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Inside a Las Vegas meeting room on a pleasant morning in May, residents of Sin City waited their turn to address the Clark County Board of Commissioners. A man rarely known by his government name, William Drayton Jr., walked to the front of the room to make his appeal for the women on the U.S. Olympic hockey team.The scene was both serious and strange — after all, this was Vegas and a member of the Satanic temple with black devil horns affixed to the top of his head was waiting for his turn on the microphone. Even so, here was a proud “girl dad” trying to make good on his pledge to give the gold-medal-winning hockey team a proper celebration after they had become the president’s punchline back in February.
Here was a man standing up for women.
Then, he shined the spotlight on himself.
“I decided to bring them all here to fabulous Las Vegas. Why? Because there’s no better city for me to have these girls celebrate their winnings than Las Vegas,” rapper and hype man Flavor Flav said, in explaining ‘Flavor Flav’s SHE Weekend’ scheduled for July 16-19.
“And plus when a lot of people come to Vegas, they think of Flav,” Flavor Flav continued, shrugging his arms and smiling. “So, everybody said I should run for mayor. I might be y’all next mayor! I’m just joking, I’m just joking!”
In the front row, the devil didn’t laugh. Was this hell? No, just another day when women are pushed to the background — even when they merit to be the stars of the show.
Flavor Flav wants to honor the U.S. Women’s hockey team that captured the program’s third overall gold. They deserve it. However, this weekend is the vision of a man who promotes himself as much as he does his causes, and a man with a rap sheet of violence against women. So, are women’s sports so starved for male advocacy that they’ll take anybody? They’ll celebrate anyone who celebrates them, even if the support comes as second billing?
On the surface, the idea of a SHE Weekend — excuse me, “Flavor Flav’s SHE Weekend” — feels beautiful and benevolent. A wrong made right. The website promoting the event claims that more than 100 athletes from the Winter Games, including members of the women’s bobsled and skeleton teams, will be honored. There’s a parade down Las Vegas Boulevard planned for Thursday night, and the women will receive ceremonial keys to the Strip. Also, Flavor Flav promised to send the entire hockey team to the ESPYs, glam and wardrobe included.
“Let’s gooooo, baybeeeee!” he whooped in an Instagram video that directly addressed the team’s star, Hilary Knight. “I’ll see you in Vegas!”
To understand how a 67-year-old emcee and the captain of Team USA became social media besties, we have to go back to the genesis of this weekend.
In February, the women clinched gold. In that final game, the team drew an average of 5.3 million viewers — the largest audience ever to watch a women’s hockey game in the United States. Megan Keller scored the golden goal. Knight, the five-time Olympian, made history of her own, scoring more goals than any other American in the Olympics. Though these women should’ve been entitled to all the love, some of the loudest headlines after their win centered on a man who wasn’t even on the ice with them in Milano.
The U.S. men followed the women with their own golden performance. The two programs sweeping the sport should’ve been twice the reason for America to celebrate. But in the men’s celebratory locker room, FBI director Kash Patel — once he put down his beer — got President Donald Trump on the phone. While Trump heaped praise on the team, offered the guys a free plane ride to Washington, D.C., to attend the State of the Union, and medals for when they would visit the White House, he spoke of inviting the women more as a conciliatory gesture to save face.
“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team. You do know that,” Trump said. Though a player off camera tried to start a fleeting “two for two!” chant, most of the room roared in laughter at Trump’s comment.
“Distasteful” is how Knight described Trump’s comments.
Those in the world of entertainment agreed. So, ‘Saturday Night Live’ invited Knight and Keller to appear during actor Connor Storrie’s opening monologue. The audience’s screams and applause for Knight and Keller lasted nearly 28 seconds. They eclipsed those for U.S. men’s players Jack and Quinn Hughes, as the women symbolically replaced the brothers in the two spots anchoring Storrie.
