Mark Lye blames ‘cancel culture’ for SiriusXM firing over WNBA remarks

Mark Lye, the SiriusXM golf analyst who was fired for ripping the WNBA, has spoken about his termination.

In an interview with the Naples Every day Information in Florida on Tuesday, Lye defined his aspect of what occurred.

“It’s actually cancel tradition,” Lye instructed the outlet.

“In a approach to glorify girls’s golf, I made a comparability by evaluating it to a different sport that perhaps isn’t so profitable. Now as I look again on it, it was a hurtful factor.”

In a phase for SiriusXM’s PGA channel that went viral over the weekend, Lye was praising the progress that the LPGA has made over the past decade, after which went into an apart the place he juxtaposed girls’s golf with how he felt concerning the WNBA.

“Is there a gun in the home?” he requested, implying that he’d quite kill himself than watch the ladies’s basketball league.

Amid backlash over his feedback, Lye tweeted on Sunday that his feedback weren't rooted in sexism: “The truth that I can’t relate to WNBA doesn't make me sexist in any method. All you haters ought to take heed to the entire phase, the place I fully glorified womens golf, which I like to cowl. Thanks for listening.”

“The explanation [the comments on Twitter were] blowing up is that they took probably the most unflattering a part of that sound chew they usually lower it off in a spot that buttressed their viewpoint, which is that males hate girls’s sports activities or Mark hates girls’s sports activities,” he instructed the Naples Every day Information.

Lye mentioned there have been contextual causes for citing the WNBA.

Mark Lye in 1994
Getty Photos

“We had been cross-referencing sports activities,” he mentioned. “We talked about baseball. We talked about soccer. We talked about among the powerful issues dealing with these sports activities, the challenges, and the challenges that the PGA Tour has in opposition to [Saudi Arabia’s Super] Golf League.

“That’s what made it germane. That’s why I talked concerning the WNBA. It simply didn’t come out of nowhere. I occurred to observe WNBA highlights on ESPN. I noticed no person within the stands. I mentioned, ‘Wow, that’s an issue.’ I was making an attempt to make the purpose that the LPGA is a dwelling, thriving, credit score to girls’s sports activities usually, and that the WNBA was on the different aspect of the spectrum.

Mark Lye on the 1984 Masters
Augusta Nationwide/Getty Photos

“I really like watching girls’ tennis, girls’ golf, girls’ volleyball. I can’t stand males’s volleyball. There are specific girls’ sports activities that I actually like watching. I like fast-pitch [softball].”

Lye, 69, performed full-time on the PGA Tour from 1977 to 1991. His one PGA Tour match victory got here on the Financial institution of Boston Basic in 1983.

Lye, who coaches his daughter’s highschool golf crew, mentioned he's “not probably the most politically right man on this planet” however that he tried to make his reveals fascinating for widespread golf followers. He lamented that the toughest factor about the entire scenario was the influence it's having on his spouse and youngsters.

“My youngsters are going to get uncovered to this at this time [at school] and it breaks my coronary heart that that is occurring,” he mentioned Tuesday. “My spouse is in tears. I really feel terrible for my household.”

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