Simone Biles, Chip and Joanna Gaines, WNBA: How to Torpedo Your Brand

Few better, or worse, examples exist on how to torpedo your own brand than Simone Biles, Chip and Joanna Gaines, and the WNBA, all in the past few months. Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Biles suddenly decided trans insanity is something she should support on X, and not just this, but to do so by attacking highly regard Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer and girls/women's sports advocate. Why? Transgenderism has not been an issue in gymnastics. Chip and Joanna Gaines of "Fixer Upper" fame and fortune, well known for their conservative, even Christian stance, began promoting a new program on their Magnolia Network featuring a same-sex married male couple with two adopted children. Needless to say, their fans were shocked and disappointed. The WNBA has been failing financially and otherwise for years, barely hanging on, then last year is gifted with a generational talent in 3-point wizard Caitlin Clark. Has the WNBA welcomed and promoted her? No. Players, coaches, referees all are guilty of dissing her, fouling her flagrantly if not violently, all based on racism, envy, and greed. Horrid way to attract fans. Who you are inside, your values, determine who you are on the outside. Same for a person or organization. If ill-advised or negative values are allowed to drive the brand, you or your organization will pay a steep price. For more Christian commentary on key issues, see my website at www.rexmrogers.com or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. #brand #CaitlinClark #SimoneBiles #RileyGaines #ChipJoannaGaines 

Transcript

Celebrities make mistakes just like the rest of us, but have you noticed how celebrities sometimes make decisions based not on good business or common sense but on ideology? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #217 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Celebrities or other notables are just people, so they make mistakes like all of us do from time to time. But there are mistakes—inadvertent missteps—and then there are deliberate choices based upon questionable, erroneous, or threatening values rooted in false ideologies, choices that make no sense in terms of a person’s or organization’s brand. A brand is the overall image and emotional impression that people have about a business, product, or person. 

Consider these three examples:

I.              Simone Biles, multiple Olympic Gymnastics Gold Medalist, considered the GOAT, or “Greatest of All Time,” in her sport, an attractive, generally pleasant young black woman whose name is known across much of the American public, recently posted a series of social media tweets that have cost her dearly. 

II.            Chip and Joanna Gaines, the likeable personalities behind the hugely popular HGTV program, “Fixer Upper,” and later founders of a burgeoning Magnolia Network and streaming service, recently promoted a new program on their network called “Back to the Frontier,” featuring problematic characters in the program that have generated an enormous backlash.

III.          The WNBA, Women’s National Basketball Association,” professional teams and players struggling in recent years to find an audience and become profitable, hit the jackpot when 2024 rookie sensation, Caitlin Clark, entered the league. Since that time, despite Clark’s generational basketball talent, immediate star power, incredible impact upon the league’s viewership, ticket and merchandise sales, and transformative impact on the sport, the WNBA, many players, and seemingly referees have systematically sought to dismiss, damage, or disable Clark’s ability to play and thus “kill,” so to speak, “the golden goose.”

Let’s start with Simone.  June 6, 2025, Simone Biles tweeted on X, an out of nowhere support for transgenderism, saying, “@Riley_Gaines_You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! But instead…You bully them…One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!" 

Riley Gaines is a former University of Kentucky swimmer who in a national NCAA race was forced to go up against so-called trans woman, Lia Thomas aka William Thomas. Since that time in 2022, Gaines has become a nationally recognized spokesperson arguing it is fundamentally unfair, unsafe, and anti-biology to allow boys/men claiming to be girls/women to enter these events.

Simone Biles’ highly personal attack on Riley Gaines and Biles’ sudden support of trans athletes (she’s on record against this in the past) makes no sense. Her later tweets aimed at Riley Gaines were nasty, and her eventual apology left a lot to be desired in terms of sincerity.

