Living in a Caitlin Clark moment: A Q&A with author Christine Brennan

The USA Today columnist and author will be in Lafayette Thursday to talk about ‘On Her Game,’ her new book about ‘Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports’

• Thanks to Wabash Riverfest for sponsoring this edition. Celebrate the mighty Wabash River on Saturday, July 12, with conservation exhibits, float trips, charcoal drawing classes, paddleboard yoga, a birds of prey presentation, kayak tours, photography workshops and more. Learn more about the festival and sign up for activities: wabashriverfest.com

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LIVING IN A CAITLIN CLARK MOMENT: A Q&A WITH AUTHOR CHRISTINE BRENNAN

The day of our call last week, social media and aggregator sites were humming with the suggestion that Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist and author of a soon-to-be-released book on Caitlin Clark, was floating the idea that the Indiana Fever guard was poised to break away from the WNBA in favor of an upstart, rival women’s basketball league.

A “bombshell theory” and “wild scenario,” some outlets called the speculation.

“No context whatsoever,” Brennan laughed about comments culled from a stray piece of an ESPN LA radio interview about "On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports," set for release Tuesday, July 8.

“No, I never said that,” Brennan said. “But I thought if anyone could, it would be Caitlin Clark.”

But social media feeds, firing from deep, went to the point of Brennan’s look at the phenomenon Clark has become as not only a centerpiece for the WNBA but also any and all conversations about expectations, race, economics and equity in women’s basketball and sport, in general.

Earlier that same day, the WNBA announced league plans that actually were real, with an expansion strategy to add three new teams – adding Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia to additions coming in Toronto and Portland – to take the league to 18 by 2030.

Another “Caitlin Clark moment,” Brennan said.

“Would this be happening without Caitlin Clark? No,” she said.

Thursday evening, two days after the book release, Brennan will be at the Wells Community Cultural Center in Lafayette, to discuss “On Her Game.”

Christine Brennan (Photo provided)

Here, Brennan talks about the deep dive reporting on Clark’s rookie season in Indianapolis after a record-setting career at Iowa, navigating a league reaping more attention than ever but still trying to figure out how to deal with the crossover sensation. These are excerpts of the conversation.

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Question: How did you approach a story that already had been told from a million angles by the time you got started?

Christine Brennan: I went to the Paris Olympics and got very busy with all that, wonderfully – I’ve been so fortunate and so lucky to cover those kinds of things. Then the plan would be to immediately come back from Paris, be home for a day or two here in D.C., and then fly over to Indy and start covering the Fever and Caitlin Clark and the rest of the season. … Nothing was off limits. As you probably know about her, she just looks you in the eye and is direct and straightforward and amazing, the way she answers questions. It's just wonderful how she doesn't shy away from any topic or any issue and controversies. As I write in the book, she's 22 going on 40 or 50 – just remarkable poise. I had kind of exclusive access to some practices – (then Fever General Manager) Lin Dunn had me coming in watching those. I was on the road – wherever the Fever were, I went. …

I was lucky in the sense that I’d broken both the charter flight story for WNBA (in May 2024) and the Olympic snub story that she was being left off the Olympic team (in June 2024). I’d done those for USA Today. I was able to then follow up and do more on the Olympic snub. I've got a very thorough look at what is truly the worst Olympic team selection decision ever that I've covered in my 41 years of covering the Olympics, going back to (Los Angeles) in ’84.

Question: Even worse than including Christian Laettner on the Dream Team at the ’92 Olympics?

Christine Brennan: Yeah, because he was nowhere near as important to men's basketball as Caitlin is to women's basketball. I know what you're getting at, but that's the opposite, right? Because they put him on. This, though, was the moment for USA Basketball. I had so many journalists that I would run into in Paris saying, Where's Caitlin Clark? Why isn't she here? They were going to cover it all. A journalist from Rio, she would have covered every U.S. game, all of it going right back to Brazil and to little girls there. Even if Caitlin Clark played five minutes a game, it would have absolutely packed the press section. Instead, it's tumbleweeds in there. And I know that because I've covered Olympic basketball since ’84. They get short shrift. I wrote again from Paris about just the incredible lack of interest from the media, and the TV ratings were the worst since 2008 for the women's basketball team.

