After the curtain finally dropped on Caitlin Clark’s collegiate career and the last of the garnet and black confetti had fallen at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Sunday afternoon, the all-time scoring leader in major college basketball history could finally reflect on a season that has recalibrated all expectations for how women’s sports can be covered, commercialized and consumed.
Twice in the last week alone Clark’s games have set new television ratings records for women’s college basketball with a third for the title game almost certain when Sunday’s overnights are released. Even South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, having just completed a perfect season for a second NCAA title in three years with a team who had graduated all five starters, probably her best piece of coaching work yet, couldn’t make it far into her victory speech before paying tribute to the woman of the moment, saying: “I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport.”
Whether Clark is the greatest college player to ever lace them up is subject to debate – it’s still Maya Moore for me – but there’s no question the Hawkeyes star has done more to attract mainstream attention to the women’s game than anyone before her. Since drawing a record 55,646 fans for an October preseason game in an outdoor football stadium, Clark and the Hawkeyes became appointment viewing. Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3m US television viewers, making it one of the most watched sporting events of the past year outside the NFL. Their Final Four contest with Connecticut on Saturday night bested it, averaging 14.2m viewers and peaking at 17m, better than every World Series and NBA finals game last year.
But the TV numbers, splashy as they are, somehow the undersell the moment. Consider all the morning sports-shouting shows talking about women’s basketball like never before. Or how the cheapest ticket on the resale market for Sunday’s title game surpassed $500 at tip-off, an unthinkable sum for a women’s college game even a few years ago and more than three times the get-in-the-door price for Monday’s men’s final.
On Saturday, more than 17,000 spectators turned out to watch Iowa and South Carolina in an open practice, forcing organizers to turn people away at the gate by the time Clark and the Hawkeyes took the court. A few hours later, the running gag in Saturday Night Live’s cold open was how Clark and Co have come to completely overshadow the men’s tournament.
And it wasn’t Clark alone. Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, LSU’s Angel Reese and Southern California’s JuJu Watkins have all helped propel the women’s college game into uncharted territory over the past few months, becoming household names in a sport where coaching greats like Pat Summit, Geno Auriemma, Tara VanDerveer and Kim Mulkey had always been the biggest stars. Staley’s ruthless Gamecocks, who have won three of the last eight NCAA titles and 80 of their last 81 games, continue to raise the standard for team play. And there’s no shortage of optimism for the future with talents like Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, Villanova’s Lucy Olsen and LSU’s Mikaylah Williams waiting in the wings.
Longtime viewers of women’s sports have reason to be leery when it comes to sustaining this momentum. Researchers from USC and Purdue conducting a longitudinal study analysing the disparities in men’s and women’s sports television coverage over three decades have warned about the myth of the watershed moment – how periodic spikes in interest, like the 1999 Women’s World Cup, have been framed as turning points “that now things can never be the same again, that never again will women’s sports be ignored by the mass media” followed by inevitable disappointment when there is “little to no subsequent spillover into increased quantity or quality of mainstream media coverage of everyday women’s sports”.
But it must be said: this time does feel different. Yes, Clark is that rarest of phenomena who won’t be easily replaced when she joins the professional ranks in the coming months. But the machinery that is making it possible to get these players in front of eyeballs appears built to last. Schools are pouring funding into women’s sports at record clips. Social media and NIL deals have enabled players to amplify their star power like never before. The growth of conference networks in addition to ESPN’s commitment to airing games on their flagship channel have resulted in more televised regular-season games than ever.
“I think the biggest thing is, for us, this team came along at a really good time, whether it was social media, whether it was NIL, whether it was our games being nationally televised,” Clark said Sunday after finishing with 30 points, eight rebounds and five assists against the nation’s top field-goal percentage defense. “We’ve played on Fox, NBC, CBS, ESPN – you go down the list, and we’ve been on every national television channel. I think that’s been one of the biggest things that has helped us.
“I think, no matter what sport it is, give them the same opportunities, believe in them the same, invest in them the same, and things are really going to thrive. You see it with other sports, and I’m a big fan of other sports. Like I try to support as much as I can, and I think that’s the biggest thing is continue to invest your time, money and resources there, and continue to show up for those people and give them the opportunities.”
Speaking off the record to a Guardian source, the commissioner of a major North American sports organization once said that a league cannot be based on a cause or social movement. It has to be about the quality of the sport. People will never tune in or turn out in mass numbers because they’re told they should support women’s sports. They will watch because the product is compelling on its own terms.
When experts are asked why women’s sports are so much more popular today, the go-to line is always streaming services and social media. That everyone has always wanted to watch it and now it’s available. But that’s not entirely true. More women are better at sports now than ever before. The college game has always had stars at the top, from Cheryl Miller to Sheryl Swoopes to Lisa Leslie to Diana Taurasi to Candace Parker to Breanna Stewart to Sabrina Ionescu and countless others in between. But the talent pool today is deeper than ever. Look no further than the tooth-and-nail drama in the early rounds of this year’s NCAA tournament, an event that at one point was more or less a walkover until the Elite Eight.
And the people have come. The audience for women’s college hoops is no longer exclusively hardcore fans and liberals watching out of a sense of obligation. When the Barstool bros are in on it, you know you’ve got over. It also doesn’t hurt that, while the best players on the men’s side rarely stay for more than one season, women’s players are precluded from entering the WNBA draft until the year they turn 22. That allows rivalries – like the one we saw between Clark and Reese – to develop and storylines to percolate.
But as one famous LSU fan might put it: it’s the talent, stupid.
“When I think about women’s basketball going forward, obviously it’s just going to continue to grow, whether it’s at the WNBA level, whether it’s at the college level,” Clark said. “Everybody sees it. Everybody knows. Everybody sees the viewership numbers. When you’re given an opportunity, women’s sports just kind of thrives.”
