One of the most exciting players in college sports will be in the D.C. area this weekend, closing in on the all-time scoring record in women’s college basketball.
Caitlin Clark is just one chapter in the story of women’s sports popularity.
The Maryland Sports Information department says it usually receives about 60 credential requests for a woman’s conference game. For Saturday’s upcoming Iowa Hawkeyes-Maryland Terrapins matchup, they’ve received 90. That’s the Caitlin Clark effect.
USA Today columnist and CNN contributor Christine Brennan said Clark “is the greatest show in sports. This is Title IX personified. We’ve never seen anything quite like this. Basically, even going back all the way to the ’99 Women’s World Cup.”
Brennan added that Clark is wrapped up in a much larger story about how the country has fallen in love with what Title IX created.
“It’s the story of opportunity — you give the other 50% of our population an opportunity to play sports, and they are absolutely killing it. And it’s also about creating a stronger nation. I mean, whatever that girl you see in the kitchen every morning, whatever she’s going to be, whether she’s going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a businessperson, a coach, a mom … some combination thereof, she will be better at it because she played sports because of Title IX,” Brennan said.
Clark is the reigning national player of the year in women’s college hoops. Fox TV will have the “Caitlin Cam” streaming on its TikTok channel following her every move Saturday.
She’s on track to do something never accomplished by a woman’s college basketball player: appear on all four broadcast networks in the same season.
That’s likely to happen, depending on where Iowa lands in the Big 10 Tournament and March Madness rankings.
Women’s sports viewership continues to increase. During 2023’s March Madness, nearly 10 million people watched the Iowa-LSU game featuring Caitlin Clark and Angel Reece. Over nine million watched the Rangers and Diamondbacks in baseball’s biggest games.
Those numbers led Brennan to say something she never thought she would: “The NCAA Women’s Basketball [Championship] had basically an average of a million more viewers than the World Series, our national pastime. That is a sentence I never thought I would be able to utter.”
Brennan said women’s team sports are flourishing because Title IX is working its magic.
“Now, almost 52 years old in this country where not only are girls and women’s sports accepted, they are the biggest thing going,” she said.
WTOP’s Will Vitka contributed to this report.