The only question still to be answered about Caitlin Clark is whether the glorious trip she has been taking us on over the last few weeks — OK, for maybe a year if you’ve been paying close attention — turns out to be a moment or a movement.
I’m leaning toward movement, but I have to hedge slightly, even as I was struck by a tweet late Monday night saying simply this: “Caitlin Clark is the truth.”
This is what I know:
If you’re a sports fan, you certainly tuned in to watch Clark and the Iowa-LSU basketball game Monday night.
If you’re a student of popular culture, you certainly tuned in to watch Clark and the Iowa-LSU basketball game.
If you’re a bandwagoner, like many of us, and are fatally attracted to whatever is the hot new thing, I know you watched Clark and the Iowa-LSU basketball game Monday night.
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And if you think that sports can sometimes transcend mere games — I’ve got the receipts if you don’t — you watched because it just felt like something important might be happening.
You know who Clark is. She’s unavoidable. And not just because she has from-the-logo shooting range to rival Steph Curry. And not just because she’s a trash-talking killer on the court whose emotions play out for all to see. I mean, it’s not for nothing they call her Kobe Bryant in a ponytail. And not just because she’s broken every college career scoring record along the way, to packed houses wherever she plays.
There’s also this: Because the rules changed a few years ago, big-time college athletes no longer have to pretend to be amateurs. And Clark, who is undoubtedly big time, has signed on with 11 sponsors, including Nike, Buick, Xfinity and State Farm, in deals worth a total, we’re told, of $3.1 million.
She is the most famous player in today’s college game, male or female. That’s never happened before. I mean, the only way Clark could be any bigger, I guess, is if she were dating Travis Kelce.
The rules have changed, and so have the times. And so has the game, for that matter. Whatever preconceptions the naysayers might have about women’s basketball couldn’t survive watching just that one game.
Just last weekend, seven million watched Clark and Iowa defeat Colorado in their Sweet 16 matchup. If you watched it, you already knew.
The Iowa-LSU game had everything, starting with the fact that it had to be one of the few women’s basketball games about which people asked whether it could possibly live up to the hype. Let’s just say it did.
It had rivalry (between on-court adversaries and fellow All-Americans, Clark and Angela Reese). Revenge (LSU beat Iowa in the NCAA championship game last year, as nearly 10 million people watched). Drama (the winner would advance to the Final Four). Madness (as in March Madness, which used to be reserved for the guys, and also as in mad skills.)
And in this version of March Madness, the women’s game saw the kind of off-court drama that forces people to pay attention, even if for the wrong reasons.
The rivalry between Clark (white) and Reese (Black) has taken on an unfortunate racial tone, with Reese too often cast as villain. In last year’s title game between LSU and Iowa, Reese was called for taunting Clark with a John Cena-like “You can’t see me” hand gesture. But Clark had made the same gesture just a few games before. It wasn’t hard to find the double standard.
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LSU coach Kim Mulkey, who has gained a notoriety that has her being compared — not altogether fairly — to Bob Knight, called out a Los Angeles Times article for being sexist and racist. The writer had to publicly apologize.
To the surprise of nearly everyone, officials forced Hannah Hidalgo, Notre Dame’s star freshman who is Black, to sit out for four minutes of a game, which Notre Dame lost, while she removed a nose ring.
These kinds of things have happened before. But they’re noticed now, which is, I guess, both good and bad. If nothing else, it means people are paying attention.
But there are other truths. Clark is hardly the first great women’s basketball player. When I worked in Norfolk, Virginia, in the late ‘70s, I wrote about Nancy Lieberman, who played at Old Dominion. They called her Lady Magic. She grew up on Long Island and as a high school kid, she took several subways to get to Harlem to play in pickup games with the men. The men, I should mention, were impressed.
When I worked in Los Angeles in the ‘80s, I wrote about Cheryl Miller, who played at USC. That’s when Reggie Miller, who played at UCLA, was still known as Cheryl’s little brother. I don’t know if Cheryl Miller is the greatest women’s player ever, but nobody argued it at the time.
In each case, I wrote about what these players might mean for women’s sports. Well, I’m still writing that. I’ve been writing about it ever since 1972 when Congress passed Title IX — prohibiting gender discrimination in colleges — and changed the finances of college sports. The rule ensured more places, if not as many as the law would seem to require, for women athletes.
But this time, it does seem different. Women’s sports have grown across the spectrum. Girls play sports in numbers no one could have imagined, say, 30 years ago.
Certainly, the money is different. According to one report, women’s sports are projected to be a $1 billion industry this year. That’s 300% greater than just three years before. ESPN is now paying $60 million annually to broadcast the women’s college tournament. That may be small change compared to, say, the NFL, but it’s 10 times greater than the last contract they signed.
And expectations are different. The WNBA — the women’s pro league — can’t wait for Clark to arrive next season. And it would love it if Reese, who is eligible to play another year of college ball, also decides to go pro. It would bring back memories of the year Magic Johnson and Larry Bird went to the NBA together, double-handedly turning an underperforming league into a worldwide behemoth — with, yes, a little help from Michael Jordan.
I saw that Nancy Lieberman was quoted the other day calling Caitlin Clark a pioneer. She said Clark was a pioneer because little girls watching her play today would someday play pro ball for $5 million a year. Rookie contracts in the WNBA currently pay $76,000.
So, that would be movement of a kind, but maybe not the most important kind for the rest of us. What may be more telling is that we’ve reached a time when girls and boys alike are seen wearing Clark’s No. 22 jersey.
When you see that, you think Clark may, in fact, be a movement unto herself. But she’s inviting everyone else to join the ride.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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