Interview
This is the greatest day: Christine Brennan on sports, power, and Caitlin Clark

Caitlin Clark shoots a free throw during a game against the Washington Mystics in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 19, 2024. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)

Christine Brennan, an award-winning columnist for USA Today and commentator for CNN, ABC News, PBS NewsHour, and NPR, has been one of America’s top sports journalists for decades. The first female sportswriter at The Miami Herald and the first woman to cover the city’s NFL team for The Washington Post, Brennan has a long history of breaking gender barriers. She recently spoke to David Kagan, The Catalyst’s Associate Editor, about Caitlin Clark and the recent changes in women’s and men’s sports. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

For those who don’t follow these issues closely, there have been massive changes in college sports over the last few years. How would you summarize them, particularly those involving women?

This is the greatest day for women’s sports – until tomorrow, and then the next day and the next. I say that because Title IX is 52 years old now. That’s the law signed by President Richard Nixon that opened the floodgates for girls and women to play sports. What we’re seeing with Caitlin Clark and the younger athletes born in the early part of this century is that they have benefited from Title IX on full blast. Everything has changed. These girls and women have been permitted to learn the kind of life lessons that were denied to women for generations. For generations, we told 50% of our population, “No, you cannot learn how to win at a young age or lose at a young age. You cannot learn about teamwork and sportsmanship.” Then Title IX changed all that.

What does this mean for the nation? In the 2030s and onward, the U.S. Congress will have more than 50% women. We’ll have women presidents throughout the ’30s, ’40s and beyond. That’s how significant Title IX is. It’s not just sports.

How would you describe Caitlin Clark’s influence on basketball and on how the media covers the game?

The numbers are extraordinary. This year, for the first time ever – and I cannot believe I’m about to say this sentence – the NCAA women’s basketball final had more viewers than the men’s final, 4 million more.

Yet just three years ago, women couldn’t even use the brand “March Madness.” For years, women’s basketball was denigrated, laughed at, joked about. “They can’t play above the rim,” people said, “and they’re just rolling around trying to get the ball on the floor.” All that misogyny, all that sexism. Now compare that language to where we are today. I’m going to give credit for the change to one person: Caitlin Clark.

Imagine grandparents in the produce section who probably don’t watch much basketball, men’s or women’s, but then they hear about this young player from Iowa who’s shooting from the logo and making the shots – it’s the high-wire act at the circus. It’s basketball, but it’s also more than that: It’s unbelievable entertainment. You can’t take your eyes off her. And that has brought millions of people who didn’t care about basketball, especially women’s basketball, into the fold. People who wouldn’t have known what channel the WNBA was on are now checking the start times of WNBA games and planning their days around them.

Is this phenomenon exclusive to basketball, or are we witnessing a shift in other women’s sports too?

I think that because of Caitlin Clark, people are now much more open-minded about seeing what else is out there, and so what’s happening in women’s basketball will be the launching pad for other sports. There are so many examples now of female athletes who have achieved and overachieved – not just for themselves, but in terms of the nation falling in love with them.

We are now pumping out millions of girls and women every year who are going to be playing sports for the rest of their lives. Every single company and every single league is just salivating at the idea of getting those women into their sport. That’s why the NFL is now all-in on flag football [the league has been working closely with schools and municipalities around the country to build youth leagues and integrate flag football into physical education curriculums] – and flag football mostly for women and girls. Eleven out of 50 states now have girls’ flag football as a high school sport. And with the NFL fully behind it, it could be 50 out of 50 relatively soon.

The NFL wants to make sure it gets ahold of these young women and brings them into the sport. They want them to become NFL fans, of course, and to buy products and to go to games and do all the things that they want fans to do. Like most other leagues, the NFL has pretty much maxed out on men and boys. So where can the industry grow? With women and girls.

A player is downed during the 17U girls championship game at the NFL's Flag All 32 Summer Invitational in Washington, DC. on July 30, 2023 (Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

How would you evaluate Caitlin Clark’s debut with the Indiana Fever in the WNBA? Has she suffered from unfairly high expectations?

It has been great. She is in the top 20 in all the major statistics, which is amazing, including third in the WNBA in assists and 15th in points per game. She’s tied for first in the league in three-pointers and was selected rookie of the month in the first month of the season. But yes, some of my colleagues in the media have bizarrely accentuated the negatives, and there is a sense among some critics that she’s been struggling, which is ridiculous.

I actually thought it would be tougher for her. You can tell from the way she’s being guarded – double-teamed, blitzed, and defended the length of the floor – that she’s already the most important player in the WNBA. If you took away that defense and let her be a normal rookie, she’d probably be top 10 in points and have way more three-pointers than anyone else. She’s already achieved so much while running a gauntlet of the most difficult schedule ever in her first month, with no time off, 11 games in 20 days against the toughest teams, while learning the professional game. I think she’s been absolutely remarkable.

What do you make of the criticism that she’s received too much attention at the expense of other athletes in the WNBA?

Clearly people weren’t handling it very well in the first month in particular, but that’s so strange because with Clark, the TV ratings and attendance are historic and record-breaking while, were there no Caitlin Clark, we’d see viewership numbers like those from last year: small and rather insignificant. Maybe some people would prefer it that way, but I find that hard to believe. I am amazed that more people, including top WNBA veterans, weren’t embracing it, although people like Diana Taurasi are finally praising her. For anyone begrudging Caitlin Clark’s success, I’d just say this: A rising tide lifts all boats.

Do you think the WNBA’s momentum is permanent?

I think Caitlin Clark needs to have a great 10-year career, at least.

