On March 3rd, 2024, Caitlin Clark broke the all-time NCAA Division I scoring record across men’s and women’s basketball.
On that fateful day, her final collegiate regular season game, she scored 35 points, 9 assists, and six rebounds in Iowa’s defeat of 2nd ranked Ohio State 93-83. She ended her regular season with a career 3,000 points and led Division 1 with an average of 31.6 points and 8.9 assists a game. With this record-breaking play, so came record-breaking views as that game was the most viewed women’s college basketball game since 1999.
Caitlin Clark is a point guard who has just finished her 4-year collegiate career at Iowa and is projected to be drafted number one in the WNBA draft. Throughout her college career, she racked up numerous awards, became the consensus number-one women’s college basketball player, and as previously mentioned, broke the all-time division one points record. She also popularized women’s basketball in what many are dubbing the Caitlin Clark effect.
There have been many examples of this effect but there are two big ones. One big example is the NCAA women’s championship game, whose viewership record was shattered this year with a whopping 18.89 million viewers, nearly double the number who watched last year’s championship.
As previously mentioned, Caitlin Clark is projected to be the first pick in the WNBA draft. This pick seems to be so obvious that the team with the first overall pick, the Indiana Fever, will have 36 of their 40 games nationally broadcast, several on major networks. This is the other big example of the Caitlin Clark effect as last year they only had 22 of their games nationally broadcasted and none on major networks.
Caitlin Clark is an all-time women’s basketball player who has brought an unprecedented amount of exposure to her sport and with her all-time ability to score points.
Dan Patrick, a sportscaster and radio personality, said on his radio show, “She’s the face of college basketball, men and women.”
