Mac Engel Goes to Sicily & The WNBA Needs to Get Out of Its Own Way | Engel Angle

Another sign that I'm getting older, I wear contact lenses. That's okay. And now I have to wear eyeglasses with the contact lenses. That's great. Mac Engel, Fort Worth star telegram, Ingle Angle podcast, Sunset Lounge, Stolen Water Media. Am I missing any outlets? I don't think I am. Back from vacation. Let me take that back. Back from a trip. There are vacations and then there are trips. A vacation is when you go someplace and you relax. A trip is when you go someplace and when you come back, the first thing you say is, Jesus god, I need a vacation. I need and I I do those because I wanna see everything. So and I think it's one of the greatest things I've done in my life. I've said that before here on this podcast to anybody who has years traveling and seeing the world and meeting people and different people and seeing new cultures in different places and blah blah blah blah blah gives you a much better, broader appreciation of the world and people and cultures and realizing what separates us really isn't that much and all those different things. However, when you do come back, you are absolutely wiped out. And I would say after going to Sicily, Italy, I am a bit wiped out. No need for sympathy. It's okay. I'll be alright. I struggled through it. But spouse and daughter and I recently went to Sicily. And two things about this that I wanna share before I get into my topic du jour, and that is the randomness of spotting a celebrity. And then how important timing is to see the celebrity that you really wanted to see. Fast forward or pardon me, rewind to Terra Mina, Sicily. It's a it's a tourist town on the East Coast and it's carved into the side of a mountain. Very impressive place. In the previous week, all of the a listers were there. Talking Michael Jordan, the Kardashians, everybody for a Dolce and Kabana show. I have no idea how they did it only because if you've been to this city, there's no room for anything. Like nothing. I've never seen a city, and I've been to a lot of places carved out of the side of the mountain and then a bunch of tourist places jammed inside of it. It's a beautiful view, but getting around there is just a migraine of a migraine. You would have donkeys that would look at it or mountain goats and be like, yeah, I can't do that. So anyways, last week, all the a listers were there. So when we're there, it's still very crowded. It's a very American tourist attraction. We hear a lot of English voices, a lot of American voices. And there's one main avenue that's crowded with shops and, you know, gelato and all this different stuff. It's getting towards the evening, and I see this guy, this white dude down the road a little bit. And again, it's it's a very European cobblestone, and it's very narrow and all this stuff and a lot of people and I see this guy and he kind of stands out. Was like, God, know that guy. What do I know that guy? I know him. We're walking towards him walking towards him and maybe five feet from him, it dawns on me who this person is. And that I have interviewed him several times. I know he does not know me, but I know him because I had interviewed him. As it maybe I'm two feet in front of him, he's getting ready to walk into a restaurant. And I said, Temu Salani. And he turns and looks at me. He said, yeah. I said, you are a hell of a player. And I kept walking. He said, thank you. And who's Taymou Salani? Taymou Salani was a long, long, long time NHL hockey player, and he was a phenomenal player. He And I had interviewed him when I covered hockey, regularly for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and he's a great guy. Wonderful guy. Couldn't be any nicer. All those fans are terrific guys. And, anyways, so I I passed him and it was just like that. And you could tell he was a little surprised somebody recognized him there in Italy, much less, you know, me. And so needless to say, I was surprised. So now, like an hour or two later, my daughter is going through might have been my spouse who's going through their cell phones, and they find on social media this restaurant or sort of spot that was an attraction there in Terramina that had that gets visited by a lot of famous people. It's like does desserts and drinks and stuff like that, and my daughter had found it through influencer types. And my experience with the influencer type place is that sometimes they're terrific, and other times they're just it's not what you see on the screen. This place was great. It's really good. And so happens that yeah. We we missed the the big celebrity who was there at that specific spot where we had been three hours prior. It's kinda cool to see Taymou Sallani in person. It would have been a hell of a lot cooler to see Sofia Vergara in person because that's who had been at this particular spot. And we missed her by like two or three hours, which is crushing because I think anybody who knows knows about her situation and knows me knows that she would love to meet me. And to deny her that