Biles garnered some support but also immediately faced huge social media pushback. How much money she lost in endorsements and future contracts is being disputed online, but it’s clear there are significant financial repercussions. And regarding her work with little girls in gymnastics, what will her reputation be on the other side of this fiasco? Why would she go ballistic on social media when transgenderism is not a big problem in gymnastics—she never competed against a trans athlete—thus risking her credibility and her financial future? Does Biles really believe sexuality is not binary?

For the past dozen years, Chip and Joanna Gaines have been the darlings of home and garden reality TV channels. Their chemistry, humor, and affection for one another attracted huge audiences to “Fixer Upper” and made them famous and rich. Along the way, they also presented themselves as Christians.

Then comes the new program, “Back to the Frontier,” featuring a married same-sex male couple along with their two adopted boys. It’s fair to say this presentation caught their audience off guard and shocked many of them. Chip’s tweets defending the choice and his attempt to interpret Scripture while lecturing others hasn’t been well received either.  Here’s his first tweet: “Talk, ask qustns, listen..maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. 

Judge 1st, understand later/never It’s a sad sunday when “non believers” have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.” 

Meanwhile, Christian leaders and conservative fans of the couple’s work have said, featuring a same-sex couple on a family program normalizes, or attempts to, what God calls sin, presenting adopted boys in this arrangement is not wholesome for these child actors or for those who watch, disagreeing with this presentation is not judging without understanding, and disagreeing is not ipso facto hate and vitriol.

The couple is on record as attending an evangelical church that does not affirm LGBTQ+ lifestyles, so what really do the Gaineses’ believe? Are they motivated by being accepted by television peers, or is this about making more money, or is it that they really do think same-sex marriage is acceptable in the eyes of God?

During the 2024 season, the WNBA witnessed the advent of a once-in-a-generation player, Caitlin Clark. She earned Rookie of the Year, All-WNBA First Team, Rookie scoring record, Rookie assists record. Her ability to consistently shoot three-point shots from 25-30 feet is astounding. 

“The average number of fans attending Fever home games this season…was an all-time WNBA record for any team…WNBA ratings on ESPN were up 170% over last season.” Yet “when Clark missed five games over three weeks earlier this season with a quadriceps injury, WNBA viewership tanked by 55%...

Meanwhile, 7% of all the flagrant fouls last season were against Clark (she drew more than double the flagrants of the next-closest player), and 11.8% of those flagrants were committed by Chicago Sky players against Clark…Clark was fouled 4.2 times per game during her rookie season, the third-highest rate among all players. That trend has continued this season, and the physicality (some would say violence) of some of those fouls has seemingly intensified.”

So, why is the WNBA allowing a level of physicality against Clark that makes these basketball games look like rugby? Some pundits argue this is just the way it is for new players and Clark will have to find her way through, others say players are envious of Clark’s ability, several are on record racializing the situation, saying there are good black players being ignored to feature a white player, and some make the next level argument that the only reason Clark is getting attention is “white privilege,” i.e., that she is white so she gets special treatment. Others strongly disagree, saying these race comments are blatant envy and instead they say Clark’s getting attention because she earned it with her incredible basketball talent. Whatever the reason, the WNBA is failing to instruct referees to do their jobs, to reign in the flagrant fouls, and to work developing a culture of merit over race politics. 

Given the conservative drift of the American culture in the past few months, it’s surprising Biles, the Gaineses, and the WNBA have aligned with suspect unpopular values:  transgenderism for Biles, LGBTQ for the Gaineses, and woke racism for the WNBA. While some Americans support these off-base values, most do not, so, it’s commonsense and good business not to promote transgenderism, same-sex marriage, and race-based hostility in athletics…yet these celebrities and the WNBA are doing just that. Their ideological political values are their religion, so they remain defiantly committed in the face of criticism, financial loss, and reputational damage.

Will their brands survive? Probably, but these celebrities’ brands have suffered. They might rebuild, but these stories are a cautionary tale that remind us that our values, who we are inside, determines who we will be outside. And at best, our values should be evaluated and shepherded by a biblically Christian worldview. 

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.