The thing about truly special athletes — the ones we’ll be talking about for the rest of our lives, the ones our kids will ask us what it was like to watch — is that they have a sense of the moment. They possess an ability to elevate their performance to match that moment. And when they do, they stop being mere sports superstars and turn into something transcendent.
Caitlin Clark, the Iowa sharpshooter who is in the process of changing her sport in the way Stephen Curry once changed his, had one of those moments last week when she broke the all-time women’s NCAA scoring record. She didn’t accomplish this feat by hitting a random free throw, or some cheap layup. Instead, she did this:
Caitlin Clark's first quarter: 23 points on 8-10 shooting, 4 assists, breaking the all-time scoring record with this three, playing absolutely psycho (complimentary) pic.twitter.com/1WTwbGa8qg
— Emma Baccellieri (@emmabaccellieri) February 16, 2024
Clark hit her signature shot, a shot almost no one else can imagine even attempting, amid a first quarter in which she scored 23 points and threw in four assists, laying waste to every fool left in her wake. It was a transcendent superstar performance, and one that crossed over to the larger outside world — the sort of highlight they play on the Today show, one that your grandparents may have heard about. As a professional sportswriter who spends most of his social time around people who don’t know or care about sports, I’m always on alert as to which figures from my world reach the radar of normal humans. Lately, it has been Travis Kelce (of course), Shohei Ohtani, and Lionel Messi. But right now, I’m getting asked about Caitlin Clark more than anyone else. And in a sign that maybe the world is in fact capable of improving itself, you’re seeing Clark a lot more than Aaron Rodgers in State Farm advertisements these days.
Clark’s ascension over the last year or so to the top shelf of sports icons is often used as evidence that women’s sports is having a moment. But I think that framing undersells what’s going on. The more you look at Clark, and her fellow superstar Angel Reese from defending champion LSU (not to mention Dawn Staley’s undefeated No. 1 South Carolina team), the bigger this all seems. Everything points to an upcoming explosion in the popularity of women’s sports, unlike we’ve ever seen in this country before.
The Clark/Reese storyline (they memorably had a kerfuffle in the Final Four last year) is also exactly the sort of generational talent-vs.-generational talent faceoff that draws in normies. There’s a familiar and fun analogue here: Bird vs. Magic in 1979. Clark and Reese are different kinds of players than those two; Clark is more like Curry, or even Pete Maravich, and Reese could be compared to Charles Barkley or Karl Malone. But like Bird and Magic, they’re both magnetic performers, players you absolutely cannot take your eyes off when they’re on the court, or even off it. And as with that rivalry, the two competitors bring out the best in each other. Even allotting for the fact that Reese’s WNBA potential is much more hotly debated than Clark’s, they’re going to be tied together forever in a way that’ll ultimately benefit both. Not that they need to be a package deal to spark interest: I’m a season ticket holder for Georgia women’s basketball, and seeing Reese play in person next week may be the highlight of my 2024 sports calendar
This may go without saying, but Clark and Reese are much better known than any men’s college basketball player. (I bet 95 percent of New York readers have never heard of Purdue’s Zach Edey, who is about to become the first person to win the Naismith Award twice in a row since before Michael Jordan was drafted.) Why is this? A major reason is that women’s college basketball is structured the way the men’s game was in 1979, when future NBA players were playing for the best college basketball teams on the biggest possible stage. Clark will be the first pick in next year’s WNBA Draft (unless she decides to come back to college for another year, which is unlikely but still a possibility) and Reese will go in the top 10. They’ve made their names before they even reach the pros, and thus their league (and their sport) will benefit. This went out the window in men’s college basketball many years ago. Only one player chosen in the first round of the NBA Draft last year reached the Final Four, and only one of the first seven players selected even played college basketball at all. Of the top six players projected in next year’s NBA Draft, only three of them are even playing college basketball this year.
In the same way watching Bird and Magic made millions of kids want to be NBA stars, the young girls watching Clark and Reese—not to mention other star female athletes like Coco Gauff, Breanna Stewart, Simone Biles or any of the much-heralded (and much-debated) USWNT stars of the last half-decade — are eager to follow in their footsteps. While youth sports participation is down nationally post-Covid, girls’ sports have fallen at a slower level and are picking back up. Keeping girls active in sports post-puberty — historically an issue — has been the focus of investment and research from companies like Nike, which see the market as its next obvious growth opportunity. Volleyball, in particular, is way up. We are seeing the results of what women’s sports advocates have been saying for years: If you give young girls the opportunities, and the role models, they will emulate them. The next Caitlin Clark or Coco Gauff may well be playing down the road from you.
But this is still America, and the real way movements break through is by making money. That’s where television comes in. As sports becomes even more essential to a media industry desperate for something people will watch live, women’s sports is a growth market. The WNBA just signed a record rights deal with ESPN and Ion Television; last year’s NCAA tournament was up a full 103 percent on 2022; the Women’s World Cup Final in 2015 was, until last year’s Men’s World Cup Final, the most-watched soccer match in United States history. And of course last year also featured the Nebraska women’s volleyball game, held in the school’s football stadium, which drew 92,003 fans, breaking the (unofficial) record for the most people ever to watch a women’s sporting event in person. Watching the highlights of that event is legitimately moving, and signify what might still be possible down the road:
Matt Brown, the well-connected purveyor of the Extra Points newsletter, wrote last week that, “If I had to start a completely new sports media entity right now and couldn’t write about the stuff I’ve been doing, I would absolutely throw money at growing a publication aimed at women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, or softball. There’s more ad desire out there than there is existing media inventory, and there are plenty more fans (and potential fans) who haven’t been served yet.” You hear the same rumblings within media corporations.
So you’ve got above-the-title stars at the peak of their powers, an army of women eager to follow in their footsteps, and a television industry about to go all in. Caitlin Clark is a wonderful story. But she’s more than that: She, and so many like her, are the future.