I know people talk about [Chicago Sky forward] Angel Reese and her impact. She’s a really good player and has had a very nice start to the season. But her position – she’s a rebounder – is not going to draw fans. She’s not the high-wire act, she’s not bringing the ball up the court and shooting from the logo. The perfect example of how this phenomenon plays out was at the beginning of the season: When Clark’s team, Indiana, played in New York, there was a full house with over 12,000 fans. A couple of days later, Reese and Chicago came to New York and there were only 7,000 people in the stands. That’s a normal crowd for New York. But Caitlin got a capacity crowd. It happened again in D.C. a few weeks later. Clark sold out the arena, over 20,000. The day before, Chicago drew 10,000 in the same building. And the only way the great Taurasi’s Phoenix Mercury could sell out their home arena is with Clark. She came in, sold the place out, and led Indiana to victory. What a moment that was for the rookie.

Cameron Brink was another example, before she was injured. She’s a great young player who’s really good at blocking shots and rebounding. But is she going to sell tickets? I’m all for being under the basket rebounding and putting it up and in. I’m 5-11 and that was what I did when I played. But in terms of growth, popularity, TV ratings, and game attendance for the WNBA, it’s Clark. So the WNBA needs Caitlin Clark to be great for a very long time.

What about the decision to leave Caitlin Clark off the Olympic team?

What a terrible decision that is. I’ve covered the Olympics for 40 years and it’s the worst team selection decision I’ve ever seen. Clark is good enough to be on the team, period. If the WNBA has been her tryout, she has aced it. Then, in terms of bringing well-deserved attention to the most dominant team in sports – the U.S. women’s basketball team – she is the one person who could have done that. I’ve covered the U.S. women’s team at every Olympics, from LA in 1984 through Tokyo in 2021. I’ve been to at least five of their gold medal games. You know what you find in the press tribune? Very few reporters, that’s what. Journalists from the United States and around the world just don’t go to cover them, especially during the second week of the Olympics when 15 to 20 gold medals are being handed out in so many other sports that same day. But put Clark on the team and the world’s journalists would come running to see the American phenom, even if she played only a few minutes. And the TV ratings, my goodness. But that won’t happen now. What a horrible mistake by USA Basketball.

Christine Brennan (Courtesy of Christine Brennan)

Is there a racial component in the Clark story?

Yes, certainly, and we’ve seen it with all the coverage of Chennedy Carter’s hard foul on Caitlin Clark and the reaction to it. Race has understandably come up in many of the conversations, and I think that’s absolutely fine. Would we love for race to not be a factor? Of course. I think everyone on earth would love it if race were not a factor, but it is. In 2024, in this country, race is always a factor. We have to deal with it. But we should also recognize that there’s much more to Caitlin Clark than her skin color. 

The NCAA and the Power 5 conferences can now pay athletes directly. What kinds of opportunities and complexities does that create for athletes? And are the implications different for men and women?

If you listen to mainstream sports media, you’ll hear people talk about “basketball” and forget to add that pesky adjective, “men’s.” There’s such an unbelievable male bias in sports and in sports coverage. Now Caitlin Clark is changing that. But there is still a sense on these issues that it’s like, “Let’s just pay football big money.” Well, in this country, you can’t just pay men. Is it OK at a company to pay only men and not women? Of course not. If you’re paying the football team, then you’ve got to pay the field hockey team too.

Now, if the new system for paying college athletes gets set up outside the structure of colleges and universities – which is what has happened with NIL [paying athletes for their name, image, and likeness] – then it will be the Wild West, and you won’t have to follow Title IX rules. That’s why NIL payments have led to such a great disparity between how male athletes and female athletes are paid. So there will be an interesting dilemma moving forward. The NCAA wants to try to keep payments within colleges because then it will be in-house and governed by Title IX.

Is there a pathway to true equity between men’s and women’s sports?

Not in my lifetime, but I am not overly concerned about that. I’ve spent much of my career talking about the opportunities for girls and women that were not there. For many years, we were missing the boat. For decades, we weren’t doing what we needed to give girls and women all the same opportunities as boys and men, and shame on us, because our nation is stronger when we do that. But we’re starting to do it now, and that’s good.

A few months ago, there was a lot of conversation about Caitlin Clark’s starting salary in the WNBA: $76,000. That’s compared to the NBA, where male players earn well into the tens of millions. [Clark is making well over $30 million in endorsements.] If anyone wonders why Brittney Griner was playing in Russia, the answer is simple: It was to supplement her pay. As a veteran player, she was making, say, $250,000 a year with bonuses and endorsements. Meanwhile, a male player like Steph Curry makes over $40 million as a base salary.

But that’s capitalism, folks. And I’d ask those who are concerned about the issue whether they have ever been to a WNBA game. Have they bought tickets? Have they bought a jersey? Have they bought a product advertised on a WNBA game? In most cases, the answer is no, they’ve done none of those things. Well, that explains why the pay is still so low in the WNBA. We, the people, get to decide how important an issue this is.

I do think that today’s 10-year-old girl will, in the future, buy season tickets to women’s sports in a way that her mother or grandmother or great-grandmother never did. And she’s going to want to take her daughters. We’ve already seen this dynamic at work in Iowa when Caitlin Clark was playing there, and now in the first half of the WNBA season with all the massive Clark crowds. People are starting to understand the value of women’s sports for their daughters – and for their sons.

Who knows what things will look like in 50 or 100 years? What matters is participation. That’s today’s victory. We’re now reaching young girls who are learning that it is their birthright to play sports. That’s something their moms and grandmothers could never say. There are more victories to come, and it might take a while to reach some of them, but there are many victories that we can celebrate today.