CHANGING THE GAME FROM MEN TO WOMEN: CAITLIN BIGGER THAN EVER
Never mind the point records, Clark is behind the growth of women’s basketball with a magnitude topping traditional March Madness, with her unbridled passion attracting millions in genders and ages
It’s comforting to know, now that she has scored more points than any women’s player in NCAA history, that Caitlin Clark finds breathers. She escapes the massive growth that makes her a virtuoso amid massive social media and streaming TV — the biggest female athlete ever, wouldn’t you say? She sets aside passions that have her firing trash at male players in practices, telling one guy, “You’re a little bitch.”
Her three-pointers from the logo and anywhere else on God’s basketball court? The swagger that entices the rest of us from world issues? The 10 million viewers she attracted for the national championship game? The new “Caitlin Cam’’ on Fox, which joins several other networks in broadcasting her games? The companies she endorses, from Gatorade to State Farm to Nike, which are big enough to make her ask if she should stay at Iowa one more season instead of entering the WNBA?
How does she abandon this cultural marvel?
“It’s honestly hard for me to wrap my head around,” Clark said. “It’s crazy, it’s crazy the way people scream my name.”
But when the game is over, such as the Thursday night scrum where she passed Kelsey Plum atop the list, she retreats to her jumbled two-bedroom place. “I’m still a college kid. I still clean my apartment, do my laundry. A lot of times I call my mom to come do it for me,” Clark said. “I play video games and hang out with my friends. Do some schoolwork here and there.”
That’s good. Because her joyful edge is a phenomenon to women and men of all ages, kids to mopes. Scoring a career-high 49 points with 13 assists in a 106-89 win over Michigan — leaving her with 3,569 after a 35-foot three by the logo — blew us away for multiple reasons. First, she couldn’t help some family members and friends in her home state. “I’ve had to tell a lot of people, ‘No,’ ’’ Clark said of the most expensive ticket in women’s basketball, allowing secondary sellers to win. Second, coach Lisa Bluder wasn’t certain whether to stop the game when Plum’s mark was broken, knowing Clark had said, “Honestly, I hope they don’t stop it. We can’t be wasting timeouts on that.” Bluder obeyed merely 2:15 into the first quarter, allowing gold-and-black-clad fans to celebrate at Carver-Hawkeye Arena before a timeout allowed for more.
And third? Clark and the upcoming NCAA women’s tournament, which finally is worth $65 million, is becoming a mightier attraction than a men’s tournament that makes more than a billion dollars this year from CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery. The best men’s player is Zach Edey, the 7-4 center at Purdue. He isn’t nearly as well-known across America than Clark, who hopefully will rematch against Angel Reese, with whom she shared “I don’t see you” gestures during LSU’s title-game victory. March Madness has been shot down by another Clark laser. Ten million viewers might approach 20 million on April 7, a Sunday afternoon in Cleveland, where ABC will promote the event as if we’re seeing gender beginnings.
“Never stop dreaming,” she told the crowd afterward, before crying. “You can achieve what you want. I keep dreaming. I’m 22 years old. Never stop.”
What did Clark say at halftime, when asked about history? “Have to play better defense,” she said, perfectly, with wider thoughts.
She understands the immensity of the record and what it means to her legend. But Clark wants to win a national championship. “Obviously, I understand the magnitude of this. But I think it’s just kind of come along with how my four years have gone. And it’s crazy looking back at how fast everything’s gone. But I’m just really thankful and grateful,” she said. “I dreamed of doing really big things, playing in front of big crowds, going to the Final Four, maybe not quite on this level.”
Which is why she is so honored to play in front of fans, even those who want her to autograph their faces and wave arena signs that say, “Swiftie? I’m a Clarky!” Her marketers, who fly in from New York and normally take care of Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods, know Clark is forming fans for life. “It just takes a second out of my day to make someone else’s day. That’s how I was raised,” she said. “Also, I was that same young girl. I remember going to games. I remember wanting a high-five and wanting an autograph and wanting to catch a t-shirt. That really does make your whole year or week, and it takes a second out of your day. Those are moments they’re going to remember for a really long time.”
They pay for those memories. She is there to entertain, though she must win the game or she might collide with a misguided Ohio State fan wandering after a victory. Notice how the students keeps trashing courts. “People spend a lot of time, money and resources to come see us play, and whenever I step on the court, I just want to have a lot of fun,” she said. “I’ve been able to find a lot of joy and calmness in that. I don’t get nervous for these games, honestly. It’s basketball.”
She has played in front of sellouts all season, at home and on the road, including 55,646 fans who watched her at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. In her view, Clark is still getting back at her competitive brothers, including one who suffered a head wound during a Nerf game. Male athletes always have played mind games, in her view. Why not her? The best revenge is hitting the three, often involving at least 10 a game and sometimes early in a particular possession.
“Usually I know it’s going in when it comes off my hand,” she said, “and usually I know when it’s not going in when it comes off my hand.”
What’s fascinating is that the NBA megastar to whom she is compared, Steph Curry, faces Sabrina Ionescu in a three-point contest at the All-Star Game this weekend. He is the best shooter of all time. She won the event at the WNBA All-Star Game and challenged Curry on social media. It’s a nice event, but Clark would have been fun, too. “There’s going to be a young kid who hasn't maybe watched many WNBA games but is going to watch this, and they're going to have that dream of one day shooting against their idol,” Ionescu said. “We're a small piece of changing the narrative. This isn't really scripted. This isn't something we're doing to try to check something off the box. We're really excited for the opportunity. It's really organic.”
“You look for opportunities to raise the bar on what it means to be a basketball fan,” Curry said. “It's an authentic competition between two great shooters who've had success in the three-point contest. However it plays out, this is what sports is about: competing. The attention and just the level of play growing (is) every single year (in the WNBA). With NBA All-Star weekend, we can keep the narrative going. It's uncharted territory.”
And what if Ionescu wins from the NBA line of 23 feet, 9 inches? “We're having this moment and reshaping how people think,” Curry said. “You've got kids that are in gyms, boys and girls playing. Whatever else comes out of it, we're going to continue to tap in and invest in moments like these that can move the needle.”
Said Curry of Clark: “Caitlin is special. The record speaks for itself, and it's cool. From a scoring perspective, from a shooting perspective, just doing what she's doing — she could pick anybody that she talks about in terms of being an inspiration. If she models something of her game after me, I don't take that for granted.”
No one in women’s sports is making the push like Caitlin Clark, 6 feet tall, known as “Ponytail Pete.” That would be a nod to Pete Maravich, who scored 3,667 points in setting the men’s record at LSU from 1967 to 1970. Clark will beat that number, just as she’ll beat the 3,649 points of Lynette Woodard, who played at Kansas before the NCAA recognized women’s sports. She won’t beat Pearl Moore, who scored 4,061 points for AIAW team Francis Marion in 1979. Just so you know, guess who never has missed a game in 126 tries at Iowa?
“I think it shows you’ve got to come in every single day and be ready to play basketball because no matter who it is, you can beat anybody, you can lose (to) anybody,” Clark said. “That’s a great thing about women’s basketball. That’s what makes it so fun.”
“For her to do this,” said Bluder, “day after day, night after night, sold out arenas, chasing records, for her to be this consistent is incredible. Everybody has a bad night. We all have bad nights. Caitlin doesn’t have bad nights.”
Why were we watching on Peacock, of all things? We want to share her glee, her triumph, her good times, the transformation of how she’s changing our lives.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.