Is that a news flash, or what? What’s funny about this story is that it involves The New York Times. And someone who is a lot smarter than the folks at the Times, Olivia Dunne.
Livvy Dunne, if you have recently emerged from a cave, is a gymnast who competed at LSU and pioneered the “name, image and likeness” revolution that has remade college sports, for better or worse. Dunne, who has the advantage of being attractive and intelligent as well as an excellent athlete, figured out the potential of NIL before nearly anyone else, and gained millions of followers on social media. She is now a multimillionaire.
In 2022, The New York Times did a “https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/sports/ncaabasketball/olivia-dunne-haley-jones-endorsements.html”>story on NIL headlined “New Endorsements for College Athletes Resurface an Old Concern: Sex Sells.” The Times disapproved, of course, on feminist grounds. But this is how they pictured Miss Dunne:
Recently, Dunne has opened up about her experience with the Times:
“So I got offered to be in Sports Illustrated — it all started because of a hit piece The New York Times wrote about me,” Dunne, who landed the cover of the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, told host Stephanie McMahon.
“So they came to our gymnastics facility at LSU, took pictures of me. They said, ‘Wear your team-issued attire, put on a leotard,’ and they took a picture of me standing in front of the beam, like any gymnast would, and then they blew it up on the screen and put the headline, ‘Sex Sells.’”
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At the time, Dunne fired back at the newspaper in an Instagram Story post.“And I decided I [was] going to put that same picture that they posted and captioned ‘sex sells’ on my Instagram story and write ‘at The New York Times, is this too much?’” Dunne recalled of her clap back in 2022. “Because, come on, you know what you’re doing. You just put a picture of me in a leotard for clicks and then caption it ‘sex sells.’
“… And then people loved that. … There was a lot of positive feedback from that. So, Sports Illustrated reached out to my agent. I was so excited about that. That was always a dream of mine. I mean, there’s some legends and some amazing athletes that have been in Sports Illustrated.”
The Times tried to denigrate Livvy Dunne, but she got the last laugh.
Dunne is also–again, for those who recently emerged from a cave–the girlfriend of major league pitcher Paul Skenes, who pitched for LSU while Dunne was a gymnast there. Skenes was the number one selection in the 2023 major league draft, and, now a Pittsburgh Pirate, started his second consecutive All-Star game for the National League a week ago.
So I think it is safe to say that Olivia Dunne’s career trajectory and that of The New York Times are going in opposite directions. And I could be wrong, since I have never met them, but I am pretty sure that Dunne and Skenes are conservatives.
