The modern sports mediot hype machine really does aim low on the audience IQ level, assuming—perhaps correctly—that modern readers are not very smart. The attempt to make NCAA women’s basketball player Caitlin Clark some kind of hero is exactly what we’re talking about right now … just as we clarified this a few weeks ago, too. Today, as you may have read somewhere, she set a record that actually means nothing.

When Clark is now eighth on her own team in both effective FG percentage and true-shooting percentage, you know something is wrong with the mediots trying to make her a “thing” … it just gets tiring. Now, the media is trying to pretend she’s a better “scorer” than 1960s legend Pete Maravich, which just defies all logic for the reasons we will explain factually below. What galls us is the gullibility the mediots assume.

First off, Maravich only played 3 seasons of college basketball at Louisiana State University, since freshmen were not allowed to play varsity back then. So, when it takes any athlete 4 years to break a record that was set in 3 years, that should set off alarms in anyone’s common-sense compartment. Do the mediots really think their audience is that clueless? Evidently, because no one seems to mention this tiny bit of context.

Why? It would ruin the hyperbolic narrative, of course. It’s like Michael Phelps or Simone Biles winning their 50 Olympic medals over 8 Olympiads as paid professionals—breaking records of athletes who only competed in 2-3 Games at most and were amateurs supporting themselves financially. You just cannot compare the 2 different scenarios … like Roger Maris getting 8 more games to break a Babe Ruth record.

Second, Maravich averaged 44.2 ppg in his career, while Clark has only averaged 28.3 ppg in her career. So, clearly, the mediots don’t mention that, either, because that contextual fact also would ruin their hyperbolic narrative. But in a rush to try to make college sports seem “equitable” the mediots just ignore or omit basic contextual realities, thereby lying to the audience and fabricating myths about Clark’s accomplishments.

How can anyone who scores almost 16 ppg less than the comparative be considered “better” than the comparative? They cannot—period. Toss in the fact that Clark has been able to benefit from the 3-point shot, too, while Maravich could not, and it’s an even sillier suggestion to insinuate that Clark is “better” than Maravich. But hey, the mediots just expect readers to go along with their spin without even fact checking it.

We’ve been teaching college courses in a variety of disciplines—critical thinking, economics, education, English, film, history, humanities, journalism, law, leadership, literature, and university skills—for over 25 years. We know that two thirds of college graduates today do not possess the critical thinking skills to process complex information; this is just a sad fact, for numerous reasons that would take a dissertation to explain.

The ability to see through hyperbole intended to sell a false narrative is a skill demanded in the modern work force. Why sports mediots believe they can get away with this for a low-IQ sports audience is just sad—and it says a lot about the people who follow sports today, in truth. So, we challenge you, our readers, to do better with your critical reading and critical thinking in sports content you consume; even ours, of course.