A squad of Dallas teenage boys famously beat the high-flying U.S. ladies’s nationwide soccer crew in 2017, and now Clay Travis desires to see if ladies’s basketball can do higher.
Mr. Travis, host of the “OutKick the Show” podcast, supplied to pay $1 million to the Las Vegas Aces, winners of the 2022 and 2023 Women’s National Basketball Association titles, if they will beat a boys’ highschool state championship crew in a one-game contest.
Now BetOnline.ag has upped the ante, asserting Thursday it is going to award $1 million to the boys’ squad if it wins.
“We want to see this game happen — heck, I think the whole basketball world wants to see this happen, and that’s why we’ve committed to pay the million to the boys’ team should they win,” Dave Mason, BetOnline.ag model supervisor, stated in a information launch. “This would be an enormous event that would shatter viewership records and generate a ton of attention for the high school, the WNBA and the sport as a whole.”
The problem invoked comparisons to 1973’s legendary “Battle of the Sexes” between ladies’s tennis nice Billie Jean King, then 29, and 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a former top-ranked males’s participant. Ms. King received the match in three units.
I’ll put one million {dollars} on the road, your WNBA champion crew towards a 2024 highschool boy’s state champion crew of my selection. You guys win, you get one million bucks of my cash, my crew wins, you all pay me one million and I give all of it to the boy’s highschool crew. You in? https://t.co/mYheqnZJLz
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 27, 2023
That contest in Houston was hailed as a milestone in ladies’s sports activities, however this time, there’s significantly extra at stake.
A loss by the very best ladies’s professional basketball crew within the nation — and sure the world — to a bunch of adolescent boys would deal a public-relations blow to the transgender motion’s push for male-born athletes to compete in women’ and ladies’s sports activities primarily based on gender id.
Some advocates for transgender athletes insist they haven’t any inherent bodily benefits over women and girls, a declare hotly disputed by former elite opponents resembling Riley Gaines, Martina Navratilova and Nancy Hogshead-Makar.
Foes of male-born gamers in feminine sports activities usually invoke the 2017 scrimmage between the U.S. ladies’s nationwide soccer crew, among the many finest on this planet, and the FC Dallas under-15 boys’ crew. The teen boys received 5-2.
The WNBA has not commented publicly on the provide, which was spurred by Mr. Travis’ declaration that “a good state championship-caliber high school boys’ team would smoke the best team in the WNBA” after the Aces received their second straight championship.
Las Vegas level guard Chelsea Gray was having none of it. “Dumbass,” she wrote on X in response to the Oct. 25 publish.
Mr. Travis swung again two days later by unveiling his provide on X and tagging the Aces participant’s account.
“I’ll put a million dollars on the line, your WNBA champion team against a 2024 high school boys’ state champion team of my choice,” Mr. Travis tweeted. “You guys win, you get a million bucks of my money; my team wins, you all pay me a million and I give it all to the boys’ high school team. You in?”
Now that BetOnline has supplied to pay $1 million to the boys’ crew, the Aces would owe nothing in the event that they misplaced.
Ms. Gray has not responded publicly to the problem, however Mr. Travis hasn’t given up, predicting that such a matchup “would probably be the most watched WNBA game of all time.”
He doubled down on his pitch Thursday after BetOnline jumped into the motion.
“WNBA players have long complained they are underpaid,” Mr. Travis tweeted. “Now they have a chance to make $1 million by winning a single game against a high school boys’ team. (The boys would still get a million if they win too).”
Not everybody agreed with Mr. Travis’ odds. NBA participant Patrick Beverley was within the Aces’ nook, saying Mr. Travis “has to be on drugs” for pondering the boys would defeat the ladies.
“Twitter [X] chatter is arguing both sides of this matchup. In a case for the Aces, people point to professionalism and root fundamentals,” BetOnline stated. “Supporters of the high schoolers argue that the sheer physical disparity would be too much for the women to overcome.”
