Cari Champion's "Naked Sports" podcast will feature a six-episode series on Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese (seen together during the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game.) Cari Champion’s “Naked Sports” podcast will feature a six-episode series on Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese (seen together during the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game.) (Left graphic from iHeartMedia, Clark and Reese photo from Joe Camporeale/USA Today Sports.)

Cari Champion has done a lot of prominent broadcasting across outlets, from past work with ESPN and Amazon’s Prime Video through current work as a CNN contributor and as a podcast host. On that latter front, she’s done three seasons of her Naked podcast, with that featuring in-depth interviews with artists, writers, sports figures and more. Now, Champion is shifting its fourth season to Naked Sports, and kicking that off with a six-part limited series, “The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese.” Here’s a trailer for the new series:

And here’s more on it from a release:

The Black Effect Podcast Network and Cari Champion announce “Naked Sports,” a new series that will span sports, culture and politics. “Naked Sports” will launch as the fourth season of Champion’s “Naked” podcast series debuting with a captivating limited special, “The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese.”

The six-part limited series, which will join the iHeart Women’s Sports Audio Network, will explore what ignited the fire between two of the most promising stars in women’s basketball. During the series, Champion will search for answers from those who know Clark and Reese best.

“The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese” is not just about two of the brightest flames women’s basketball has ever seen, but it also asks an essential question – in a time of such divisiveness, is it possible to let greatness unite us?

There are plenty of prominent figures and entities involved here, from iHeart’s Women’s Sports Audio Network (which they launched this June with podcasts from Sarah Spain and Sheryl Swoopes, and have since expanded) to Charlamagne Tha God’s Black Effect Podcast Network.

And while Clark and Reese have certainly been extensively covered, it sounds like Champion will bring a different focus to this. Another line from the release discusses how “the media’s fixation on their so-called rivalry has been fueled by the same gender and racial bias that has haunted society,” and there’s certainly lots that can be analyzed there. (Some of Champion’s CNN work in particular has explored those kinds of areas in sports, including specifically around the WNBA and Clark, so she’s bringing a lot of experience to this.)

We’ll see how this podcast series turns out and what it adds to the discussion on Clark and Reese. But it’s definitely notable to see Champion take her long-running podcast (169 episodes so far) more specifically to sports (she’s done some sports interviews there in the past, but also many outside the sports realm), and to start that with a longer series on a topic like this rather than the standalone episodes most of her podcasts to date have been.

It’s also interesting to see this added to the Women’s Sports Audio Network, which is making splashes of its own. And a podcast from Champion should help it gain further traction. The first full episode of “The Making of a Rivalry” series is out now (including interviews with Spain, Jemele Hill, Sabreena Merchant, and more), and it will be worth tracking what kind of response it generates.

The full Naked Sports podcast can be found on its iHeart Media page here. Further episodes are slated to drop each Monday.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.