The Caitlin Clark Effect

There's no denying the impact that Caitlin Clark has had on the sport of women's basketball.  Ratings for the NCAA Tournament skyrocketed during Iowa's back-to-back runs to the Championship Game.  And it wasn't just Iowa.  It led to increased interest in women's college basketball across the board.

Clark's popularity is without question, but some wondered whether the attention she generates would carry over into the WNBA.  Through the first half of her rookie season, all indications are that the momentum she's created isn't going down at all.  Quite the opposite, actually.  The Caitlin Clark Effect is real.  She's done just as much to increase interest in the WNBA as she did for women's college basketball.  The proof is in the numbers.

Caitlin Clark is so popular, in fact, that she evidently impacted other sports without even trying.  The UFL just concluded its first season and, while the league was happy with its TV numbers, the in-stadium attendance figures were disappointing.  Oddly, Daryl Johnston, the UFL's Executive VP of Football Operations, said Clark was one of the reasons.  Since, apparently, the WNBA and spring football are going after the same target audience.  The Caitlin Clark Effect is THAT powerful!

What Johnston said is obviously ridiculous, but there are other, more tangible, numbers that show just how popular Clark is.  Voting for the WNBA All*Star Game just concluded.  Clark, not surprisingly, was the leading vote-getter with more than 700,000 votes.  Last year's leading vote-getter was A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces...with 95,860!  The top five vote-getters in 2023 received 391,639 total votes.  This year, Clark got nearly double that by herself.  Overall, there was a 600 percent increase in the amount of votes cast this year compared to last year.

The WNBA's TV ratings are also higher than they've ever been.  Clark ended up on the Indiana Fever because they were terrible last year, which is how they got the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft.  Because they have Clark, though, most of the Fever's games have ended up on national television...which has proven to be a wise decision.  Again, the Caitlin Clark Effect.

They also loaded up on Indiana's games that they knew would be the biggest ratings-generators early in the season.  The Fever's first four games were against either the Sun or Liberty (two of the best teams in the league), and they've already played both teams three times.  They've also played the Chicago Sky, who have a highly-touted rookie of their own in Angel Reese, three times, and the most recent of those games on June 25 averaged 2.25 million viewers, making it the most-watched WNBA game in 23 years.

Whether that ratings success continues into the second half of the season is anyone's guess.  Clark and Indiana won't be featured on national TV nearly as much after the Olympic break, when the WNBA will also be competing with the start of the NFL and college football seasons.  They'll also hope to keep this momentum going after a month off, although, the U.S. winning another Olympic gold could certainly help provide a boost.

That Olympic break actually starts with the WNBA All*Star Game, which is set for July 20, less than a week before the Opening Ceremony in Paris.  We'll get our first look at the Olympic team during the WNBA All*Star Game, too, since in Olympic years, the matchup is Team USA vs. Team WNBA.  There were a lot of people who thought Clark should be on the Olympic team, so you know people will tune in to see her play against Team USA instead.

One of her teammates on Team WNBA will be Angel Reese.  The rivalry between the two has been brewing since Reese's LSU team beat Clark's Iowa squad in the 2023 National Championship Game, and it's only grown since they moved to the WNBA with Indiana and Chicago.  They'll be the faces of the WNBA for the next decade, and their rivalry certainly hasn't hurt the hype.  This is the first time they'll be teammates (although, you'd have to figure they'll both be Team USA regulars moving forward, as well).  And I think a lot of people may tune in just to see the two of them playing together.

While Clark has definitely been a huge factor in the WNBA's increased popularity, it wouldn't be fair to give her all the credit.  Because it's not just her.  Fellow rookies Reese and Cameron Brink (who, unfortunately, is out for the season after tearing her ACL) have helped, too.  And, while the rookies brought people in, it's the talented players who were already in the league who've kept those newfound fans watching.

Although, as much as they claim otherwise, Reese and Brink aren't the draw Clark is.  Most WNBA teams play in smaller venues than their NBA counterparts.  The demand for tickets to see Caitlin Clark is so high, though, that several teams have had to move their home game against Indiana to the NBA venue.  The Fever played the Aces in Las Vegas the other day in front of 20,000 fans at a sold-out T-Mobile Arena (many of whom were wearing No. 22 Fever or Iowa jerseys).

Indiana has gone from the second-lowest attendance in the league to the highest.  The Fever have drawn over 15,000 for every home game and have sold out the 17,274-seat Gainsbridge Fieldhouse five times this season.  Not surprisingly, they also lead the WNBA in road attendance.  Indiana has outdrawn the Liberty, who rank second in the WNBA in attendance, by 3,000 fans per game.  They were drawing fans despite starting the season 1-7 (a direct result of playing so many games against Connecticut and New York early).  Now they're winning!

Those attendance figures can be attributed almost entirely to Caitlin Clark.  Last year, only two WNBA teams, the Aces and Mercury, had an average attendance over 9,000.  Most WNBA games not involving the Fever don't even draw that many fans.  And teams certainly aren't moving games to larger venues when they play other opponents.  That may change in the future.  Hopefully it will.  But, right now, it's only Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever who are doing that.

This hopefully is just the beginning for the WNBA.  ESPN has even talked about potentially sharing the WNBA Finals with another network for the good of the league if it means they can get more in rights fees.  That likely wouldn't have been possible if not for Caitlin Clark.  The impact she's had on the WNBA in half of one season is immeasurable.  And it only figures to increase.  From in-arena attendance to TV ratings, the Caitlin Clark Effect is real.

