouthpiece." They also described signs and shirts supporting women's sports as "anti-trans" and suggested that some young girls involved in the movement might lack "critical thinking skills."

Did we mention these two women, particularly Wilder, fancy themselves as champions of other women?

In 2019, Wilder told the Washington Post, "For my whole career I’ve tried [to] be helpful and supportive of other women in the industry."

She sure has a funny way of showing it, huh?

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The Athletic, owned by The New York Times Company, distributes "The Sports Gossip Show" through its podcast network. The show joined the network under a licensing agreement in 2025.

This particular episode even labeled the segment attacking Cunningham, "Sophie Cunningham’s right-wing grift."

Subtle, right?

The problem is that the facts don’t cooperate with it.

Female excellence only counts when the politics align

Wilder’s swipe at Gaines is the easiest place to begin because whether Gaines was a good swimmer isn’t a matter of political opinion.

She earned 12 All-America honors at Kentucky, won three individual conference championships, set two SEC records and qualified for the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials. Gaines tied for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Championships, and one of her conference-title swims was, at the time, the 16th-fastest in American history. Kentucky called her one of the most decorated swimmers in program history.

Not very good, huh?

Riley Gaines holds a sign thanking Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham for speaking out to protect women's sports. (Riley Gaines/XX-XY Athletics)

Perhaps Wilder only considers Olympic gold medalists to be good swimmers. That would be a strange standard for someone whose own website describes her as "the sports expert," but at least it would be a standard.

More likely, the line served a simpler purpose. Diminish Gaines’ athletic accomplishments, and listeners don’t have to wrestle seriously with what happened to her or why she speaks about women’s sports.

Hill used a similar move against Cunningham with her condescending characterization of Cunningham as "not the best player."

Cunningham was drafted in 2019 and has remained in the world’s top women’s basketball league since. She appeared in the 2021 WNBA Finals and ranks among the top 10 in league history in true shooting percentage, making her one of the most efficient shooters the WNBA has ever seen. Plus, Cunningham is in her eighth WNBA season, roughly twice the length of the average player’s career, and Hill still found her accomplishments worthy of derision.

Almost every girl who has ever picked up a basketball would consider reaching the WNBA an extraordinary achievement.

Hill treated it as a joke because Cunningham thinks women's sports should be for women only.

That’s quite a message from two women being paid to discuss women’s sports: female athletic accomplishments count right up until the athlete disagrees with them.

The left's new favorite insult: "grifter"

Calling Cunningham a "grifter" is different from saying she’s wrong, opportunistic or enjoying the attention.

A grift involves deception. The accusation only makes sense if Cunningham is pretending to hold a belief she doesn’t actually hold because she thinks the act will make her money or extend her celebrity.

That’s what Wilder and Hill were alleging, whether they wanted to say it that plainly or not.

Hill said Cunningham "knows what she’s doing." The hosts speculated that defending female sports was her post-retirement strategy, suggested Republicans were using her to deliver talking points and predicted she would speak at the next Republican National Convention.

Their evidence?

Cunningham spoke publicly, posed with Gaines and former Levi’s executive Jennifer Sey and her player-exclusive Adidas shoe sold out in hours after doubling down on her position.

Riley Gaines, Sophie Cunningham, and XX-XY Athletics founder Jen Sey pose courtside after an Indiana Fever game with a sign thanking Cunningham. (Riley Gaines/XX-XY Athletics)

Those facts show that Cunningham’s stance has increased her popularity with a segment of the public. They might even show that she recognizes the commercial benefit.

They don’t establish that she’s lying.

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Cunningham said Wednesday that the ESPN interview took place in February and that the writer directly asked her about transgender athletes in women’s sports. She answered the question, then spent the next several months saying virtually nothing about it until ESPN published the story.

That’s an odd way to launch a carefully planned grift. Answer one question, keep quiet and wait for someone else to make it public?

A person can sincerely believe something and make money from saying it. Wilder and Hill should understand that better than most. They are, after all, paid to deliver progressive political opinions into microphones. Presumably, they don’t view their own salaries as proof they’re lying.

Plus, Cunningham’s position didn’t suddenly appear when Adidas released a shoe.

In 2022, Cunningham shared a message criticizing the participation of Lia Thomas in women’s college swimming and said athletes should have the opportunity to compete fairly. That was four years before this supposed "hard pivot right."

That doesn’t prove Cunningham has never considered the career benefits of speaking out. It does create a rather significant problem for the claim that she invented this belief as a convenient retirement plan.

The hosts provided no evidence of political coordination, compensation from conservative groups or private statements contradicting Cunningham’s public position.

