A year and a half ago, most Americans had no idea who she was. She was an athletic young woman tucked away in a Midwestern college town, known to women's college basketball fans but hidden from the national media.
Today, Caitlin Clark is America's most popular athlete, the driving force behind some of the best days in women's sports history, America's girl next door is all grown up, and this country is in the midst of what Title IX has given us. It embodies everything I could have hoped for.
Grandmas who shop in the produce section know her name. Same goes for the boys who scream after doing long jumps in the driveway. Television ratings that were unimaginable a few months ago are now commonplace. No one laughed when women's basketball easily outperformed men's basketball in this year's NCAA Tournament. It simply made sense because of her.
When she comes to town, the country's largest basketball arena fills up within hours. It happened in college and now it's happening in the pros. Disney+ has decided to broadcast her first-ever live sporting event, her first WNBA regular season game in Connecticut, Indiana, on Tuesday night. Her No. 22 jersey is flying off the virtual shelves, worn by thousands of girls and probably thousands of boys. They all have fathers and grandfathers who would never, ever, ever wear a women's sports jersey. .
That's really amazing. This complete appeal of female athletes in team sports. When has something like this ever happened? Have you ever seen something like this?
A quarter of a century ago, yes. On a sunny Saturday, July 10, 1999, in Southern California, his 90,185 fans filled the Rose Bowl, many of them fathers and mothers with their daughters, to play U.S. women's soccer at the Women's World Cup. I watched my national team defeat China in penalty kicks. Last. If you were alive then, she would remember where she was when Brandi Chastain scored the winning goal, ripping her shirt off and slamming it over her head. Luckily, I was in the press box covering every moment.
Like Clark, the team's star players became well known that summer. They appeared in witty television commercials and were revered by the national news media. After the win, Chastain and his teammates appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek, People, and Sports Illustrated in the same week, the first and only time for any of them. It was an event.
For me, the 22-year-old Clarke is a unique version of that team. As of the summer of 1999, and even now, thanks to his 1972 law, Title IX, which opened the floodgates for girls and women to play sports, this country was obsessed with what it had created. It's clear that it is.
WNBA continues to draw national attention to Caitlin Clark
But the 99ers and Clark's paths diverged. Shortly after the buzz and TV interviews died down that summer, the USWNT all but disappeared, but resurfaced in September 2000 at the Summer Olympics in Australia, where they won a silver medal. Of course, there were some friendlies and tournaments, newspaper articles, Olympic previews, and plenty of accolades, including a Sports Illustrated Sportswoman of the Year cover, but most importantly… There was no professional league yet. That he didn't realize until 2001.
So by and large, when the '99ers left the big national stage of the Women's World Cup, they were gone for 14 months.
When Clark and his University of Iowa teammates lost to South Carolina in the 2024 NCAA finals, Clark was also separated for eight days. (During that time, she actually made a guest appearance on “Saturday Night Live” to rave reviews.)
On the eighth day, Clark became the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft and drew record television ratings. She wasn't like a soccer player, she had a league to go to and a season to play right away. The league, the WNBA, and the team, the Indiana Fever, were eager to promote her and her high-profile rookie classmates and were ready to ride the season. The huge viewer ratings and momentum of fan interest that she receives.
Additionally, there is another league, the WNBA's big brother, the NBA, which is providing unprecedented support, including promoting Clark and the WNBA to its 45.8 million X (formerly Twitter) followers. Never before have the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, among the top four men's leagues in the United States, provided support for women's sports like the NBA is providing this year.
red, white and blue vs black and gold
Clark's national influence is made even more remarkable by another contrast with the 1999 USWNT. Not to mention the soccer players, the national team wearing red, white, and blue, representing the United States in major international tournaments and being cheered on by the whole country.
But what about Clark? Although she wore the black and gold uniform of the Iowa Hawkeyes, which was becoming famous, Iowa State was just one of hundreds of women's college basketball teams before her arrival. It wasn't even one of the leading schools in the women's competition.
Clark became a national phenomenon despite not representing her country in any significant sense (she played for the U.S. Under-16 and Under-19 National Teams, far from media attention). ) would be a first for women's sports.
Olympians such as Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, Allyson Felix, Mikaela Shiffrin, Bonnie Blair, Peggy Fleming, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Serena, etc. almost every celebrity in women's sports, including tennis players. Golfers such as Venus Williams, Nancy Lopez and Michelle Wie, to name a few, have achieved or enhanced their fame at major international sporting events such as the Olympic Games, World Championships, Wimbledon, and the US Open. American fans became interested in them primarily because they were first introduced as athletes representing the country. Especially since it's easy to root for.
What was Clark's starting point for becoming one of the most popular athletes in the nation? Iowa City, Iowa, and now Indianapolis. Not New York. Not LA. Not Chicago. Sports fans' interest in her and her tightrope walks, logo threes and floor-length pinpoint passes naturally expanded from the center to the coast, not the other way around.
That makes Clark and everything happening around him even more impressive. No one forced this on anyone. It wasn't media-driven. The fans did it, they did it. People want to spend money to see her. They want to buy her jersey. They want to wait in line for hours to get into the building where she will perform.
In that sense, the Caitlin Clark effect is once again very similar to what happened to the women's national soccer team in the United States in June and July 1999. What happened that magical summer changed the way Americans feel about female athletes. Women's sports were the place to be, and it was a coveted ticket for parents of daughters, but also for a man who vowed never to pay until he actually watched women's sports.
With that extraordinary support, not a day goes by that the members of the 1999 team, many of whom are now prominent sports leaders and media personalities, don't talk about their influence, their privilege to serve as role models, and their hopes for the world. . The future of girls and women in sport.
They have often spoken about the legacy they left behind, the things they created, the atmosphere and mindset that allowed the country to not only embrace, but celebrate and support girls and women in sports. .
They also reflected on their dreams in the summer of 1999, wondering who would come after them. Who is she? Where was the woman who then sent lightning bolts through American sports and culture, filling arenas just like them, talking about opportunities for female athletes, and just as willing to sign autographs? Did they really do what they dreamed of?
As it turns out, they had to wait until she was born in Iowa, and then another 22 years.