opportunity is really disappointing, but I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. I had a chance. It's another standard hockey player, retired ex jock. Who cares? I've interviewed a thousand of them. Big deal. This is the world's most beautiful woman, and I I was standing right there, and I missed her. One thing I was not disappointed, however, in this trip was going to a place that I had wanted to see for a number of years. And this is one of the few times when you you desperately wanna go see this something. And usually your expectations are so high that when you actually do finally get there, wherever it is, it's almost impossible to meet those expectations. Well, the middle aged nerd in me really wanted to go to Syracuse in Sicily. Whereas the Italians pronounce it Syracuse. I think I'm close. Not Syracuse, New York. We've Americanized it. Syracuse. I think it's Syracuse. Anyways, that's in the South, and it's a very famous place. It's been, you know, Romans, Greeks, the Moors, everybody at some point or another claimed Syracuse. And I really wanted to go to the Neapolis Archaeological Park. Nerd alert. You have all these beautiful beaches and Italian food everywhere. And I wanted to go to the Neapolis Archaeological because it had three different things that I really wanted to see. And I can admit why I wanna see it. This is so embarrassing. The reason I wanted to see it is because in the last installment of the Indiana Jones franchise, they go visit Indiana Jones goes to the ear of Dionysus. It's a real place. And he finds the tomb of Archimedes. Now the tomb of Archimedes is more of a myth than anything else. But of course, Indiana Jones finds it in two seconds, but it's allegedly there. But what is definitely there are a few different places from centuries ago that are still staining today. And you can see the influences of that architecture has in modern day entertainment viewing. Sports theater. Everybody knows the Roman Forum. Everybody knows the Colosseum. But there were other theaters, open air theaters, other places that the Greeks built that are actually in better shape. And you can see the influences of all of it that exist in today's sports and entertainment stadium design. It's remarkable. So this one, the Neapolis Archaeological Park had a few had two different ones. It has the Greek theater, which is the longest and best preserved probably the best preserved one that still exists. And it it they figured it was built sometime third century BC. Third century BC. We're replacing stadiums after thirty years, and this place is still open. And then there is the Roman Amphitheater. The Roman Amphitheater is the first one that we saw, and they actually had gladiatorial games there. You can sit there and say, did Russell Crowe's character fight there? Yeah. Sure. If you want for the sake of argument, probably not. But it was Italy. And he was on his way up, working all his way to the minor leagues before he got to Rome to the the Colosseum. And in the at this particular place, the the Roman Amphitheater, you could see, and I've I've shown some video here, you could see the layout of it in terms of the staggered seating and all that different stuff. You could see the basically, how we're still stealing the same ideas centuries later. And that's cool. You couldn't walk into that when you could walk around that one. But the one that you could walk more in and around because they've actually made it so that they still do performances at this location, the Greek theater. They've they've built seats out of wood, like benches on top of the rock that exists there. And the other cool part about this that just absolutely blew me away is that you could see now it's a bit of a stretch, but I don't think it's that big of a stretch. And as you look at this video that I'm sharing with you and I hope I hope you're able to watch this one because you can see they have these little caves at the top of the pla what would be a plaza area. And you could sit there and see that's where royalty might have sat to get out of the sun. And I will say this. This was ungodly hot. I mean, we were dumb enough to go from a Texas summer to an Italian summer. So basically, we walked out of a microwave into another microwave or an oven into another oven. It was so hot. No clouds. Nothing. And that that'll change a trip on you really, really quickly. But you could see all these different things. And I thought, my gosh, you can see this here in third century BC. And we're doing it now here in 2026. But those two things as cool as they were to see in person, those weren't the main draw for me. Because what I wanted to see was where did Indiana Jones go? I wanted to see these locations that are somewhat obscure to an American visitor or probably anybody else and why they are famous. And this particular one is a real site called the Ear Of Dionysus. And it's about, I don't know, quarter of a mile walk less than that from where the Greek Theater is. And it's in a natural park, I guess, that has all kinds of different things. But