OutKick/Fox News Digital reached out to Wilder and Hill and asked if they could provide that evidence and explain whether calling Cunningham a grifter meant they believed she was lying. Neither responded by the publication deadline.

They just announced that her sincerity was fake, kept talking and didn't respond to a request to provide proof.

Then they turned their contempt toward teenage girls.

It’s one thing to take cheap shots at Gaines and Cunningham, two highly successful adult women who can answer for themselves.

It’s quite another to aim that same condescension at teenage girls, particularly girls who have already lost to biological males in girls’ sports.

But that’s where Wilder and Hill went next.

Wilder praised Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve for questioning whether young girls holding signs at WNBA games understood the "real" threats facing women’s sports. She also described the XX-XY Athletics shirts worn by the girls as "anti-trans," though she never explained what language or imagery on the shirts attacked transgender people.

She then suggested that some people involved might lack "critical thinking skills" or hadn’t been "taught how to think about these things."

One of the girls they were discussing was Ahnaleigh Wilson.

Wilson didn’t arrive at her position because Republicans tricked her into it. She became involved after losing a girls’ 1,600-meter race to a biological male athlete when she was 14-years-old.

Athletic podcast hosts questioned teenage girls' critical thinking skills while ignoring that some had lost competitions to biological males. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

I interviewed Wilson in 2024. Her position wasn’t hateful, and it certainly wasn’t thoughtless.

"It isn’t fair, and it isn’t working for biological girls," Wilson said. "And it isn’t fair, and it isn’t working for transgender athletes."

Wilson had considered how the policy affected everyone involved. She simply didn’t reach the conclusion Wilder and Hill demanded.

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That makes the lecture about "critical thinking skills" particularly rich. A basic search would have revealed that one of the girls they were dismissing had personally experienced the exact competitive problem they claimed wasn’t a threat to women’s sports.

And Wilson wasn’t alone.

NCAA softball player Kendall Kotzmacher attended a rally supporting Cunningham in Minnesota after her final high-school game ended in a state-championship tournament loss to a team featuring a biological male pitcher. The pitcher held Kotzmacher’s team to two runs and hit a double that helped set up the winning run.

Kotzmacher said a counterprotester at the rally told her she "should’ve been aborted." She also said she had received death threats and hateful messages after speaking publicly about her experience.

These weren’t teenage girls parroting political talking points they didn’t understand. They were female athletes who had competed against biological males, lost races and potential championships, and then faced abuse for talking about it.

None of that made it into the discussion before Wilder lectured the girls about how to think.

That’s quite a display of intellectual curiosity from someone hosting a podcast for a New York Times-owned outlet.

The Athletic is distributing more than sports gossip.

By the end of the segment, the conversation had drifted well beyond Cunningham.

Hill accused Republicans of distracting from "snatching people off the street and murdering people on the street." Wilder claimed there is more money in conservative commentary because rich people support Republicans who "don’t tax billionaires."

Neither provided specific evidence for those claims during the episode.

That’s their right. Podcasts contain opinions, jokes and exaggerations. "The Sports Gossip Show" doesn't pretend to be a nightly newscast and no one would mistake these two for serious or seasoned political journalists.

But "gossip" isn’t a magic word that makes factual claims immune from scrutiny.

Wilder said Gaines wasn’t a good swimmer. Her record says otherwise.

The hosts said Cunningham’s position was a grift. They didn’t show that she was being dishonest.

They treated supportive signs as anti-trans without identifying any anti-trans language.

And they questioned whether young girls knew how to think about the issue while leaving out that at least one of those girls had experienced it firsthand.

A demonstrator protests before the WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx. (Getty Images)

OutKick/Fox News Digital sent detailed questions to Wilder and Hill asking them to explain those claims. OutKick/Fox News Digital also contacted The Athletic and The New York Times Company to ask what standards apply to content distributed through The Athletic Podcast Network and whether either company stood by the episode.

None responded by the publication deadline.

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The issue is not that Wilder and Hill hold strong opinions. It's that they made factual and motive-based claims about athletes without showing the evidence needed to support them. They also launched multiple personal attacks.

Riley Gaines held the wrong political opinion, so her 12 All-America honors no longer made her a good swimmer. Sophie Cunningham held the wrong political opinion, so Hill smirked at an eight-year WNBA career and dismissed her as "not the best player." Teenage girls held the wrong political opinion, so their firsthand experiences became evidence that they hadn’t learned how to think.

The hosts didn’t rebut these women and girls. They diminished their accomplishments, questioned their sincerity and treated their experiences as irrelevant.

Apparently, female athletes deserve support only until they defend female sports.