What we witnessed this past season with the hype and success of the University of Iowa’s Women’s Basketball team, and its star player, Caitlin Clark, was nothing short of transcendent.
The team captured the zeitgeist of nearly the whole state of Iowa and a large swath of America, making anyone associated with the program, the University of Iowa and the state and Corridor region immensely proud.
There were stories of random strangers wanting to shake hands with Iowans driving to and from Dallas for the Final Four tournament because of the pride and admiration that the women’s team garnered.
It is difficult to adequately compare a similar moment in history, especially based in Iowa. This was generational. The closest thing might be Dan Gable’s 1972 Olympic Gold medal winning performance in Munich, Germany, or perhaps Zach Johnson’s 2007 Masters tournament victory.
The difference might be that college women’s basketball could be forever elevated from a lower-tiered college sport to an equal footing with men’s college sports, save for college football.
A big reason was Ms. Clark’s swagger and Steph Curry-like shooting range, which captivated media outlets from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal as well as icons from Billie Jean King to Charles Barkley.
Ultimately, everything comes down to money and economics, and the timing of Iowa’s success might just be the factor to put women’s basketball on a whole new level the way Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird did with the NBA in the early ‘80s.
According to ESPN, the gritty battle for the women’s college basketball championship on Sunday between LSU and Iowa drew an average of 9.9 million viewers, making it the most viewed NCAA women’s basketball final in television history.
Iowa’s regional final with Louisville collected an eye-popping 2.49 million viewers, larger than any of this season’s NBA games on ESPN, according to a news report.
Now television rights for women’s college basketball are expected to be negotiated on their own rather than bundled with all other college sports, except for men’s basketball and football. The new contracts could provide a financial windfall in the range of $81 million to $112 million per year, by one estimate, according to an article in the New York Times.
“It should happen,” said Dawn Staley, South Carolina’s superlative head coach, in the same article. “We’re at that place where we’re in high demand. I do believe women’s basketball can stand on its own and be a huge revenue-producing sport that could do, to a certain extent, what men’s basketball has done.”
We hope that Ms. Clark, Coach Lisa Bluder and the entire Iowa team get the credit they deserve for helping with this elevation, and for doing it the right way.
