Back in 2023, sports journalist, radio host, and the founder of Outkick, Clay Travis, threw down a challenge to former Las Vegas Aces point guard Chelsea Gray. A million dollars on the line for the WNBA champs to go up against a 2024 high school boys’ state champion team of Travis’ choosing. Travis believed “a good, State champion caliber, high school boys team would smoke the best team in the WNBA.” Three years later, Travis has issued a similar challenge with bigger stakes, but it didn’t sit well with one NFL legend.

Travis recently took to X to drop an “important announcement.” In that post, he placed 10 million dollars on the table for a showdown between the Las Vegas Aces and a boy’s high school state title team of his choice. But this didn’t sit right with 2x Super Bowl champion wide receiver Torrey Smith, who reposted Travis’ post with a challenge of his own.

“I would pay to watch you play any of those women 1 on 1,” Smith wrote on X.

Adding further to his challenge, Clay Travis also detailed his terms in a series of posts under his original one. Travis wrote:

“If the boys win, I will give them $10 million to distribute as they see fit to their team members. Game on pay-per-view with all profits donated to Tunnel 2 Towers to provide mortgage-free homes to families of deceased soldiers, police & first responders. This will be the most money ever paid to win a single basketball game. A modern-day battle of the sexes. $10 million to the winning team.”

Now, instead of challenging the WNBA once again, Torrey Smith wants Clay Travis to go head-to-head with the reigning champs himself. But Travis’ challenge actually has another level. On a recent edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Travis painted his $10 million challenge as a response to the growing debate over transgender athletes participating in women’s sports. He even suggested buying an al-trans franchise, moving them to Nashville, and declaring they wouldn’t lose a single game.

“A boys’ high school team will get $10 million if they win,” Travis said on his show. “The WNBA – they say that they’re underpaid. They say that they’re as good as men. Let’s decide it once and for all. And I think you have to be hyperbolic to respond to the absurdity here because, if you are not, then they will just continue to chirp. They’ll continue to talk. So, I think you have to put money behind your words.”

This debate isn’t limited to a Twitter exchange between Clay Travis and Torrey Smith. In an ESPN article from July, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham pushed back against the notion that she hates transgender people, instead pushing to protect girls in sports.

“I think that I am here to extend love,” Cunningham said. “But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

Interestingly, the head coach of the Minnesota Lynx, Cheryl Reeve, wore a ‘Trans Kids Belong’ T-shirt to their game against the Fever this Sunday to clarify her stance on the matter. Before the game, Reeve even spoke with Cunningham. While Reeve didn’t reveal what they talked about, she did voice her opinion on the matter.

“It’s not the case that we have, quote, biological men in girls’ locker rooms, the way it’s being phrased, the innuendo there that somehow transgender women are predators of some kind in the locker room,” Reeve said. “There’s a lot of narrative that is problematic that we need to discuss. That is simply not what’s happening.

“Number one, we need to protect trans kids, every kid. To me, it’s a human rights issue. Every kid has a right to sports. Regardless of gender diverse, transgender. Every kid has the right to access.”

Now, this debate is only picking up more steam in sports circles, and is likely to go on for quite a while. Clay Travis’ open challenge to the WNBA comes against this tense backdrop, and even as Torrey Smith challenges this narrative, Travis’ words on his show still hang heavy in the air:

“I doubt that the WNBA will respond to this, but this is real money on the table in a significant way.”