Joe Kinsey on Lia Thomas and OutKick’s Woke Brackets

CLAY: I bet our guest now, who is one of the great writers at OutKick.com, Joe Kinsey will probably be having a few beers. What’s your beer of choice on St. Patrick’s Day, Joe?

KINSEY: Ah, Guinness. I’m just a Guinness guy. Love Guinness. Give me a Guinness on draft, a lot of head on it, Clay, and I’ll suck those down all right.

CLAY: Careful with the word choice there. All right. We got a woke bracket that is up at OutKick that you have done an incredible job on. We’re gonna get to that in a moment.

But first your writing this morning on the situation with the transgender Penn swimmer who had a three-second win in the 500. This story still not being covered very much in the world of sports because it proves that a biological man who decides to become a woman has a substantial competitive advantage, at least based on the results so far. I believe the Penn transgender swimmer, this biological male, won by three seconds in the 500 prelims. What can you tell us about the latest on this story and where it’s headed?

KINSEY: Well, Clay, we have Lia Thomas, the transgender Penn swimmer, as you said, he swam a 4:33.82, and that — yes. It was three seconds faster than the next — the next qualifier, Erica Sullivan. We have a situation that is now the fastest time in the 500 freestyle in the nation this season, even faster than Brooke Forde – Pat Forde, who is Sports Illustrated writer, faster than his daughter who won, Clay. She won a silver medal at the Olympics in August for the 4×200 freestyle team for the United States.

So not only is Lia Thomas dominating the swimming, Lia Thomas is beating Olympic silver medalist, Clay. That is where we’re at. We’re headed into the final tonight at 6 PM, and Lia Thomas — if it stands as it stands now, it’s gonna be a question if she breaks the — he, he — breaks the pool record and wins the national title.

CLAY: Yeah, what is that nobody be number, what is the pool record, like, how close is it to being broken?

KINSEY: The pool record is 4:30.81. We’re talking three seconds. This was the qualifier, you know, this wasn’t leave it all in the pool. So three seconds, could come down tonight. I mean, we could be talking about a new pool record for the NCAA championships.

BUCK: So just to be very clear, Joe, I don’t follow swimming in general at the NCAA level; so when you say pool record, is it, then, possible that tonight at I think 6 Eastern they have the 500 freestyle national championships, right. Tonight you could have a transgender female hold the all-time record for the NCAA for the 500 meter freestyle swim, right? So is it possible that it wouldn’t just be this year, it would be number one all time?

KINSEY: So Lia Thomas would have to beat Katie Ledecky, you know, the most decorated women’s female swimming champion of all time who has a 4:24. That is the NCAA record. Lia Thomas would have to beat a 4:24.06. So is it possible? Well, Lia Thomas just swam the fastest time in the nation, and it could fall tonight. We could see an all-time record and a pool record and national championship. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s out of the question.

BUCK: And what of some of the other women — one of the things I know you at OutKick and Clay and I have been talking about here, as you guys have been covering the story, is that there’s this fear of women who are actually biological women who are swimming against Lia Thomas, and they understand this is biochemically unfair and kind of outrageous to them, but they’re worried about speaking out.

I mean, are there more people that are coming forward right now, you think? Are they willing to speak to the press more about this? Or are they gonna wait until Lia Thomas becomes perhaps the national champion and then there will be more outcry? How do you see that playing out?

KINSEY: Well, we know that Brooke Forde who is entering the finals in the sixth place position, we know through her father who released a statement in January who said, “I’m perfectly fine with this. Whatever happens, happens.” Well, here’s what happens. You are an Olympic champion who is now going to lose, as it stands right now, Brooke Forde will lose a national championship to a guy. And Pat Forde, the Sports Illustrated writer, he is on record that he understands this is an unfair playing field here.

But there’s they’re so far down the woke — you know, they’ve jumped in so deep in the woke world — that they can’t now speak out about it because then they’re gonna lose their street cred, Buck. You know, they’re in this tough situation now where Pat Forde has to watch his daughter lose to prove a point. And now Pat Forde is saying these are all politically driven, these are political people that are making this a problem.

Well, Pat, your daughter is about to lose, you know. You know it’s a problem, and you’re unwilling to speak out about it; so, you know what? You almost deserve to lose, right?

CLAY: Joe, what’s crazy, too, is this Penn transgender swimmer says that the plan is to become a member of the 2024 women’s Olympic team. So this story, for people out there who are saying, okay, well, I don’t really care that much — and some of you may not care that much about a biological man dominating women’s swimming in college, it’s a possibility that in a couple of years this Penn transgender swimmer could be taking away an Olympic position from a biological woman and competing as a woman at the Olympics. This is full on woke insanity, right? I mean, there’s no other way to describe this.

