There is always a sign.
I first noticed something special was happening last spring when I couldn’t walk half a block in Dallas without encountering a large group of Iowa or South Carolina fans. And my male friends in the family, who for the first time planned their weekend around the women’s NCAA tournament instead of the men’s game. All the sports talk radio channels are talking about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. My Spider-Man senses tingled.
I felt in my bones that the sport was about to experience a breakthrough moment, even though I couldn’t have imagined that nearly 10 million people would tune in to watch Iowa’s national championship game against LSU, shattering the previous viewership record for a women’s basketball game. race. But I could tell that the barrier of indifference had been broken down. These women, the late-game taunts, the sport itself — it will all be talked about in the days, weeks and months to come.
I feel the same way now.
For a sport that should be getting used to these advancements, another giant leap is coming. As we head into March Madness, the women’s division takes center stage. It’s the female stars who shine the brightest. This is the women’s match with the most interesting storylines.
And…it’s not even controversial!
“We’ve been steadily improving,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said on SiriusXM Sunday night. “You have the combination of star power in our game and the fact that you have some big-name stars who have really built relationships with their fans like Kaitlyn Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brinker – and then you Adds this incredibly dynamic freshman class.
“What we’re seeing is that women’s basketball is a very marketable entity. People love it. There’s incredible excitement in the space that we’re in. … It’s truly a movement.”
We see fans lining up to get into an arena — any arena — to watch Clark play. More than 3 million people watched Clark’s Hawkeyes beat Nebraska in overtime in the Big Ten Conference championship game on CBS, with overtime viewers peaking at 4.45 million (!). Clark is so ubiquitous that she was discussed multiple times during this year’s NBA All-Star Weekend broadcast… while her State Farm commercial aired between shows.
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ESPN recently announced that this was the most-watched women’s college basketball regular season in 15 years, with viewership on ESPN platforms up 37% from the previous season. Last Sunday’s SEC championship game between LSU and South Carolina drew nearly 2 million viewers, while the Pac’s game between USC and Stanford on the same day The -12 championship game also drew nearly 2 million viewers — the Trojans were the No. 1 seed and the Cardinals were the No. 2 seed. The championship attracted 1.4 million viewers, a 461% increase from last season’s championship. The ratings for these three championship games exceeded the ratings for the three NBA weekend games.
As eyeballs grow, so does familiarity to fans old and new. Now, they only know the names of the stars. Caitlin. Angel. Page. Zhu Zhu. cam. Hannah.
Fast! Walk into your neighborhood sports bar and ask someone to name five men’s basketball players playing this week. Can they do it? I’m not sure I would bet on this.
Recently, Kevin Garnett expressed the same sentiment on his podcast “KG Certified.” “This was my first time watching a college basketball game and I learned more about the girls than the boys,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve ever had women’s basketball lead men’s basketball. Women’s college basketball is… dynamic. It totally blew this guy’s game.”
Of course, this is less important if we sit on the couch or bar stool for 14 hours straight on Thursday and 14 hours straight on Friday. We’ll watch the men’s games just as much and fall in love with Cinderella, even if they break our bracket. We’ll agonize over the coach’s terrible late-game clock management. We’ll continue to follow these men as their postseason run has long been some of the best in sports.
But parity on the women’s side changes things a bit. So is the ephemerality of men’s college basketball. One-and-done, combined with the transfer portal, makes it harder than ever for players to become household names in national sports. Many of the men’s greats – Hall of Fame coaches – have retired and left the sport, losing its weight.
This opened the door for the women’s competition to proceed smoothly. Players in this sport stay for three or four years and grow before our eyes. Hall of Fame coaches remain at the forefront of the sport—many are recognized on a first-name basis: Dawn, Geno, Tara, Kim—even as equality continues to grow and college sports continue to grind at their feet develop.
So, this week, I’m most interested in Clark’s final tournament game and whether she can lead the Hawkeyes to another Final Four. I want to see JuJu Watkins, the freshman phenom who reinvigorated the USC women’s program, on the big stage. I want to pretend that I have half as much energy in my daily life as Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo does on defense in a game. I’ll be on pins and needles waiting to see if South Carolina can have a perfect season after its failure a year ago.
No doubt this would have been what Neanderthals did, and despite all evidence suggesting otherwise, men still try to claim that “nobody” watches women’s basketball. Now, those views are being met with backlash from dads who connect with their daughters by taking them to games and moms of little boys wearing Clark jerseys who see nothing weird in idolizing female athletes. While we watch riveting basketball games and join the rising rocket ship, these guys can stick to their silly old-fashioned, pointless little jokes.
“We opened our eyes last year and we just learned from the momentum and it never stopped,” Notre Dame coach Neil Ivey told me Sunday. “Great team, great players – the women’s game is very popular.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb/ Competitor; Photos of Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, Hannah Hidalgo: Eakin Howard / Adam Bettcher / Icon Sportswire, Joseph Weiser / Icon Sportswire)
