Internet Outraged At Adam Schefter For Forgetting The WNBA Draft Happened
As the draft started last night, Adam Schefter fired this tweet off to the masses. Live games have been cancelled in the country for over a month. We're all missing sports and are grasping at anything we can get: a documentary about the Bulls, NFL free agency and trades, the draft, etc. So harmless enough tweet, right?
Wrong. Adam Schefter exposed himself as a despicable sexist for forgetting the WNBA draft happened a mere 6 days ago on his own network. Fire up the Internet outrage machine.
And there's plenty more where that came from. Blue checkmarks across sports media came out to crucify Schefter for this obvious display of sexism. How could he possibly forget about a draft on his own network?!? Is he saying the WNBA isn't a real sport? Does Schefty hate women?!? Some on Twitter responded to those above tweets with something along the lines of "...yeah and?" But a few hours later, Schefter followed up with an apology tweet.
Love the "apologies to anyone who was offended" from Schefter. I'm sure he himself realized how ridiculous it was but just didn't feel like dealing with the outrage anymore. The man has like 9 different phones calling every NFL GM and agent and probably didn't want to deal with faux outrage from the Internet.
Now is the WNBA a real sport? Yes. Was their draft a real live sporting event? Sure. Is the NFL Draft a million times bigger? Yes. Is Adam Schefter a sexist for his tweet? No. All those things can be true.
While the WNBA draft was broadcast on ESPN and did get a ratings bump, it was still only watched by 387,000 people. Guess how many people watched the NFL draft last night? 6.1 million. Roughly 15x as many viewers. It's just a fact that between mock drafts, trades, viewership, and everything else, the NFL Draft is a way way way bigger event than the WNBA Draft. Also Adam Schefter is an NFL insider, not a WNBA insider. He's probably been working around the clock for the past few weeks mining for NFL Draft news. Forgive him for missing a couple of hours of the WNBA draft last Friday night.
The most infuriating thing is that I'd guarantee you a vast majority of all those blue checkmarks and Internet heroes crucifying Schefter didn't even watch the WNBA Draft themselves. They just a found new thing to get mad at and ran with it. But a lot of them are hypocritical.
Let's, for example, look at WNBA superfan Zach Miller. I included his tweet to Schefter above. I scrolled through his account and did some research. He had several tweets about the NFL Draft last night. Want to guess how many he had about the WNBA Draft last Friday? Yup. Zero. Weird!
Overall, it was just another reason for people to get mad and stomp their feet on the Internet. Should Schefter have known the WNBA Draft happened since it aired on his network? Probably. Did he deserve the Internet lynch mob because of his tweet? Absolute not.
The Internet outrage machine will now move on to its next victim.