From SNL to $500 tickets, women’s basketball is mainstream. But for how long?

aAfter the curtain finally fell on Caitlin Clark’s collegiate career and the final grenades and black confetti fell Sunday afternoon at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, the all-time leader in college basketball history was finally able to reflect on a season that has recalibrated all expectations how women’s sports can be covered, commercialized and consumed.

In the past week alone, Clark’s games have set new ratings records for women’s basketball twice, with a third for the title game all but certain when Sunday’s overnights are released. Even South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, who had just completed a perfect season for a second NCAA title in three years with a team that graduated all five starters (probably her best stretch of coaching to date), could not her victory not reach far. speech before paying tribute to the woman of the moment, proverb: “I would like to personally thank Caitlin Clark for taking our sport to the next level.”

Whether Clark is the best college player she’s ever played is up for debate — for me it’s still Maya Moore — but there’s no doubt the Hawkeyes star has done more to bring mainstream attention to the women’s game than anyone before her. Since drawing a record 55,646 fans for a preseason game in October at an outdoor football stadium, Clark and the Hawkeyes became appointment attendees. Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3 million U.S. television viewers, making it one of the most-watched sporting events of the past year outside the NFL. Their Final Four game against Connecticut on Saturday night exceeded expectations, averaging 14.2 million viewers and peaking at 17 million, better than every World Series and NBA Finals from last year.

But the TV numbers, as rousing as they are, somehow undermine the moment. Think of all the morning sports shows that talk about women’s basketball like never before. Or how the cheapest ticket on the resale market for Sunday’s title game exceeded $500 at tip-off, an unthinkable amount for a women’s college game even a few years ago, and more than three times the price to get in for the men’s game from Monday. last.

More than 17,000 spectators came to watch Iowa and South Carolina on Saturday in a open practice, forcing organizers to turn people away at the gate by the time Clark and the Hawkeyes entered the court. A few hours later the running gag on Saturday Night Live’s Opened cold Clark and Co have thus completely overshadowed the men’s tournament.

And it wasn’t Clark alone. Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, LSU’s Angel Reese and Southern California’s JuJu Watkins have all helped push the women’s college into uncharted territory in recent months, becoming household names in a sport that features greats like Pat Summit, Geno Auriemma, Tara VanDerveer and Kim Mulkey are coached. had always been the biggest stars. Staley’s ferocious Gamecocks, who have won three of the last eight NCAA titles and 80 of their last 81 games, continue to raise the standard for team play. And there’s no shortage of optimism for the future, with talent like Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, Villanova’s Lucy Olsen and LSU’s Mikaylah Williams waiting in the wings.

Longtime viewers of women’s sports have reason to be leery of maintaining this momentum. Researchers from USC and Purdue conducting a longitudinal study Analyzing the differences in men’s and women’s sports coverage over three decades has warned of the turning point myth – how periodic peaks in interest, such as the 1999 Women’s World Cup, have been framed as turning points ‘that things will now never be the same’ could be’ Once again, that women’s sport will never again be ignored by the mass media,” followed by an inevitable disappointment when there is “little to no spillover into greater quantity or quality of mainstream media coverage of everyday women’s sport.”

But it has to be said: this time do feel different. Yes, Clark is the rarest of phenoms who won’t be easily replaced when she enters the professional ranks in the coming months. But the machinery that makes it possible to envision these players seems built to last. Schools are investing money in women’s sports at record clips. Social media and NIL deals have allowed players to boost their star power like never before. The growth of conference networks and ESPN’s commitment to broadcasting games on its flagship channel have resulted in more televised regular season games than ever.

“I think the biggest thing for us is that this team came at a really good time, whether it was social media, whether it was NIL, whether it was our nationally televised games,” Clark said Sunday after finishing with 30 points. , eight rebounds and five assists against the nation’s top field goal defense. “We’ve been on Fox, NBC, CBS, ESPN – you go down the list, and we’ve been on every national television network. I think that’s one of the biggest things that helped us.

“I think no matter what sport it is, give them the same opportunities, believe in it the same, invest in it the same, and things will really blossom. You see it in other sports, and I’m a big fan of other sports. I try to support as much as I can, and I think the most important thing is to continue to invest your time, money and resources there, and continue to stand up for those people and give them opportunities.

Speaking off the record to a Guardian source, the commissioner of a major North American sports organization once said that a competition cannot be based on a cause or a social movement. It should be about the quality of the sport. People will never participate or show up in droves because they are told to support women’s sports. They will watch because the product is attractive on its own terms.

When experts are asked why women’s sports are so much more popular these days, the first line is always streaming services and social media. That everyone always wanted to see it and that it is now available. But that’s not entirely true. More women are now better at sports than ever before. The college game has always had stars at the top, from Cheryl Miller to Sheryl Swoopes to Lisa Leslie to Diana Taurasi to Candace Parker to Breanna Stewart to Sabrina Ionescu and countless others in between. But today the talent pool is deeper than ever. Look no further than the tooth-and-nail drama in the early rounds of this year’s NCAA Tournament, an event that at one point was more or less a walkover all the way to the Elite Eight.

And the people have come. The audience for women’s college hoops is no longer made up solely of hardcore fans and liberals who watch out of a sense of duty. When the Barstool brothers are on it, you know you’re over it. It also doesn’t hurt that while the best players on the men’s side rarely last more than one season, women’s players are barred from entering the WNBA draft until the year they turn 22. That allows rivalries – like the one we saw between Clark and Reese – to develop and storylines to push through.

But if a famous LSU fan might say it: It’s the talent, dumbass.

“When I think about women’s basketball in the future, obviously it’s just going to continue to grow, whether it’s at the WNBA level or whether it’s at the college level,” Clark said. “Everyone sees it. Everyone knows it. Everyone sees the ratings. Given the opportunity, women’s sports just thrive.”