Caitlin Clark Phenomenon Is Perfect Look At Modern Era Of Society | Clay Travis
Caitlin Clark has produced more hot takes in the past year than any American female athlete in my life.
And I don't think this is hyperbole.
Hell, she may have produced more sports opinions in the past five days than any American female athlete ever has. Find me another athlete ever who has managed to turn a flagrant foul into a talking point on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN in primetime broadcasts. Put simply, I don't think it has ever happened before.
Now, let me be clear, I'm not saying Clark is the most accomplished female athlete of my lifetime, she clearly isn't, but is she the most talked about in terms of a variety of opinions? Without question. Serena Williams is the best women's tennis player of the 21st century, but she was never that controversial. Danica Patrick raced against men in NASCAR and the Indy 500, but she didn't provoke massive opinions. Hell, I don't think I've ever written a column about a women's basketball player before in 20 years of writing about sports online. And I bet the vast majority of you reading this have never clicked on an article about a women's basketball player ever. (No, this isn't media manipulation. I get the data, every time OutKick publishes anything on Caitlin Clark, you guys click faster than you do for Olivia Dunne's latest bikini pics. Frankly, I've never seen anything like this interest for a women's athlete. Ever.)
And I'll admit to you, I didn't see this coming, I was wrong about how much interest there was in Caitlin Clark. Truth be told, I grew up watching a ton of women's basketball -- my dad loved Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols, we watched every Lady Vols game that mattered for most of my childhood. I loved Pat Summitt and Candace Parker and Chamique Holdsclaw and I hated Geno Auriemma back in the day. I got my picture taken next to the Pat Summitt statue in Knoxville. So I didn't buy into the idea that somehow Caitlin Clark was taking women's basketball to a different level than it had ever been before because I thought women's basketball was already pretty popular.
But I was wrong.
And I own it.
People are tuning in to WNBA games to see Caitlin Clark. (Photo by Catalina Fragoso/NBAE via Getty Images)
Caitlin Clark makes people watch
Ratings say 18.7 million people watched Iowa's women play against South Carolina this past March. That's roughly triple the audience of any NBA playoff game so far this year. Way more people are interested in watching Caitlin Clark play basketball than Luka Doncic or Jayson Tatum. I'll admit, I didn't see that coming.
And while the audience for the WNBA games has been nowhere near that level of viewership, the data reflects that the Caitlin Clark obsession has produced record ratings for the WNBA too.
Right now everyone in sports has an opinion on Caitlin Clark. Heck, she nearly broke ESPN Monday when in consecutive shows Stephen A. Smith got called out by one of his guests for not talking about the WNBA enough over the past three years and Pat McAfee had to apologize for calling Caitlin Clark a white bitch. (He meant it as a compliment, but context isn't always easy to convey on the Internet where everyone clips 30 seconds of what you say and reacts to it.)
Regardless, if I'd told you two years ago ESPN was going to have a day where its primary story line was a WNBA foul controversy and that I'd write several thousand words about a women's basketball player, most of you would have called me crazy. And two years ago I would have agreed with you.
But here we are, the Caitlin Clark phenomenon is real, she's the biggest story in sports and she's the first woman to ever ascend to my sports talk hypothetical summer season doldrum filler, you can say "Caitlin Clark is..." and ask your callers to fill in the blank and every line will be immediately lit nationwide and the opinions will be incredibly varied.
Not many athletes, male or female, have reached this level on phenomenon
That's not a huge list, by the way. LeBron has been on it for most of his career, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, and Cam Newton have been white-hot topics for substantial amounts of time, Tiger Woods, Colin Kaepernick, there aren't many athletes that will load lines without the host even giving you his opinion, but Caitlin Clark is on it right now. We talked about her on Clay & Buck yesterday and we could have done an entire three-hour show on her if I were still hosting the OutKick morning radio show.
That's how many people care right now.
