Caitlin Clark’s political arc begins at the 2023 NCAA women’s basketball championship, a study in identity politics. On one side was her team, Iowa, standard bearers for white middle America. On the other was Louisiana State University (LSU), Black America’s team. When LSU went on to beat Iowa by double digits and win the most watched women’s college basketball contest to date, sympathy was quick to gather around the white phenom who had given her all in defeat – and it flowed straight from the top. “You know,” Jill Biden said after the game, “I’m going to tell Joe that I think Iowa should come too because they played such a good game.”
The first lady’s comments, besides raising a national debate around race, were yet more evidence of how the American athlete has become not just a Rorschach test for politics, but also a giant funhouse mirror for our never-ending discourses and polarizing disagreements. During an election year in which fitness and vitality have been stubborn themes, the political surrogacy of sport has come into stark relief.
In the overwhelmingly Black and gay WNBA, Clark has inadvertently become a champion to Maga Americans who fight against wokeness. At the all-inclusive Olympics, the champion gymnast Simone Biles prompted debates about work ethic and even the boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting became global culture war fodder. In the ultra-conservative NFL, Aaron Rodgers gets a green light to air his conspiracy theories on Covid and 9/11. The days when Laura Ingraham or another conservative pundit might tell an outspoken athlete to “shut up and dribble” are gone. Now it’s more like shut up and juggle these convictions.
