Ben Bolch’s LA Times article “Commentary: UCLA-LSU is America’s sweethearts vs. its basketball villains” received a lot of backlash for the supposed ‘racist’ undertones in it and the Times’ editorial team had to remove parts from the piece later on. In the article, the battle between UCLA and Angel Reese’s LSU was termed “Milk and Cookies vs Louisiana Hot Sauce“. It was just one of the many examples of the “heroes vs villains” narrative in the LA Times piece.
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The article prompted a lot of backlash for trying to antagonize a team with a lot of Black players. On her Insta stories, Angel Reese posted a picture of milk & cookies with the caption “WE LOVEEEE MILK & COOKIES”. On his Nightcap Podcast, Shannon Sharpe sat down with NFL legend Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and discussed Reese’s reaction to the LA Times article.
The duo agreed that the article from the UCLA beat writer Bolch had racial undertones. The former NFL stars lamented the fact that Black athlete-led teams often face such narratives where they are portrayed as villains and the ‘bad guys’. On the other hand, White athlete-led teams get much favourable labeling. Unc Sharpe cited the 1988 football game between Notre Dame and Miami to corroborate his argument. This college game was infamously termed “Catholics vs Convicts” with predominantly White Notre Dame referred to as ‘Catholics’ and the Miami side being labeled as ‘Convicts’.
“Why doesn’t a predominantly White team ever get labeled as villains or convicts? You remember Miami and Notre Dame, it was the Catholics versus the Convicts. Why don’t the other side ever get labeled in a derogatory manner,” Sharpe said to Johnson.
Then the Nightcap pod host referred to the upcoming battle between Caitlin Clark’s Iowa vs Angel Reese’s LSU, which will be a rematch of last year’s Final. He found this Elite Eight battle akin to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s title game in the 1979 NCAA Finals, when Johnson’s Michigan State clashed against Bird’s Sycamores.
“You know you had one segment pulling for Bird and we know the segment that was pulling for Magic. This is a similar situation where you got Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. We know one side is pulling for one and other side is pulling for other. That’s just the way it is,” added Sharpe
Therefore, the former tight end’s gripe is about Reese’s representation in popular media. Apart from Sharpe and Johnson, the LSU Center also received backing from teammate Hailey Van Lith.
Hailey Van Lith defends Angel Reese
LSU’s versatile scoring guard Hailey Van Lith had scathing criticism of the LA Times piece. For her, the LSU Tigers women’s basketball team has been on the receiving end of unwarranted negativity. Bleacher Report’s Joseph Zucker covered her reactions in the post-game conference after LSU’s win against UCLA.
“We do have a lot of Black women on this team, and unfortunately, that bias does exist still today, and a lot of the people that are making those comments are being racist towards my teammates,” Van Lith said.
Apart from that, she also didn’t like the way the author called her team “dirty debutantes”. The LSU guard complained that such framing has “nothing to do with basketball”. The LA Times is on the back foot after the article and had to admit its mistakes.