That's unheard of for a women's athlete. In fact, the only other woman that would fit this bill,that I can think of were Ronda Rousey and Simone Biles and both of these were relatively short-lived periods of time, Biles after she pulled herself out of the Olympics and Ronda Rousey at the peak of her UFC career, maybe Megan Rapinoe because sports fans came to hate her, but the list is small.
That's it.
And I'd argue that Caitlin Clark, based on the audience numbers, is bigger than all of these women, the most hot take producing female athlete in any of our lives.
What's more, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Caitlin Clark, right now, is the highest paid woman to ever play basketball in the history of the sport. She's making at least $10 million a year, probably $20 million, and almost all of that is from endorsements, not from her WNBA contract which only pays her around $75k a year.
Yet, at this particular moment, she's probably not one of the 20 best WNBA players. (I will readily admit that I can name like five WNBA players, but I went and looked at the stats. Caitlin Clark is presently the 18th leading scorer in the league. Someone named Arike Ogunbowale is the leading scorer. Here are the other top nine. A'Ja Wilson, Kahleah Copper, Napheesa Collier, Jo March, Dearica Hamby, Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd.
Do you know any of these women?
I don't.
Pop quiz, can you pick out which one is actually not a WNBA player and instead the star of Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women?"
Clark is the 21st best shooter in the league, the 38th best rebounder, and tied for the sixth best in assists. She's not in the top 40 in steals, and is tied for the ninth most turnovers.
Again, is this the resume of a top 20 player right now in the league?
I don't think so.
Caitlin Clark being paid based on potential, fan interest
In fact, and this is probably my fourth super hot take of the column so far, there's a strong argument Caitlin Clark is the only athlete in any pro sport ever to be the highest paid in the sport and not be one of the top five or top 10 best in the sport. Ever in the history of sports. (I say top five or top 10 because you can often debate whether someone is the best or not if they are in the top five or the top 10.) Even if you are a Caitlin Clark diehard, I think it's pretty clear that Clark isn't a top five or top 10 talent in the WNBA right now.
I said RIGHT NOW.
Maybe one day she will be.
But RIGHT NOW she's the highest paid women's basketball player ever and she's nowhere near the best pro.
Yes, I know, she's the highest scoring women's college basketball player ever, but can you name me a male athlete who dominated in college and became the highest paid player in his sport before he ever accomplished anything as a pro? Tiger Woods might be the closest, but other than him, I can't even think of anyone in the stratosphere of being the highest paid ever before you even do anything as a pro.
So how did this happen? How much of this is race, sex and looks based and how much is talent? How did Clark, a college basketball player from Iowa, become the highest paid women's basketball player ever, before she even played a minute in the WNBA? And what does this tell us about the state not just of sports, but of women's sports in particular. And where do we go from here?
I have so many thoughts on this because I find the Caitlin Clark phenomenon so utterly fascinating.
Major points of discussion regarding Caitlin Clark
But for now, let's start with five major points of discussion.
Beginning with this:
1. Who are the Caitlin Clark fans, the people who weren't women's basketball fans before, but are now?
This is the most interesting question to me -- it's unquestionably true that Caitlin Clark is bringing an entirely new group of fans to women's basketball, the WNBA in particular. So who are these fans?
My guess? Highly educated and relatively high-income white people with little girls in their family. (I'd love to see this data, but so far I haven't seen it broken down.)
That is, the group that made the US Women's Soccer team a huge national phenomenon. Clark, like most popular soccer players, is a straight woman of relatively normal build and girl next door cuteness. She looks and carries herself like a ton of these (often white) families would like their little girls to grow up and be like.
Yes, this is a hypothetical from me.
You are welcome to now scream at me on social media that you are a trans black midget who LOVES CAITLIN CLARK and therefore my surmisal about her fan base can't possibly be true.
