If you search the term "WNBA commissioner suspended" on Google, you'll get multiple links to YouTube videos published in the past day with names like "REF RIGGED? WNBA Boss SUSPENDED in Caitlin Clark Chaos!" and "Cathy Engelbert WNBA Commissioner SUSPENDED After Caitlin Clark Ref Scandal EXPLODES!"
But here's the thing: _**Cathy Engelbert has not been suspended**_. I'm sorry if you believed a video that didn't even spell her name right in the title, but those videos are lies! Not real!
What they are, though, are evidence of a growing issue around the league, which is fake clickbait articles and videos about the WNBA. Some of these are outright lies. Some are simply just clickbait websites whose AI software wrote a bunch of random crap about the league.
The important thing is that WNBA fans need to stop believing these misleading headlines.
The WNBA has an AI clickbait problem
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I'm in a couple of WNBA Facebook groups. I won't name them here because I don't want to denigrate a bunch of people who just want to talk about hoops, but at least a few times a week, someone will post an article in there that's completely and utterly false, and people will treat it like it's real. Salacious headlines are used to drive people to sketchy websites.
Now look, I don't mean what legitimate websites do as far as headlines go to drive traffic. Having to include Caitlin Clark's name in the title field of any Indiana Fever article is a necessary evil in this business. Just two days ago, I [wrote on this website](https://fansided.com/aari-mcdonald-fever-caitlin-clark-replacement) about Aari McDonald, who the Indiana Fever just signed to a hardship deal, with the title "Who is Aari McDonald, the Fever's new Caitlin Clark replacement?"
Is that title using Clark's name to get higher placement on Google? Well, yeah, because that's how online sports media works. But if you read the article, you can see that I'm writing true things about a real thing that happened. The Fever signed Aari McDonald to a hardship deal because Clark is injured. I link to reputable sources about the signing. Maybe the title gets more eyeballs on the article, but it's not clickbait.
Reputable websites like FanSided work hard to find the right angles to drive traffic to well-researched, well-written, true articles about things that are happening in sports.
That's why it can be so frustrating to see people share articles like "BREAKING: WNBA player Caitlin Clark has invested $3.3 million to turn a home into a living facility for homeless youth in Des Moines," published by a website that's probably nothing but AI-generated slop.
There's a Facebook post about that article with 33,000 likes. 33,000 people saw that headline and thought "wow, Caitlin Clark is turning a historic home in Des Moines into a homeless shelter."
Except, she didn't. The story got so out of hand that the actual organization that runs the Salisbury House and Gardens, which is what the article alleges Clark bought, had to [issue a statement saying that no](https://www.axios.com/local/des-moines/2025/04/09/caitlin-clark-homeless-shelter-ai-fake), this didn't happen.
The WNBA isn't the only sports league that deals with this. The Axios article linked above mentions that Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was also the subject of similar rumors.
But as the WNBA gets more and more attention, fans are encountering this kind of AI-fueled, fake news clickbait in a way that they never have before.
Looking around Facebook just now, I found posts with an alarming number of shares and likes claim Brittney Griner was being permanently banned from the WNBA for racist comments made against Clark or that University of Texas women's basketball players had their scholarships canceled for kneeling during the National Anthem or that, like ... former Fever head coach Christie Sides was dying of a rare lung condition.
None of that happened, but people fall for it because ... well, I don't know, because they aren't media savvy enough to know that sensational headlines like that are usually not real. Of the three examples above, two are drawing on right-wing outrage to draw traffic and the other is drawing on an alleged tragedy. Two things that get eyeballs: anger and tears.
You might write this off as nothing. Something that doesn't impact your life. But just a couple of weeks ago, one of my uncles shared one of these random AI articles about Caitlin Clark. Unfortunately, I can't tell you which one, because he shares probably 20 different pieces of fake news every day, but I think it was something pitting Clark against Angel Reese, using some made-up reason to make Reese out to be a villain.
What can _you_ do about this issue? Well, you could first just make sure you do your best not to fall for these fake AI articles and videos. If you see a sensational headline about Caitlin Clark, go see if reputable places are reporting it! If Clark had actually donated millions of dollars for a homeless shelter, we'd have an article on it here at FanSided! Sports Illustrated would have one. The Des Moines Register would have one. Places you can actually trust would be saying it!
And if the WNBA commissioner had _actually_ been suspended, you'd learn it from some place that wasn't a YouTube video from an account with 800 subscribers. Use some common sense. Seek out additional sources. Learn which voices you can trust and which voices aren't even voices at all — just AI algorithms making things up so you'll click on them.