The Caitlin Clark Effect: Iowa draws record viewership in win vs. Maryland
Big audiences are the norm for Clark and Iowa this season.
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This is AMAZING!!! The Caitlin effect!!!!
- Thread starter TornadoHawk93
- Start date
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Meh
it's just a 25 year old padding her stats by shooting 40 times a game
it's just a 25 year old padding her stats by shooting 40 times a game
...in her 5th year of eligibility.Meh
it's just a 25 year old padding her stats by shooting 40 times a game
#asterisk
Who never passes the ball!
So... Curry is the Caitlan Clark of the NBA?
Not sure if the Big Ten is prohibited in engaging an NIL deal, but would it make economical sense for the Big to do a deal with Clark? She has to be generating millions for the conference.
Thanks for mentioning, I found it:
How Caitlin Clark Is Changing Basketball
Another rapturous road night for college basketball’s biggest star. (Meanwhile, here comes JuJu Watkins at USC. 51 points!)
By
Jason Gay
Follow
Feb. 5, 2024 5:30 am ET
College Park, Md.
It’s a circus now, everywhere. Wherever Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play basketball, strangers stand outside in the cold, for hours, to make sure they get inside to see. It was like this in Columbus, Ohio; in Evanston, Ill.; and it was like this Saturday night at the University of Maryland, where Clark and the Hawkeyes landed for the latest installment of the most exuberant show in sports.
If you get a chance to go, go. Don’t think twice.
Clark, the 22-year-old guard from West Des Moines, has reached the level of sports stardom where her mere arrival causes a minor pandemonium. This a very small space, historically, occupied by extraterrestrial talents like Steph Curry, and yet she’s already there. This has been Clark’s normal this season—sold-out houses on the road, fans everywhere in her black and gold No. 22 jersey, kids with no attachment to Iowa holding homemade signs pledging lifetime loyalty. Saturday’s game was broadcast on Fox—that’s the big Fox, rabbit-ears Fox—and the network added a “Caitlin Cam” to follow Clark’s every move.
A Caitlin Cam. That’s where she is.
Clark is trying to appreciate it—not just the games, but the whole wild fuss. “I take it in, everywhere I go,” she said after the third-ranked, 21-2 Hawkeyes put away a motivated Maryland team, 93-85. “I’m just very grateful.”
“Obviously, it’s changed my life in some ways more than others, just being more aware of my surroundings, stuff like that,” Clark continued. “But people spend a lot of time, money and resources to come see us play, and whenever I step on the court, I just want to have a lot of fun. I’ve been able to find a lot of joy and calmness in that. I don’t get nervous for these games, honestly. It’s basketball.”
Shorter version: she gets it. Clark knows she’s both an idol and entertainer, the sort of athlete capable of doing something so skillful and new that it can break a hostile crowd into awestruck giggles. It happened immediately against Maryland, when she got the ball for the first time on the wing. The Terrapins are a good program, former national champions and an Iowa nemesis, and they had no intention of giving the Hawkeyes an easy roll. The UM student section booed when Clark touched the ball, as student sections do. Then Clark took a quick step and sunk an effortless 3, easily an NBA distance three, more a few feet behind the 3-point line.
Oooooooooooooooooh.
All that agitation evaporated, replaced by a rush of pleasure. The circus was here.
This is the Caitlin Clark experience. With 3,462 points, Clark is closing in on breaking Kelsey Plum’s NCAA women’s record (3,527), Lynette Woodard’s pre-NCAA women’s record (3,649), and even Pistol Pete Maravich’s men’s record of 3,667. Still, I don’t think this circus is about a number. This is more visceral/emotional/spiritual. It’s about how Clark makes people feel—and where the sport of basketball is going.
The Curry comparison is apt here. Clark is far from the first great shooter in women’s basketball, but she’s the one who is changing the dimensionality of the game, because of the distance she can shoot from, and how well she can pass. Long shots that make nice coaches hoarse—the edge of the center court logo, for instance—those are reasonable attempts for Clark. She can catch and shoot; she can rotate off a screen for a jumper; she can create off the dribble. If a defender pushes up too close, Clark will blow by for a lay-up. If she’s double teamed—zoooooooooooop—she will fire a rocket of a pass to a cutter underneath.
“It’s really difficult to coach against her,” Ohio State’s head coach, Kevin McGuff, told me. “But I love watching her play.” (McGuff’s Buckeyes managed to stun Iowa in overtime on Jan. 21 in a game where Clark scored 45 points.)
Ample credit here to Clark’s adaptable Iowa teammates and the school’s head coach, Lisa Bluder. By now everyone knows what Clark and the Hawkeyes are going to do—pass, move and shoot—and yet the engine is hard to stop. Maryland made an admirable push in the second half, switching to a zone defense and roaring back from a double-digit deficit, but they couldn’t prevent the inevitable. Clark, who finished with 38 points and 12 assists, is simply that good.