Now regardless of whether you buy my hypothesis on who her fans are this is unfair to a degree because Clark, no matter what her race, looks and sexuality were, would still be in the WNBA. If Clark were a gay Asian woman, she'd still be a first round pick, but I think it's fair to say her race and sex impact her appeal. (In this way, she's a bit like Jeremy Lin. Remember Linsanity? If Lin weren't an Asian man, it never would have existed and you never would have known who he was. Yes, there are other white women in the WNBA, but none of them are remotely as popular as Clark is.)
I think there's also a "Yellowstone" impact here. Do you know how "Yellowstone" became the most popular show on television? From the middle of the country. LA and New York came late to the Yellowstone phenomenon. I think Clark also came from red America and was discovered late by blue America. Again, this is a generality, but I think coming from Iowa made her more famous than she would have been if she'd just been another great UConn player.
The other part is this, her game is accessible, she's a female Steph Curry. She isn't the biggest or brawniest player, she isn't an absurd athlete, she's a long-range gunner with great handles who plays an effervescent style of basketball.
I've written and talked quite a bit about this, but I coached my son's youth basketball team for much of the past decade. You know who all the kids today want to be? Steph Curry. They all pull up and take long-range shots, they dream of a step back three to win a game. When I was a kid, we all wanted to be Michael Jordan, kids today all want to be Steph Curry.
My bet is Caitlin Clark grew up wanting to be Steph Curry too.
Because she plays just like him.
And, remember, early in Steph's career there were lots of NBA players who didn't like him too. They didn't like the way he played, his cockiness, his long range shot taking, and significantly, the fact that he grew up fairly well off in a two parent household. That's not really a part of the Curry story now, but LeBron hated him early on, a big subtext of their rivalry was LeBron, at least to me, seemed jealous of Steph's family. LeBron wanted the dad Steph had. To LeBron's credit, he appears to be a really good dad himself now, the dad he never had, but go back a decade or so and this was a big part of the rivalry, underdiscussed, between the two.
In a league where there were almost no white stars of that era, Steph was seen as the light-skinned rich kid with the rich kid game.
Now everyone plays like Steph -- and the Euros -- but I'm old enough to remember when saying a big man liked to stand outside and shoot threes was the biggest insult you could give a player.
The game has changed, thanks to Steph, and Caitlin Clark is one of his offspring, she's just playing like him in the women's game.
But, again, my guess is -- and I'd love to see demos on this -- that the Caitlin Clark fan base is the same as the US women's soccer fan base, a white family with young girls fan base that otherwise wasn't consuming women's college or pro basketball at a high level.
2. Okay, so she plays like Steph, but who is Clark most like in modern sports history in terms of her impact on the sport itself?
My take right now is Ronda Rousey.
Why do I say this?
Because Steph Curry, as popular as he is, didn't really add tons of new basketball fans. The NBA already had a big fan base when he came into the league. The WNBA, on the other hand, basically has no die-hard fans.
This is why the player's make teacher salaries to play pro basketball.
Ronda Rousey is the only women's UFC fighter that has truly cut through the noise and become a superstar. Now that I've written this, I'm going to be deluged with hard core UFC fans accusing me of disrespecting (insert women's fighter here who most of you have never heard of). I know women are still fighting in the UFC, but I bet most of you, who are casual UFC fans, can't name any of them.
Ronda Rousey was the Mike Tyson of women's combat sports.
I paid for UFC fights to watch her fight.
I had friends over to watch her fight.
I can't even name a women's UFC fighter right now.
Angel Reese tried to argue Monday that it wasn't just Caitlin Clark bringing fans to the stands. That's true only in the sense that Clark has to play someone else. If Caitlin Clark retired tomorrow, Angel Reese would lose 95% of her relevance. She only matters because she's branded herself as the anti-Clark. If there's no Clark, no one cares about her. Reese's famous because she mocked Clark in a big nationally televised game.
If Clark's not there, the audience vanishes.
Now unlike Rousey, who lost two fights and vanished, Clark can play in the WNBA for a long time and has more staying power.
But this brings me to point three.
3. Caitlin Clark has to be good enough to matter.
If her team sucks and she isn't one of the best players, eventually people will lose interest.