what I wanted to see was I wanted to walk into this giant cave that is really shaped like an ear. And it has an echo it has an echo effect. So if you go to the right one, you can speak into it, and the words will echo. And I don't care how old you get. The chance to say, hey. And it echoes. Hello. Gas. Still as cool today as it was when I was five years old. So I was doing that. And luckily, my spouse and I didn't think that the first one we went to, it was it was cordoned off. And that's the one frustrating thing about Italy is that sometimes there's some of these other places that you go is that they will just magically say, okay. You can't get in there today. Wait a minute. Why not? Who knows? Probably never know. But I see it. I'm like, Okay, this is it. And I thought that's it. I've seen the iridinesis. That's cool enough. Well, so I get separated from my daughter and spouse, And then I go catch up to him. Then there it is. That's what I wanted to see. That's the cave. That's what I wanna walk into. That's that's what I wanted to see. You would have needed a jackhammer to wipe the smile off of my face when I saw that. I was so excited to see this because after I'd seen the movie, I had read about this place. And when I read about it, was like, oh, this sounds really cool. I totally wanna do this. Totally get it. Nerd alert. Don't care. I'm in my fifth I'm in my fifties now. I don't care what you think. It was awesome. And if you're gonna go to these places this is what I tell anybody. If you're gonna go to these places and you've got something circled that you really wanna go do, go do it. Don't don't don't worry about the money. And I hate I can't even believe I'm gonna say this. Don't worry about the money. This one's worth it. And this was only, like, $15 to get in to to see the whole area, but some of them are really worth it. The experiences are always worth it. The hotel is not. Sorry, the hotel is not. You're barely gonna stay there. Get out there. If you're gonna get out there and go do it, get out there and go do it and pay for the experience because you're not going to go back. You can't plan on going back. So go do it. Go join it. Go lean into it. If you if it's nerdom or any of that other stuff, go do it. I loved it. My favorite part. I don't know if I would recommend the traveler to go to Sicily. It's a real pain in the ass, but there are other places that I would say I would put ahead of it. But it was new and exciting, different, blah blah blah blah blah. Installed vehicle notwithstanding seeing this particular spot was awesome. That was great. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Join the Sunset Lounge DFW and your dark companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. And then I get back to Texas, and then I get back to The United States, and I see that the world is ending over our continued outrage over a sports league that is 30 years old. Not the NBA, not NCAA football, not NCAA basketball, not the NHL, not the n b or Major League Baseball, and certainly not the NFL. I'm talking, of course, about the WNBA. I can have an opinion on this. My first job at college, backtrack. Even when I was in college, I was working major women's college basketball games, a statistician, geek, stat runner, whatever you wanna call. The next season, I work with a women's college basketball team at what is now Missouri State University. I come to TCU to get a graduate degree. I work in their athletic department, and my primary job is to be the media relations contact for its women's basketball team. I graduate. I go into sports journalism. I go to the other side, and then I start covering women's basketball because I had been around it, and I knew it, and I knew the game. And then I'd covered the WNBA in its early stages and women's college basketball final fours and all that other stuff. And I will say this, as I watch the game today here in 2026, I am astonished at the state of it where it exists today, both on the NCAA level and the professional level. Anybody my age can sit here and say, well, it's this and this and this. And you're right, but it exists. It's stable. It has money. The franchises are worth a ton. The players are making real money now. That is a viable professional sports league. And I remember distinctly interviewing the WNBA's Dallas Wings head coach however many years ago. Let's say it's ten, fourteen years ago. And he said, if you look at the timeline, it takes about thirty years before a professional sports league is viable and stable. And that's where we are this season with the WNBA. But the WNBA can't get out of its own way. And the biggest problem that this league has in women's sports in this country has from really taking the next step, and I hate that cliche, is that we're not talking enough about the game. We're talking about sexism. We're talking about misogyny. We're talking about mansplaining. We're talking about shitty marketing. We're talking about double standards and unfairness. We're not talking enough about the matchups and the game. We're talking