Being a fan and a reporter for certain women's sports is different than say football, men's basketball, baseball, and men's soccer. If you look sports like professional women's soccer in its earlier years, college softball, college women's soccer, even college women's basketball.... and other sports like wrestling. Reporters, fans, etc are don't openly criticize coacheds, players, etc. Many media types are player-friendly, have relationships with coaches and players. The mantra is that you should support the players, coaches, and the sport in general. I think of Meg Linehan, a key journalist in women's soccer. She grew her career covering the sport while the professional leagues were in their infancies, fighting for resources, fighting to gain support. She actually helped line fields, etc. She has largely been rarely critical of players and coaches because (a) she was friends with them and (b) criticizing any would hurt relationship and damage the ability to get inside access. You HAD to "support" the sport that was trying to get off the ground, gain an audience, gain resources, etc. I think this is often the case for many female sports that have those dynamics: growth, gain audience, grow resources, gain TV coverage, improve conditions, etc. I believe that has happened for the most part with those sports I mention above. The WNBA is getting more "criticism" but that often comes from outsiders like men's basketball analysts or twitter fans. But the WNBA analysts rarely criticize players or call out coaches. This seems to be more of a thing for male sports, especially revenue ones. We feel freel to criticize Pry, Fuente, Buzz, Mike Young. You "trust the coaches until you don't trust the coaches. fan criticism that people say "are stupid and fans don't know much" are often borne out when you see the reasons coaches are fired. But this isn't the case for those other sports that "need support". These are kind of like "insider sports" where fans, reporters, journalists, analysts are insiders who are part of the sport, even feel ownership of it. The audiences are smaller and know each other and criticizing anyone seems dangerous and blasphemous. You might not even see analysis because analysis has the potential to be seen as criticizing, even if valid critiques are, well, valid. This is not about Chip. His statement about not being a "professional reporter" made me think of this topic. It is something that i have had conversations with a reporter who does cover the NWSL. It feels like this for a lot of non-revenue, small revenue, even establish sports that are fighting to gain a wide place in the sports world