Time For a Change

When the U.S. Men's National Team was poised to rehire Gregg Berhalter after the 2022 World Cup, I was all for it.  Even after all that stuff with the Reynas airing his dirty laundry came out, I still felt he was the right man for the job and that certainly shouldn't have disqualified him (especially after the details of what actually happened emerged).  I no longer feel that way.  Not after what happened in Copa America.

While it's not the low of failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, it's pretty close.  Nobody thought the United States would win the Copa America.  Getting out of a group that included Uruguay, Panama and Bolivia was the bare minimum people were expecting.  Instead, the Americans lost two games and managed to do something that had never happened before.  For the first time in 20 global/regional international tournaments they've hosted, they failed to get past the group stage.

That stat is bad enough.  What makes it worse, though, is what this Copa America meant to the U.S. Men's National Team.  It's less than two years until the United States hosts the 2026 World Cup.  This World Cup won't be like the 1994 World Cup.  People are expecting the U.S. to make some noise two years from now.  This was the biggest tournament the team will play in before that.  It was supposed to be the test of how they stack up against the top South American teams heading into the biggest tournament in U.S. soccer history.  Not only did it not go well, it was a total embarrassment!

It isn't just that they lost.  It's how.  After a great opening win over Bolivia, everything turned when Tim Weah got a (deserved) red card in the 18th minute against Panama.  The U.S. is better than Panama.  They know this.  Panama knows this.  But Panama's also a familiar opponent, made the game ugly, and took advantage of playing with an extra man for the better part of the final 70 minutes.

So, instead of the Uruguay game being essentially meaningless and only deciding seeding, it became a must-win.  While Uruguay is a good team, it was definitely a winnable game, and the U.S. started off well.  However, they generated no offensive chances until the end (when they were down a goal and had to press the issue).  No matter how well you play defensively, you can't win if you don't score.  It's that simple.  It was a must-win game, but they showed little to no urgency and at no point did you think the goal they needed (which eventually became the two goals they needed) would come.

Once again, the U.S. men fell to a highly-ranked opponent.  They've proven they can beat the other CONCACAF teams (the loss to Panama notwithstanding).  What they haven't done in Berhalter's tenure is beat a top team from Europe or South America.  In a pre-tournament friendly, they got their butts kicked 5-1 by Colombia, but did earn a draw against Brazil in their next game.  If the U.S. wants to be taken seriously as a contender on the world stage, they need to win those games.  Or, at the very least, be competitive against those teams.  That hasn't happened.

Since Berhalter's rehiring, the results simply haven't been there.  The team's record is right around .500 over the past 12 months, and the wins haven't exactly come against a who's who of the top teams in FIFA (Oman, Uzbekistan, Canada, Trinidad & Tobago).  They won the CONCACAF Nations League Finals in March (big freakin' deal!), but their only other win in 2024 was the Bolivia game in Copa America.  Meanwhile, they got smacked by Colombia and had a loss to Slovenia in January, in addition to the losses to Panama and Uruguay.

You can't say it's because of a lack of talent, either.  By all accounts, this is the best group of players the U.S. Men's National Team has ever had.  They're pretty much all based in Europe playing for some of the top clubs in the world, and, for the most part, actually playing.  Now, they aren't the "golden generation" as some want to claim since they haven't done anything to earn that title (which will always belong to the Landon Donovan/Clint Dempsey teams anyway), but the players are certainly good enough to hang with the world's best.

Berhalter seems to have the support of the locker room, too.  During the whole Reyna saga, the players publicly declared that they wanted him back, and they all seem to genuinely like him.  Even after they fizzled out of the Copa America, they had Berhalter's back.  But what else would you expect them to say...especially right after the game? 

And, frankly, the fact that the players like him so much may be part of the problem.  How much accountability is there in the locker room?  Have they gotten too complacent?  As Carli Lloyd said during the postgame, the women's players hated their coaches when she played for the National Team.  But you know what?  They got results.  So, whatever they were doing was obviously working.  And does it really matter if the players like their coach as long as the team wins?

You can't exactly get rid of the players, either.  Sure, you can make changes to the lineup or go to a different tactical formation, but the players themselves aren't the problem.  You aren't replacing Christian Pulisic or Tyler Adams with someone better.  Because that person doesn't exist.  So, it's up to the coach to get the best out of the talent he's got on the roster (and there's plenty of it).

Which brings me back to the coaching.  Jurgen Klinsmann got the boot in 2016 after a pair of disastrous results in World Cup qualifying.  He was replaced by Bruce Arena, who only lasted until the end of that unsuccessful qualifying campaign.  So, it's not unprecedented for U.S. Soccer to dismiss a coach based on the team's poor performance.  And that's exactly what the 2024 Copa America was.  Actually, scratch that.  It wasn't just a poor performance.  It was a terrible, embarrassing performance.

Fans of the U.S. Men's National Team deserve better than the display they saw at Copa America.  Sure, there were a bunch of other factors that had a direct bearing on the results (terrible officiating is right there at the top of the list), but the bottom line is they failed.  The team didn't get the job done on the biggest stage they've had since the Qatar World Cup and the only big stage they will have until they host the next World Cup.

The performance at Copa America did nothing to inspire confidence heading into the only home World Cup for a generation.  Keeping Gregg Berhalter as the team's manager wouldn't do anything to restore that confidence, either.  In fact, it would just be doubling down on something that clearly isn't working.  So, there really seems to be only one logical solution.  The U.S. Men's National Team needs a change at the top.  Immediately.