Question: Wasn’t the knock that she was a rookie and still feeling her way in the WNBA? There was some justification to say, Well, let's not do it, besides crossover star power. What do you think that told, and where does it fit into the overall story of the emerging Caitlin Clark phenomenon?

Christine Brennan: Exactly. She had the 10 turnovers in her first (WNBA) game on May 14 (2024). But by the third game, she was she was playing so much better, lights out threes, by the time of the Olympic decision. … What I talk about is, every sport wants to have a global game. It’s why the NFL goes to Europe. It’s why the NHL is stopping the season to have pros in the Olympics in 2026 in Italy.

But then there’s the flip side. She was already one of the 12 best players. And when (South Carolina coach and a member of the USA Basketball selection committee) Dawn Staley, goes on NBC with Mike Tirico (during the Olympics) and said, “If we had to do it all over again … the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people.” All these great basketball minds on the committee, they didn't see that? I thought these people knew basketball, you know what I mean? So, it's really clear to me that they actively did not want her on the team. They did everything in their power to make sure she wasn't on the Olympic team. It is truly the worst Olympic team selection decision I have ever seen. Just an egregious missed opportunity for a sport that desperately needs eyeballs. …

Of course, the going away prize was given to Diana Taurasi, 42 years old, to get her sixth Olympic gold medal – a historic sixth basketball gold medal – and she did. But in that gold medal game, as you probably know, Diana Taurasi and Caitlin Clark both played the same number of minutes and scored the same number of points – zero and zero. The difference was, Diana Taurasi was sitting on the bench in Paris courtside, and Caitlin Clark was 4,000 miles away in the United States. The decision looks worse every day. Again, women's sports, if we were at equal pay for women and men, if we had same television viewership for men and women in all sports, then I would say don't worry about the eyeballs. But this was the absolute goal. Could you imagine, Caitlin Clark – the talk of the nation, greatest scorer in the history of men's and women's D1 basketball, and you actively choose to leave her at home? Even now, I’m stunned by it.

Question: Who do you see as a comp for Caitlin Clark? Are we talking Wayne Gretzky? Michael Jordan? Serena Williams? Mia Hamm? In your mind, is there comp in sport for what she’s become?

Christine Brennan: I do deal with this: Why her? Why now? I said women’s team sport athlete, because women’s tennis has always had superstars. It's an individual sport, and Billie Jean King fought for equal pay at the US Open in 1973, so you've got that openness for women and girls in tennis in 1973 saying you're equal to the men. Naturally, then you've got Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova and, of course, the amazing Williams sisters. Women's tennis is kind of in its own category.

The comparison I see is Tiger Woods. I covered Tiger the length of his career. So I was at all those Masters, U.S. Opens, British Opens, everything Tiger. I watched that happen. What I found – people would tell me this, or you just knew it – is that there were grandmothers who didn't know the difference between a bogey and a birdie, who would plan their Sunday afternoons in mid-April around Tiger Woods’ Masters tee time for the fourth round. That's how you cross over. That’s the definition of crossover, transcending your sport and being part of the culture. That was Tiger. It wasn't the golfers. They already had the golf crowd. It was the people who just wanted to watch the singular athlete hitting these shots, doing these amazing things, walking up and down the fairways. That’s what drove the Tiger Woods phenomenon.

