Winners of major sports championships have traditionally received invitations to the White House. What we have never seen is the losing team getting an invite to the White House.
But Jill Biden is hoping an alteration is made to that tradition for the 2023 women’s NCAA Tournament. After being in attendance for LSU’s thrilling national championship game win over Iowa in Dallas on Sunday, the first lady said she would like to have the runner-up Hawkeyes come to the White House with the Tigers.
That particular idea didn’t sit well with LSU star Angel Reese. The Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament tweeted out a link to an ESPN story about Biden’s idea and called it “a joke.”
She then went over to Instagram and stated that the team would not be coming to the White House as a result of what Jill Biden said.
On Tuesday, Jill Biden’s press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, cleared up any confusion by stating the first lady “admires how far women have advanced in sports since the passing of Title IX” and that “[her] comments in Colorado were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.”
For their part, Caitlin Clark as well as the Iowa head coach have already stated that the LSU Tigers should be the only ones to get the honor of being in the White House after the National Championship win.
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The Iowa-LSU match-up was the most-watched women’s college basketball game of all time in the US. It averaged 9.9 million viewers. The controversy surrounding the game with Angel Reese taunting Clark can only help grow the game even more. Controversy certainly sells and no other women’s national title matchup has been dissected more than this past game.
We can only hope these two meet again next year.
