Okay, this piece is technically not about sports, but name one food more ubiquitous to sports fans than hot wings. It’s not that people eat only hot wings during games, but hot wings only get eaten during games. They’re not exactly showing up at bistros or baby showers, you know.

(I wrote hot wings and breasts and this picture just automatically came up. Hope it’s okay.)

It’s getting to the point that the skinless, boneless chicken breasts, long-revered (and rightly so) as the best part of the chicken, are taking a backseat to the wing. Those cheap wing nights at your favorite bar? Oh, they’re long gone. And if you’re not careful, you’ll have to eat the “boneless” wing instead. Quelle horreur.

From the NEW YORK TIMES:

All this is happening because wholesale chicken prices have turned upside down. The once-lowly wing is selling at a premium over what has long been the gold standard of poultry parts, the skinless boneless chicken breast.

Like the tail that wags the dog, the wings are now flapping the chicken.

In seven of the last 11 months, wholesale wing prices have been higher than breast prices, a reversal in a market where breasts usually reign supreme. In September, the average wholesale price for whole chicken wings in the Northeast was $1.48 a pound, according to the Agriculture Department. Yet skinless boneless breasts were $1.21 a pound.

Understand that this is like selling the hair of a coconut for more than the milk. I love me some wings, but primarily for the sauce; the wing itself is an inefficient, gaunt piece of food. You get three bites if you’re lucky, and an undercooked (or lukewarm) wing is worse than no wing at all. Okay, almost worse.

So restaurants, incredulous at the scene unfolding in front of them, are frying pieces of breast meat, calling them “boneless wings” (apparently taking the bone out turned the meat into good meat), and preparing them like wings to class the place up a little bit. And, well, no:

For wing-centric restaurants, boneless wings are a way to attract customers who may not like the messiness of wings, which have to be chewed off the bone. And with prices upside down, the boneless wings now act as a hedge, with the lower-cost breast meat offsetting higher wing costs.

But wing lovers sneer.

“A wing is a wing, and a wing has a bone,” said Anita Freedlander, the owner of Rusty’s Family Restaurant and Sports Grille in Tucson, which specializes in wings and does not sell the boneless variety.

That’s just like racist against white meat, Anita. Why you gotta hate on the whites?

Really, the spike in wing prices - though likely a market overreaction that’ll correct itself over the coming months and years - was inevitable; the wing has become an increasingly specialized piece of food, with wing chains popping up across the country and offering all sorts of sauces and extras with the wings. For whatever reason, that under-girthed part of the chicken, with its gristle and pimpled skin, is the perfect canvas for a wide variety of buffalo sauces.

I’ll still eat wings at a bar, of course, price be damned; like I said, love me some wings. But if you’re trying to gnaw tiny slivers of meat off the bone and you want to make fun of the girls who eat the boneless wings instead, laugh all you want; the ladies are still eating better than you are.

Cheaper now, too.