Same thing with Caitlin Clark. Reverse it, though. I mean, it is the grandma and grandpa who don't watch women's basketball, who now are trying to figure out where Ion is on their TV dial. Oh, hey, we have this on our cable package. Yay! … Even more important, you got the guys – you know these guys, I know these guys, I may have dated some of these guys – who are all for equality and all for girls playing sports and women playing sports, but just didn't want to watch women's basketball. Those same men are now the ones who are buying the No. 22 jerseys and the 22 T-shirts and proudly wearing them not only to Fever games or to the WNBA game in whatever city they’re in, but they’re wearing them to the grocery store and they’re wearing them to the gas station. That is the very definition of crossing over into the culture and transcending your sport. …

What Caitlin Clark has done, bringing the WNBA along with her, is so much more important than what Tiger did to men’s golf, because men’s golf already had all that attention before. It’s a shame that Maya Moore didn’t move the needle. She should have. So did Candace Parker, Sheryl Swoopes, all of them. It just wasn’t happening, and it should have. Caitlin Clark is so much more important to her league than Tiger Woods or any male athlete ever was singularly to their league. And I'd include Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, which we know that we give them total credit for changing everything with the NBA.

Question: Where is it for you where she becomes more than a Maya Moore, more than a Sheryl Swoopes?

Christine Brennan: Back to, Why her, of all the great female athletes? (Gymnast) Simone Biles, (swimmer) Katie Ledecky, Serena Williams – I could go back and name 100 or 200. Why Caitlin Clark? The No. 1 thing for me is that she’s a basketball player, yes, absolutely. But she’s even more an entertainer. … I was watching the Iowa-Indiana game, actually, in February of ’23. I was watching kind of for IU, because all my siblings went to IU except me. I mean, I knew who Caitlin Clark was, and she hits this buzzer beater to win. She's kind of sideways, legs are askew, she’s falling over, and she wins the game with an amazing three. You watch the replay, and then you watch it again and you watch it again. I’m lucky, I've seen a lot, covered a lot of great things. I was like, what have I just seen here? A woman doing that and running to the crowd, so confident, so strong. It’s just magical. … There's just something about her that is the high-wire act at the circus, and that's what's different. (Dallas Wings guard) Paige Bueckers is great. All of these other players are great. They're basketball players, and they're very, very good at what they do. Caitlin Clark is an entertainer.

Question: You spend time talking in the book about how well the WNBA was ready for all that – or, really, how the league didn’t handle the arrival of Caitlin Clark well enough to steer aside some of the animosity that has followed her in the league.

Christine Brennan: It’s not just my voice. I have lots of different voices, but I’m proud of (sociologist) Dr. Harry Edwards. He's the man who, of course, was the impetus for the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics with (John) Carlos and (Tommie) Smith. … He says he loves Caitlin Clark. He thinks she’s a great player. And he says the league failed the players. The league failed the players by not preparing them, not because they're damsels in distress. No, but because this was going to be a very unusual thing, with a 74% Black league and a white woman enters the way Caitlin Clark did.

From the book: "This was predictable," (Edwards) said. "It's human nature for people not to be happy for you when you're new and successful, especially if it's in an arena where they have toiled all their lives and not come close to the kind of reward or applause that (Clark) is receiving. … There are people out there who could have gone in and given those talks to each franchise, experts and specialists from a sports sociological perspective with the understanding and grasp of the situation, and told each team: ‘Hey, we have Caitlin Clark coming in and the media has grabbed ahold of this, the public has grabbed ahold of this. … But this is true: You are the wind beneath the wings of Caitlin Clark, you made this possible because you are the WNBA. Take pride in that, lift her up, lift all the rookies up … because as they soar, so do we all.”

I think any of us could go, OK, maybe have some seminars, maybe talk this through, maybe help the players a little adjust and understand. Would you then have had all of the acrimony and jealousy that we've seen? Maybe some of that would have been nipped in the bud. Again, it’s not just me saying that. It’s Dr. Harry Edwards saying it.

Then also, you have Briana Scurry, the goalkeeper on the 1999 Women's World Cup team that won the won the World Cup in the Rose Bowl in July of ‘99 – the first Black superstar of the most famous women's team on the planet, the U.S. women’s national soccer team. Same thing.