KINSEY: Clay, as long as these numbers continue, Lia Thomas will be an Olympic swimmer for the United States swimming team. This is not some farfetched reality. This is what’s gonna happen if these times maintain — you know, if Lia Thomas maintains these times, Lia Thomas will be on the Olympic team. Lia Thomas will take a biological female spot-on the Olympic team.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Joe Kinsey of OutKick.com. He’s got a story up on Lia Thomas smashing the records, the times of biological females in the NCAA swimming championship preliminary rounds.

Joe, to the point about the Olympics, one thing Clay and I have been talking about is how once this starts to be, you know, look, NCAA swimming is obviously no money in it or I don’t — maybe you can sell your identity — not identity. You know what I mean.

CLAY: I think that’s already happened.

BUCK: That’s a different thing. You know, you can sell your image and likeness. That’s what I was trying to think of, but in general there’s no money in swimming.

But when you get to gold metals and when you get to Olympic medalists, I’ve seen assessments that say that that’s worth seven figures to people in terms of endorsements and speaking engagements, et cetera. So how does the International Olympic Committee treat this situation? I mean, do we know what are the rules about someone like Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, competing for actual medals at an actual Olympics?

KINSEY: Well, Buck, they’ve been rewriting the legislation and they’ve got pages and pages of you gotta go through this process and you gotta prove this and you gotta go before the doctors. And, let’s face it, Buck. Everything that they’ve written this year as far as legislation, none of it is going to stop Lia Thomas from competing for a spot on that team, none of it, Buck. Because Lia Thomas came out a week or two ago and said, listen. I am gonna go back and go get a law degree or something like that, I guess, and I am gonna train for the Olympics. And this is not gonna stop Lia Thomas.

There’s nothing that the U.S. Olympic team that has put forward to stop a transgender swimmer from competing in the London games. And that is where this is headed. We are seeing the early stages of what is setting up for one of the most insane stories in Olympic history.

CLAY: You mentioned — and I want to get to this ’cause I think people will love it — the amount of American sports media that is woke is like — what do you think, Joe? You’ve been doing this for a long time — 95%? If you were analyzing people in sports media, what percentage of them do you think voted Biden over Trump?

KINSEY. Oh, my God. It’s easily into the nineties. And I would have to say into the mid-nineties. Clay, we have very few instances where we know of blue checkmarks that aren’t in the woke world.

CLAY: I’m one of the few, right? I’m one of the few who’s actually come out and said I was willing to vote for Trump. The reason I bring this up with you, Joe, is because you mention the Pat Forde who I believe writes now at Sports Illustrated. His daughter is an Olympian which is an incredible accomplishment. She may lose her chance to win an NCAA championship to a guy, and Pat Forde is in some way defending this.

And he is a part — you’ve done this as a second year in a row where we have a woke sports media bracket challenge — for people out there who like to do bracket voting and have fun with it, you’ve got 20 different woke sports media brackets. Last year Jemele Hill, who memorably called the president a white supremacist and got to keep working at ESPN, she won. So we’ve pulled her out of the ranks, but this is pretty entertaining. 20 different people all competing for the title of OutKick’s woke bracket challenge winner.

KINSEY: Clay, this — this has become my calling card. You know, the readers request it, they want the bracket, they want the woke All-Star challenge. Listen. We had trouble coming up with number one seeds, there were so many people that could have been a number one seed in this bracket. We have Rex Chapman, your buddy. He’s you know, he’s one of the craziest.

CLAY: You even know these guys. Listen to the one seeds. Rex Chapman who is insufferable on social media. We’ve got Keith Olbermann, who you texted me this morning, is trying to steal somebody else’s show at MSNBC.

BUCK: Yep. He’s a true lunatic.

CLAY: Darren Rovell, who covers sports media and business and has turned into an insane man over covid. He wears, like, 40 different masks a day. And then we’ve got Mina Kimes, who has got into a woke battle. So people love this. I mean, you even, Buck, I think will enjoy it. So we have oddsmakers putting up lines, breaking down the matchup, and then we just let everybody vote for it, and people flood in like crazy to read Joe’s breakdown.

KINSEY: Yes. Clay, the thing about the woke challenge is, is we have competitors that I think love the woke challenge and they’re trying to win it, Clay. They really want to win this. Keith Olbermann, he went nuts this week. He wants to win this, Clay. This is what it’s all about. They want to prove how woke they are, and this is one of the ways they do it.

BUCK: There’s no such thing as too woke to the woke. That’s what you have to remember. They can always be crazier, and it sounds like, gentleman, they’re gonna try to prove it.

CLAY: Yeah, so go check it out. Joe, we appreciate the time. OutKick.com, people can go check out the woke bracket, they can follow you @JoeKinseyEXP, I’ll tweet out your handle if people are interested and they can stay updated as well. Joe, appreciate the time. Enjoy the games, and enjoy St. Patrick’s Day, bud.

KINSEY: See you, guys.