about these bullshit issues, and that has become the overriding narrative of the state of the WNBA and women's professional sports in this country. We're not talking enough about the actual product on the floor itself. And I'm man, I remember what it was like to go to those games back in the mid nineties, and I'm sitting there selling it as a PR person. And some of the games were god awful. Some of the games were an affront to any sports fan that you would sit there and say, why would I spend five minutes of free time watching this atrocity? It was so bad. The players were horrendous. You had two or three good teams, and that was about it. It was awful. Even in when the WNBA started, and you had the Houston comets, which started with a dynasty. If you go back and look at those players today, no disrespect because they were a product of their time. They those teams would get blown out of the water by today's teams. The players are that much better. And I totally realize and I understand what the WNBA is is basically where men's basketball was as a sport, say in nineteen fifty ish. This takes a long time. And I keep getting tired of all these different comparisons between Caitlin Clark and it's like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. No. It's not. It's it was it's totally different time of of of basketball. But the difference then was, and I'm old enough to remember it, we were talking about the players. We were talking about the game. We weren't talking about all these different other issues. And one of the problem is is that the media that covers it, that has the biggest platforms to talk about it, that's all they know because they're not actually watching the games. Now we have more members of the media, and you need members of the media on any platform talking about the games, talking about the players, talking about the coaches, talking about the product. Not all of these other issues. All of these other issues are left to these massive platforms being parroted around by by people who are not as invested in that game because they don't know it nearly as well as they do college football and NFL football. Because that's where the ratings are, and that's what they wanna watch, which I totally get. But as I sit here and I look at where the WNBA is, and we've had the commissioner, the commissioner of the league, and it's state of the league, addresses a reporter who says this was back a couple months ago. And the reporter basically asked an innocent benign question and said, how much longer do you anticipate on being in this job? The commissioner of the league is Kathy Englebert. Whatever you think about her performance, don't care. The question is legitimate. She had just presided over a very difficult labor negotiation with the Players Association, and any commissioner who has been in the chair long enough after a while acquires a lot of criticism. And her first response is, I wonder if you would ask that of a man. Well, yes, Kathy, I would. I did not ask you that question, but I certainly would because I did. I asked that question to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, however many years ago. After asking his PR person, is this the last contract that Roger Goodell will sign? And he says, yes. So I follow it up in a press conference with Goodell, and he says, I'm not sure yet. Well, we know the answer to that. The answer is no. He wants to stay in that job forever because it's fun and it pays a lot of money. Whereas Inglbert makes this about sexism. This absolutely drives me crazy. A minority has enough issues in their life, and minorities covers them all. A minority has enough issues in their daily routine, daily existence, daily life to sit there and think, well, that's not fair. That's not right. Yes. You do. But when you sit there and bitch about that one point, it hurts the rest of your argument about the other ones where there is true discrimination, where there is true devaluing, where there is true diminishing. A question posed to a commissioner who has been in that office for as long as she has saying, how much longer are you gonna do this? All you have to do is say, I'm not sure. But instead, you deflected it with some thin skin bullshit answer that says, well, I don't know if you'd ask that of a woman or of a man rather. Yeah. We would deal with it. And then famously, recently, she was scheduled to go on the Dan Patrick show, arguably one of the biggest sports talk shows in The United States. Schedules it, blows it off at the eleventh hour. You can't do that because she's under the microscope for trying to handle an impossible situation, which is a league that is overrun full of narratives of favoritism, abuse, discrimination, sexism, misogyny. I don't think a lot of the other major sports leagues are dealing with those types of issues currently. Some, but not like this. And it gets to the crux of the problem with the WNBA as an observer or as a fan even is that you feel like I can't win here. Unless you can sit there and say, you know what? I understand those