Iowa had a chance to win a title so people bought in to women's college basketball.
The Indiana Fever are 2-9 and in their last game Clark scored three points, shooting 1 for 10 from the field.
Her team lost by 38 points.
And this is why I get WNBA players resenting her.
Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever had a nightmare game to the New York Liberty, losing by 38 points (Photo by Catalina Fragoso/NBAE via Getty Images)
Yes, race and sexuality are at play here, there's a ton of jealousy from a mostly black and lesbian league.
But also, and this is key, if you busted your ass at work and were better than everyone else there and then a new hire made more money than you ever had in your entire career and you were way better than her, wouldn't you resent her too?
Caitlin Clark is the highest paid women's basketball player ever and she isn't remotely close to the best.
Now, again, maybe one day she will be.
But right now she's being paid more than anyone in the history of basketball and she isn't the best player.
Michael Jordan and LeBron James didn't start off their careers as the highest paid player in the history of basketball. They earned it with their performance on the court.
Sports is a meritocracy and Clark hasn't earned her pay on the pro level.
Now maybe if Clark was a black lesbian, like most of the league, and made this same kind of money there wouldn't be the same amount of resentment, but you can make the argument that Clark is the diversity, equity and inclusion hire of the WNBA -- the straight white girl in a league without many straight white girls -- and she makes more than anyone else. If the vice president of DEI was the highest paid employee in your office by far on the first day she started work would you like and respect her?
Probably not.
Now you can say that Clark isn't being paid more by the WNBA itself, but come on, she's making tens of millions of dollars off the court instead.
Okay, there have been lots of good black lesbian WNBA players. None of them got Caitlin Clark money. That's not her fault, mind you, but it is worth thinking about when you consider how the other players are reacting to her.
Why has no WNBA star player ever made this kind of Caitlin Clark money? Hell, this white basketball princess shows up and the entire league doesn't have to fly commercial any more?! They all get charter jets now? Just because she's so famous and some people in the airport might treat her unfairly.
I mean, that's pretty crazy. Can't you see why that might provoke a bit of resentment?
Put it this way, if you'd spent your entire life as a black woman perfecting your craft, you are, presently, way better than Caitlin Clark has ever been at basketball, and no one even knows your name, isn't it fair to ask how that happened? Why is black female excellence at basketball valued so much less than white pro basketball averageness? That's a hard question worth asking, and it isn't wrong to ask it.
Furthermore, why is this happening in women's sports?
Because there is no male equivalent to this at all in any sport ever in my lifetime.
4. The closest male equivalent, frankly, is probably Tiger Woods.
Much like Caitlin Clark, Tiger looks different than most of the people in his sport.
And he brought a new audience to that sport.
Which is why if I were advising the WNBA players, I'd tell them to look past their resentment and realize that the attention she's bringing is probably going to get everyone way more money. In fact, the better Clark is in the WNBA, the better everyone gets paid. You may not be the golden child yourself, but if the golden child gets rich, we all get more shine.
Back when Tiger Woods joined the PGA Tour and did so with massive amounts of endorsement money, I'm sure some pro golfers believed he was overrated and overpaid.
But, guess what, he almost immediately started dominating on the tour. Tiger had a ton of hype, but he lived up to it.
And then everyone got way more money to win golf tournaments. The Tiger Woods tide lifted all boats.
And pretty soon everyone was cool with Tiger.
Making everyone else rich has a way of papering over differences.
But here's the problem with that analogy, Tiger dominated and proved his money was earned. Is Caitlin Clark ever going to dominate in the WNBA? In order to justify the money and end the resentment, she has to prove she's worth the money, by becoming one of the best in the game.
Will Caitlin Clark's career trajectory mirror Ronda Rousey's or Larry Bird's? (Getty Images)
5. Which is why to me there are two pathways at this point for Caitlin Clark, is she going to be Ronda Rousey or is she going to be Larry Bird?
