Mark Madden: Who would win if WNBA champs faced top high school boys team?

Sports talker Clay Travis proposes a basketball game between the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a state champ boys high school basketball team. (Travis didn’t specify a state or team.)

Travis wants to wager $1 million. If Las Vegas wins, the Aces get Travis’ money. If the boys win, they get paid by the Aces. (Would that be considered NIL money?) Travis predicts the boys would win by over 30.

Travis says that game would attract more eyes and produce more revenue than any WNBA game ever.

Travis is 100 percent correct about that. Put that game on pay-per-view, and it draws a monster buy rate.

But Las Vegas can’t play. There’s nothing to gain.

If the Aces win, they beat high school kids. If they lose, women’s basketball is ruined. (Not really. But that would be the narrative.)

It’s fantastic manipulation by Travis. That’s not a knock. If we want women’s sports to be equal, we can’t tiptoe around them.

Who wins? It’s likely the boys would. They might be intimidated by the situation. That’s the best bet for the women.

But if it’s a champion from a state that embraces basketball, and a team from a higher enrollment classification that features a few major-college recruits, the boys would win easily. Their athleticism, muscle and speed would prevail.

I saw the 1976 Class AAA state champ Fifth Avenue team that featured future Pitt star Sam Clancy among a fistful of Division I recruits. They would have beat any U.S. women’s Olympic team by 30.

There is precedent, albeit in a different sport: In 2017, an under-15 boys soccer team from Dallas beat the U.S. women’s national team 5-2.

Once upon a time, the idea of a game like this would have been fun.

But now, it wouldn’t be fun. It would be a dead-serious proving ground with labels of sexism and misogyny liberally applied. God forbid one of the boys would commit a hard foul.

Sure, the reputation of women’s basketball would be at risk.

But that didn’t stop women’s tennis icon Billie Jean King, then 29, from playing 55-year-old Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in 1973. Riggs, a former Wimbledon and U.S. Open winner, had defeated women’s No. 1 Margaret Court earlier that year.

The hype for King-Riggs was mammoth. Thirty thousand showed up at the Astrodome. Ninety million watched on television.

King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. How much would it have hurt women’s tennis had she lost?

That’s hard to say. But the event and its buildup were very entertaining.

King took a risk, albeit one she was basically forced into because of Court’s loss. But there was never any doubting King’s guts.

The WNBA won’t take a risk.

But the WNBA should want to gain heightened visibility. Its average live attendance is roughly the same as the American Hockey League’s. The WNBA has major cities, big-time arenas and national TV. The AHL doesn’t.

Related

• Derrick Henry presents big challenge for Steelers' inconsistent run defense
• Patrick J. Rooney, son of late Steelers patriarch Art Rooney Sr., dies at 84
• Forward Jeff Carter isn't worried about the Penguins' struggles

You can demand equality. You can declare it, too.

But you can’t force people to watch what doesn’t interest them.

Tennis legend John McEnroe was castigated when he said that women’s tennis superstar Serena Williams would be ranked “like N0. 700” on the men’s circuit.

Everybody wet their pants. Williams played the victim. McEnroe backtracked.

That dispute should have been settled by Williams playing, say, the No. 100-ranked men’s player.

But it’s so much easier to proclaim.

The day will come when the NBA and NHL are co-ed. Not in my lifetime. But it will happen. Equality will be mandated. Two females on the court/rink at all times. Hockey would go no-contact.

Laugh now, sure. But the NFL is eventually going to be flag football.