Also, Flavor Flav, who has been rebranding himself as a women’s sports ally, took to social media and said if the women wanted a “real celebration and invite,” then he would provide that and more in Vegas. As Rhiannon Rae Ellis, his manager, said to the Clark County Board of Commissioners as they sought an application for the upcoming celebration, that tweet turned into a “movement.” More than a weekend, this would help create “lasting social change in women’s sports,” according to the event’s website.
Those words sound virtuous, though also a bit of P.R. fluff. However, the uncomfortable truth is that if this vision for women’s sports ever comes to pass, the movement might require someone with cultural credibility to lend a hand.
Certain athletes, particularly in women’s sports, need the boost of having a champion by their side — an influencer’s platform, a celebrity’s power to make people sit up and pay attention.
The U.S. Women’s water polo team’s fourth-place finish at the 2024 Summer Olympics might have been ignored had it not been for Flavor Flav’s involvement. He was the team’s official sponsor and hype man, giving $1,000 to each woman on the team and helping to gin up media appearances and other opportunities for all water polo athletes.
Theirs was a marriage of convenience. The women received mainstream publicity, and Flav, an icon in the ‘80s and 90s with Public Enemy and the star of a reality TV dating show through the mid-2000s, once again reinvented himself into cultural relevancy. Although the pairing might have been worked up between managers and created strictly to generate mass appeal, no one could argue against its positive impact for the athletes.
Who would’ve thought? Flavor Flav — or as hip-hop heads affectionately enunciate his name, Flavorrr Flaaaaav: The advocate women have been waiting for.
“Hopefully this will open up the doors for other celebs, like myself, to sponsor Olympic teams,” he said during a 2024 appearance on CBS Mornings, where he surprised Maggie Steffens, captain of the women’s water polo team, with a free cruise for the entire team.
With Steffens beamed into the studio from a remote location, and Flav sitting across from Gayle King and Nate Burleson, the women’s ally on set made sure to get the last word.
“‘Cause I’m the only one right now,” Flav continued, boasting. “And I’m the first!”
Yes, the man deserves credit. He just doesn’t deserve to be the headliner of this moment for female empowerment.
It’s not just that Trump took attention away from the women’s hockey team, and whether Flavor Flav has intended this or not, that his SHE Weekend once again tilts the focus back on a man.
It’s this inconvenient question: Is William Drayton Jr. really the right guy for this job?
He has a history of domestic violence against women that spans decades. In 1991, Drayton was arrested and served time for assaulting his girlfriend. In 2012, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and battery involving his fiancée and her teenage son. As recently as 2021, he was accused of grabbing the mother of one of his children and throwing her to the ground. The misdemeanor domestic battery charge was later dismissed, and Drayton pleaded “no contest” to a nonviolent charge.
Drayton has openly shared his story of addiction and road to sobriety. His is a redemption arc in which the public has forgiven and largely forgotten. Most human beings should be allowed the opportunity to live past their worst moments. Still, that Flavor Flav has made a personal comeback by backing women athletes — he, for some reason, will also receive a key to the Las Vegas Strip along with the U.S. hockey team — feels complicated, even cynical.
In promoting his weekend, Flavor Flav has done local and national interviews and made a podcast tour. He repeats the talking point that he’s a girl dad, but rarely is he asked about how his respect for women might have evolved since his arrests. I reached out to SHE Weekend for an interview with Flav. Initially, a representative returned my message, but when I indicated the extent of my questions, the representative did not respond again.
True advocacy for women’s sports can come from anyone with pure intentions, and if Flav truly believes in these women, then kudos to him for stepping up when they were distastefully put down. However, more brands, including the heavy hitters tied to “Flavor Flav’s SHE Weekend,” could do a better job of aligning with these athletes, behind the scenes and without the pull of a celebrity.
The women on that team didn’t ask to be the butt of a locker room joke, belittled by the President of the United States, no less. Now they’ve been summoned to the desert by the wanna-be mayor of Las Vegas, in a gesture that feels a little like advocacy but more like image-washing. The women are the ones wearing gold around their necks, but since the Olympics they’ve played a bit role in their glory while the men yuk it up.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Opinion, Culture, Olympics, Women's Hockey
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