The hardest thing to do in sports—in any form of entertainment, really—is to be great, and do it over and over, with seldom an off night. Even harder is the pressure of those expectations, but Clark doesn’t seem rattled during games—that’s what she meant when she talked about the calmness. Before the crowd thickened on Saturday, I watched Clark shoot for about 40 minutes—a half circle of perfect 3-footers, a half circle of 5-footers, two steps back, increasingly harder, keeping it moving and perfect. It looked exactly like Curry’s routine, because it is Curry’s routine. That’s the work: the repetition and endless attention to detail. The games? That’s the joy.
The joy is why everyone wants to see her: hard-core fans, casual observers, celebrities and people who’ve never paid to watch organized basketball in their lives. Maryland’s athletic director, Damon Evans, told me he’d been besieged with requests for tickets for the Iowa game. In Saturday’s crowd was U.S. tennis star Frances Tiafoe, a Terrapins die-hard who grew up nearby. He was still a Caitlin Clark friend and superfan. Why wouldn’t he be?
“She’s box office,” Tiafoe said in a stadium tunnel after Clark’s press conference.
That Clark is, clearly—she’s coming along at a time when college athletes, in particular women’s college athletes, are finally being allowed to tap into their economic potential. That means Clark in prime-time commercials for Gatorade and State Farm. That means growing money and visibility for the women’s game. (Fox even brought in its play-by-play maestro, Gus Johnson.) It means $10 general admission seats crossing into the hundreds of dollars, everywhere Iowa goes.
USC’s JuJu Watkins scored 51 points in a victory over Stanford. PHOTO: THEARON W. HENDERSON/GETTY IMAGES
It’s a real moment. And it felt like one earlier in the weekend, when the USC freshman JuJu Watkins delivered her own star-making performance, dropping 51 points as the Trojans stunned 4th-ranked Stanford, 67-58. Watkins is just getting started. Stories abound in the women’s game, and let’s not forget Dawn Staley and her South Carolina Gamecocks, reassembled, undefeated and once more No. 1.
Clark has another year of eligibility left—this is the NCAA’s offer to Covid-era athletes—and hasn’t declared whether or not she will stay in school, or declare for the WNBA. Iowa has unfinished business. The Hawkeyes lost in a memorable tournament final last year to LSU, and they are eager to make another run. The Caitlin Clark circus continues, one sellout at a time. If you have a chance to go, go. Otherwise: watch.
What's even more amazing is there are girls in my city wearing Caitlyn Clark shirts and Jerseys that are from Cyclone families. Families that hate everything Hawkeye. You know she is big when she can cross that line!
The Caitlin Clark Effect: Iowa draws record viewership in win vs. Maryland
Big audiences are the norm for Clark and Iowa this season.
It has clearly morphed into celebrityville. America loves stars.
If there was not so much substance in her game, it would be the " famous for being famous" syndrome.
If there was not so much substance in her game, it would be the " famous for being famous" syndrome.
I have family near Ames & I went into a HY Vee store last month. A full size Caitlin Clark cutout front and center. ISU fans must hate that. LOL
Burns their collective asses, to be sure.I have family near Ames & I went into a HY Vee store last month. A full size Caitlin Clark cutout front and center. ISU fans must hate that. LOL
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Tickets are now the MOST EXPENSIVE EVER for a womens game....College or Pro!!! So cool!!
As I said they have those in every Hyvee in Kansas City as well....I have family near Ames & I went into a HY Vee store last month. A full size Caitlin Clark cutout front and center. ISU fans must hate that. LOL
WGN: My 'Friday Favorite' this week goes to Caitlin Clark
Iowa State was definitely triggered by that.I have family near Ames & I went into a HY Vee store last month. A full size Caitlin Clark cutout front and center. ISU fans must hate that. LOL
The Caitlin Clark Effect - NCAA.org
Women's basketball has seen a rocketlike rise in popularity in recent years, and Iowa senior Caitlin Clark — now the NCAA women's all-time leading scorer — has provided
www.ncaa.org
Long article in last week's Wall St Journal detailed the big trend of pro athletes monetizing their celebrity thru creation of production companies that supply content to various media companies.
LeBron Springhill productions is already huge, valued at 400 million
Manning bros(who share CC's agent also have a company.
Giannis is among more than a dozen who are in this biz.
I know CC wants to concentrate on this season but she is so hot her agents have to be considering capitalizing on her 15 minutes
Have cameras capturing the rest of this season for a docu-series in April or May to be streamed on Apple,prime, Netflix or HBO.
Great for promoting Hawkeye BB also.
LeBron Springhill productions is already huge, valued at 400 million
Manning bros(who share CC's agent also have a company.
Giannis is among more than a dozen who are in this biz.
I know CC wants to concentrate on this season but she is so hot her agents have to be considering capitalizing on her 15 minutes
Have cameras capturing the rest of this season for a docu-series in April or May to be streamed on Apple,prime, Netflix or HBO.
Great for promoting Hawkeye BB also.