Also from the book: “That would've been absolutely brilliant to have something like that,” Scurry told Brennan. “Even if the players didn't themselves want to see things holistically, they would have at least been able to see someone talking about it and saying, 'OK, I may be angry about all this and feeling like we've been here this whole time, however I can find this silver lining in here.’ But because the WNBA unfortunately didn’t do that, the players didn’t even understand how big that tsunami was that was coming for them, in a good way. And they were just woefully unprepared for it.”

It's OK that Caitlin Clark got the spotlight, because, as you and I both know, that spotlight on Caitlin Clark is now on all these players who for a long time deserved to get the attention, never got it and are now finally getting it. It’s the old rising tide lifts all boats. She’s brought so many new people to the game.

Question: If Caitlin Clark winds up in any other market besides the Indianapolis, does that change the dynamic at all? Did the Fever do better or worse than if she’d wound up in Chicago or Connecticut? Or do you see that phenomenon being the exact same, just in a different uniform?

Christine Brennan: If the sports universe had a grand plan to advance women's sports as quickly as possible and could place Caitlin Clark in the perfect spot for that to happen, it would have put her exactly where she ended up – Indianapolis, Indiana, not New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.

Question: How do you figure that?

Christine Brennan: Because, the city is obviously known for its love of basketball, I don't have to tell you that – high school, college, pro, boys and girls, men and women. The city that houses the NCAA, of course, and the Olympic national governing bodies. Over the years, they've hosted and supported, enthusiastically, major international and Olympic style events, including multiple U.S. Olympic trials. … It was ready to support someone, not only because of sports, but as a matter of civic pride. And it’s in the heart of Big Ten country. So everyone already knew her. They'd seen her play at Purdue. She’d played games at Indiana University. Fans had already seen her in person. No introduction was needed. And then, of course, how close it is to Iowa. And the way that Pacers Sports and Entertainment is so prepared to have the Pacers and the Fever work together. So, the merchandise was there, the social media was there, everything was set. Billboards were up. Jerseys were available. They didn't run out. You know, if they did, they got them right back. Everything about it was just perfection.

I didn't ask her this, but I actually think if Indiana had not gotten the first pick in the draft – this is my guess, next time I see her, I'll have to ask her – I’ll bet you she would have gone back to Iowa for a fifth year.

Question: Is this buzz sustainable?

Christine Brennan: I think so. I mean, what we're seeing this year, she's been injured, the way people can't wait for her to come back. Great TV ratings for that New York game where she played and had those three threes within 40 seconds. I'll say it: It's the most entertaining 40 seconds in the history of the WNBA. Not the most important. I'm sure there have been many buzzer beaters and whatever in championship games. But the most entertaining and certainly the most watched 40 seconds in WNBA history that's also the most entertaining.

I think people can't get enough of her. And I do think it sustains itself. I absolutely do. If she gets healthy and stays healthy, if she is able to play at the level that we've seen her play all the time – which there's no reason to think she won't – and they continue to get good people around her. She’s just beginning with the Fever. Perfect fan base. Perfect place for her to thrive. She loves it. I’m an optimist, but I think it sustains itself throughout the entirety of her career.

• If you go: Christine Brennan will discuss her book, “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports” (Scribner), at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 10, at The Arts Federation/Wells Community Cultural Center, 638 North St. in Lafayette. The event is free. Reserved seating is available pre-ordering the book through Second Flight Books, 2122 Scott St. in Lafayette, or Main Street Books, 426 Main St. in Lafayette. For more details, here’s a link.

Thanks, again, to Wabash Riverfest for sponsoring today’s issue. Celebrate the mighty Wabash River on Saturday, July 12, with conservation exhibits, float trips, charcoal drawing classes, paddleboard yoga, a birds of prey presentation, kayak tours, photography workshops, and more. Learn more about the festival and sign up for activities: wabashriverfest.com

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