are the easy tropes to fall on. And certainly, the big one right now is the treatment of superstar Caitlyn Clark. If you piecemeal enough clips together, you can find countless examples of Clark being unfairly treated by other teams, by other opponents, by opponents because we shove in the stereotype of pettiness amongst women and envy amongst women. I hate to break it to you, but a lot of people in the NBA are petty and just as prone and vulnerable to envy as a woman. They were towards Magic Johnson, towards Larry Bird. Go back and watch Larry Bird highlights. See how many times guys went at him. Did anybody say at that time, well, they've gotta protect Larry. He's Larry Bird. You gotta protect him. The last person on the planet who would have said, I need any extra protection would have been Larry Bird. Now is the league handling this situation with Caitlin Clark where she seems to be targeted by other players to be extra physical with her? Are they handling it right? Probably not. But she's the fastest gun in the West. Michael Jordan was the fastest gun in the West. How did the Detroit Pistons treat Michael Jordan? Not really well. They came up with a plan to physically punish him every time he went at the basket. Anytime he had the ball, they made a point to beat the living shit out of him. Now I'm not advocating what any of these players are doing because there are certain examples. Sometimes we say, yeah, you can't do that. You just can't do that. But what I am saying is that sometimes we are lazily forcing these cliche gender stereotypes into a narrative because we're not focusing enough on the game itself and the product itself. We're focusing on these societal narratives because they're fucking lazy. Pardon my French. I don't like to use the word lazy because it's lazy on our part to sit there and talk about those details. They have a place for sure. But if you really wanna to be a part of it, focus on the game. The game is better today than it ever has been. There are some truly remarkable players in the WNBA. Athletically, skill wise, it's incredible. Every now and then when I still play pickup basketball, not a good idea. And and an affront to most people who have ever played basketball, I have played against good NCAA women's college basketball players. One of them was from Nigeria. Great. God, she was athletic, and I would get matched up against her. She is the dirtiest player I have ever played against, and it's not even close. Strong as a bull, dirty as shit, really nice, and a tremendous athlete. There was another one who was like six one. She used to abuse some of us in the paint with post moves. An outside shooter from France. It's a little bit of a shed a bit of a trigger finger, but she could god. She could shoot it. These point is these players today, the women's college basketball players and the the WNBA players today are so much better today than they were twenty five years ago. We still need more of them to justify all these teams that that that exist now and to justify the potential of of expansion. But I remember when the NBA expanded, and the thought was, well, you're watering down the league. There's not enough good players. They they prod that's not the problem now. You got players all over the world now. You got so many good players who are buried at the bench at the end of the bench. The the WNBA is not there yet. The WNBA is finally in a good place. Thanks to the NBA's long range vision of former commissioner David Stern to start a professional sports league for women. It's the first one we've really ever had. One exists now for hockey. It's very, very small. One exists for soccer. These things take a long, long time. The WNBA is ahead of all of them because of the financial backing of the NBA and the fact that they would be willing to take on the losses as write offs under marketing. But the one thing that they can't do or they're not helping themself enough is is to try to shape the narrative and focus on the actual product itself. And it doesn't help when the commissioner, it's herself is sitting there saying, well, I don't know if you'd ask that of a man. Yes. You would. It's not a hard question. Or some of these other certain things that it would not be difficult to address. And then the other reality is there are certain areas you're just not gonna win. Because once you start opening the door to sexism and misogyny and fairness, and that's such a subjective thing, and you will just get lost in it to the point you're like, okay. I give up. Whatever. Fine. You don't wanna do that. And some of that is beyond the WNBA's control. But to this point, the game, the good games, there's some dogs in there. It's as good as it's ever been. You've got legit players now all over the place. The WNBA is still going through some considerable growing pains. One of the first things that it can do is to get over itself, get out of its own way, and market the game and the players. Market the stories. Quit worrying about the other crap. See you next time. This is a Stolen Water Media production.