Postcards from America
In 2024 for the first time, the TV audience for the NCAA women’s basketball championship was bigger than the men’s game thanks largely to one player.
Women’s college basketball is smashing all kinds of audience records in the United States. The championship game last week drew more fans than baseball’s World Series and the venerable Master’s golf tournament. Its viewership topped men’s college basketball and pro NBA championship finals.
We were among the nearly 19 million people captivated by the rollercoaster game between the University of Iowa and the University of South Carolina. It was the first women’s basketball game we had ever watched from tip off to the final buzzer.
Like many other Americans, we caught this new fever because of 22-year-old Caitlin Clark from Iowa. She’s the highest-scoring player, male or female, in Division I college basketball history.
Last month, she broke an all-time career scoring record that had stood since 1970.
Clark has magic. She consistently makes seemingly impossible shots from long distances, the kind of flashy three-point marksmanship usually associated with professional male stars like the NBA’s Steph Curry. Over and over, Clark arcs a 9.5-inch-wide ball into an 18-inch hoop from as far away as 35 feet.
“She’s breathtaking to watch,” said Christine Brennan, a well-known sports columnist and TV commentator. Brennan compared Clark to the diva at the opera or the star in a Broadway hit: “You can’t take your eyes off her.”
On the court, Clark’s athleticism over a two-hour game causes jaws to drop and fans to stand. Off the court, she comes across as confident and composed, not a hothead or showoff.
“People aren’t going to remember every single win or every single loss,” she said after her team lost to the reigning national champion, South Carolina.
“I think they’re just going to remember the moments that they shared at one of our games or watching on TV or how excited their young daughter or son got about watching women’s basketball. I think that’s pretty cool.”
Clark wears her long brown hair tied up in a ponytail, a thin headband keeping any stray hairs out of her line of vision. She is a no-fuss gal in a baggy uniform who doesn’t wear makeup.
The Caitlin Clark Effect, as many sportscasters call it, comes 50 years after enactment of Title IX, a law that forced colleges to invest as much in women’s sports programmes as men’s. It aimed to give girls and young women equal opportunity. Until then, colleges poured money into first-class facilities and coaches for male athletes, while women barely were given the money for a locker room.
Plenty of world class female athletes have benefited from this law, and some have risen to stardom, especially in women’s soccer.
But until now basketball, a game invented in America, has been thoroughly dominated by men. Just about everyone has heard of legends like Curry and LeBron James.
Now Americans can name a female basketball star.
Clark was the No. 1 pick in the April 15 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft and to compete on the US Olympic team in Paris this summer.
As with so many things in America, the Clark phenomenon has raised racial questions. She is White and many have asked, “Would there be so much buzz if she were Black?” Some say no. So many basketball stars, both men and women, are Black and she stands out.
But South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who is Black, had nothing but praise for Clark.
“She carried a heavy load for our sport, and it just isn’t going to stop here on the collegiate tour,” Staley said. “When she’s the number on pick in the WNBA draft, she’s going to lift that league up as well.”
The big bucks are still in men’s basketball. The WNBA’s annual revenue is around $200 million compared to NBA’s $10 billion. Even though ticket sales for women’s games have a jumped 200 percent, men still dominate the dollars.
It’s also unclear if the current obsession will last. When Clark goes pro and if there is no new college dynamo, will the interest run out as fast as the game’s 24-second shot clock?
The lucrative sports betting industry hopes not. Suddenly, it got a new boost from women’s basketball. Several sportsbooks said the championship game was the most-bet women’s sporting event ever.
The big test may be in how many young girls start playing and if the women who had become Clark fans stay tuned into the sport.
Our daughter Kate, 29, a CNN journalist who had been captain of her high school volleyball team, has been following Clark intently, thrilled by the nation’s fixation on a young woman athlete.
Kate was bummed that Clark’s team lost the championship game. But the next day, she dug out her basketball from a box in the garage and went to a neighbourhood park and started shooting hoops.