If she's Ronda Rousey, she won't lose the American sporting public's interest overnight like Rousey did after losing two fights, but she will slowly fade, like a comet streaking across the sports sky.
Can you name an American athlete who isn't presently and hasn't ever been at any point in his or her career one of the 10 best at his or her pro sport that American sports fans follow? I can't.
Yes, Caitlin Clark could become Tiger Woods and be the unquestioned best at her sport, but that feels unlikely right now. The better analogy, I think, is she could become Larry Bird. Back in the day Larry Bird and Magic Johnson made the NBA matter.
Before them, the league was dying, the NBA Finals were on television tape delay.
Tape delay!
Then the Bird vs. Magic rivalry happened.
And suddenly every white and black person in the country who was a sports fan cared.
But, and this is so incredibly key, Bird and Magic respected each other, they uplifted one another with their athletic excellence, they brought white and black people together in sports harmony.
Sure, Bird might have had more white fans and Magic might have had more black fans, but they didn't make race the focus of their rivalry, they made their basketball excellence the focus of their rivalry.
And in so doing, they did what the best in sports can do, make us see our common humanity and rise above our individual identities, while elevating the sport they played to levels it had never seen before. By appealing to each of our better angels, they took us all into the clouds.
What's happening right now with Caitlin Clark and the WNBA is what I've spent the better part of a decade fighting against, the idea of our identities -- racial, sexual, and ethnic -- dividing us completely. Many WNBA players, quite frankly, don't respect Caitlin Clark or her game. They are dragging her down and, with it, their own league too. These players have spent decades begging for attention, they finally get it, and they all detest the person bringing the attention, it's Mean Girls on the basketball court.
It makes no sense when you think about it logically, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it from an identity politics perspective.
Because identity politics is the antithesis of sports, it teaches us to judge everyone based on appearance, not based on talent and behavior.
In sports all that matters is your talent, it's the ultimate meritocracy, you either are the best man or woman or you're not. No one starts off on a scoreboard with more or less than zero points, no one cares where you go to school or who your parents are, we're all equal between the lines of competition, all that matters is your own individual performance.
I've been arguing for a decade that America should be more like sports and sports should be less like America, that the best man or woman should win, not the best man pretending to be a woman.
But right now the story of Caitlin Clark is she's being compensated like she's the best at what she does and she isn't.
Maybe one day she will be, but right now she isn't.
We've never seen a male version of Caitlin Clark
There's no male sports version of Caitlin Clark. The best paid men are all the best at their sports. For better or worse right now Caitlin Clark's the most overpaid player in women's basketball history.
But Clark’s also bringing diversity and inclusion to the WNBA and the people who claim to love DEI, hate her the most.
They say politics can make strange bedfellows, but right now sports can too.
Witness Bob Costas on CNN last night speaking truth to their left wing audience, he pointed out something fascinating, CNN had him on to talk about a flagrant foul. But he noted that the only reason anyone cared was because a black player had flagrantly fouled a white player. He pointed out that if two black players were involved, no one would have noticed or cared.
That's true, but it also raised another issue, which wasn't addressed.
In covering Caitlin Clark, CNN had accidentally flipped its racial script.
Usually CNN only covers stories where black people are victims of white misbehavior. Here they were covering the white person as the victim of black misbehavior. Only none of them noticed the narrative switch.
That's because at the moment Caitlin Clark is breaking people's minds by crafting a story that doesn't fit a convenient narrative. She's the overpaid white, straight girl in a league filled with black lesbians.
And people from across the national landscape have no idea how to respond.
Because in the end what she's actually doing is revealing much more about the people commenting on her than anything about herself at all.
Caitlin Clark is an American Rorschach test and we're all just squinting at her image, telling everyone all about ourselves when we claim to be talking about her.
And in that way, she is the perfect mirror for the modern era we all live in, because isn't that all social media really is, a large portrait we all paint of ourselves, while we claim to be talking about others?