'Women's Basketball Media Is Just P.R.', OutKick's Dan Zaksheske On Asking Dawn Staley The Trans Question

OutKick’s Dan Zaksheske went on "Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich" and discussed the negative responses he received after asking South Carolina’s Dawn Staley a question about transgenders in women’s sports.

The day before Staley’s Gamecocks were set to face the Iowa Hawkeyes for the women’s basketball national championship, Zaksheske asked Staley about her thoughts on transgender women (or, biological males) being allowed to play in women’s sports. 

Here’s the video of the interaction.

His question and her subsequent response created a firestorm across the internet, and caused many to accuse him of asking a question at the wrong time. However, Zaksheske pointed out that if there was a time to ask that question, it was in that setting.

"One of the biggest hate responses I’ve been getting is, this is not an appropriate time to ask this question, and I couldn’t disagree with that more," Zaksheske said. "In fact I prefaced my question by saying ‘Dawn you’re talking all about how important women’s sports are,’ what better time to ask about an issue facing women’s sports? This was the biggest weekend in women's sports probably ever…and you’re going to tell me this is some sort of non-sequitur question that had nothing to do (with this)?"  

He further pointed out that he was in the press room on a day where Staley wasn’t coaching a game, which further showed that it was a reasonable time to ask the question.

"I asked her about an issue facing women’s sports.’It’s unbelievable that people think this was a ridiculous question. This wasn’t in a postgame (press conference), this was an off day question." Zaksheske said. "She answered 12 questions before my question came, and very few of them were about the game."

His experience showed him that journalists who cover women’s college basketball aren’t actually committed to doing any real journalism. Instead, they want to do all they can to glamorize the sport and shield people like her from criticism.

"Here’s what I learned the most this weekend. There’s no such thing as a women’s basketball media, they’re just PR," Zaksheske said. "Everyone there was mad at me because it created negative attention, but they're there to prompt this, and promote her and that was it. And they were mad that someone came in and asked a difficult question at that moment.