It’s Over: Sports Illustrated Is Officially Dead After Astonishingly Gross Sophie Cunningham Headline
The article discusses an incident from a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky, where Sophie Cunningham was clotheslined in the face by Dijonai Carrington. The foul was upgraded to a Flagrant 2, leading to Carrington’s ejection. Sports Illustrated covered this, but its headline described the foul as “A Bitter Taste of Karma,” which sparked controversy. Critics, including Outkick Sports’ Clay Travis, argued that the headline was misleading because it implied Cunningham deserved the foul based on past actions from over a year ago, specifically a 2025 incident where Cunningham was defending teammate Caitlin Clark and retaliated against Jacy Sheldon, now a Sky player. The article suggests that Sports Illustrated’s framing was biased, especially considering Cunningham’s outspoken stance against trans Athletes, which the author perceives as being unfairly implicated in the incident’s narrative. The piece also critiques the decline in Sports Illustrated’s journalistic integrity over recent years and highlights the cultural and ideological biases present in sports media coverage.
Sports Illustrated had an interesting choice of words after Saturday’s WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky.
Although the Fever would best the Sky 90-86, the story that made headlines came with two minutes remaining in the first quarter, when the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham was clotheslined to the face by the Sky’s Dijonai Carrington in a moment that Fox News’ Outkick Sports reported left the star player with a bloody mouth.
Carrington was given a foul, upgraded to a Flagrant 2, and subsequently ejected from the game.
Sports Illustrated covered the game, but their headline called the violent foul a “Bitter Taste of Karma.”
Outkick’s Clay Travis posted a screenshot to social media platform X with the full headline that read, “Sophie Cunningham Got a Bitter Taste of Karma After Drawing Flagrant Foul in Fever-Sky.”
Sports Illustrated’s headline is “Sophie Cunningham got a bitter taste of karma” by getting clotheslined. Sports media is broken. It’s way more left wing than political media. pic.twitter.com/svrY06F0JP
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 8, 2026
“Karma” for what, exactly? Sports Illustrated claimed its article was referring to Cunningham’s actions from June 2025 in a game between the Fever and the Connecticut Sun.
There, Cunningham was given a Flagrant 2 for a play against the Sun’s Jacy Sheldon. Sheldon now plays for the Sky.
Outkick said the reaction to the headline was so strong, Sports Illustrated decided to change it.
It now reads, “Sophie Cunningham’s Enforcer Role Gets Reversed Onto Her With Hard Foul in Fever-Sky.”
Who would honestly look at Cunningham being bashed in the face and believe it had anything to do with a game against the Sun from over a year ago?
The two fouls are not even comparable.
For starters, Cunningham, during the 2025 game, was playing her role as “enforcer” for the Fever and defender of Fever star Caitlin Clark. Cunningham grabbing Sheldon was in direct retaliation for Sheldon poking Clark in the eye earlier in the game.
Sheldon knew it, the officiating crew knew it, and the fans knew it. Cunningham herself was not surprised she was thrown out of the game for it. (“Last year, I did the same thing, and I got kicked out,” she told ESPN discussing Saturday’s fracas. “And I deserved to be kicked out.”)
Sports Illustrated didn’t see fit to mention that context outright, since it would have destroyed the article’s whole point. Instead, it merely included a link to a story last year — a link that was likely ignored by the vast majority of the article’s readers.
Theologically, of course, the concept of “karma” and the accrual of multiple lives it entails is diametrically opposed to Christianity, so no one should take it seriously. But as a slang term for cosmic comeuppance, it has its uses.
And anyone following the sport knows the “karma” Sports Illustrated has in mind came after Cunningham’s July profile with ESPN, in which she defended young girls and denounced “trans” athletes playing against them.
“I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” Cunningham told ESPN.
That does not sound controversial to anyone with an ounce of sanity, but ideologues who believe men can become women obviously lack even that.
In other words, Sports Illustrated implied that Cunningham got a good bashing for being a transphobic bigot.
Imagine Cunningham being a black woman and getting this treatment. You would see black activists out in droves, demanding diversity training and protesting WNBA games.
In recent years, Sports Illustrated has gone drastically downhill in quality and journalistic integrity. Perhaps not coincidentally, their impact has diminished over time as well: What was once a quality weekly sports news magazine started publishing only biweekly in 2018, then just once a month in 2020, according to the New York Post.
So it’s ironic that they would be the ones to label the Sophie Cunningham foul a “Bitter Taste of Karma.”
That title could just as easily describe the situation in which the once highly respected publication now finds itself.
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