Swanson: America can’t shut up about women’s basketball – and it’s about time
You wouldn’t be reading this if a friend hadn’t suggested we go watch the Stanford and Oregon women’s basketball teams play at McArthur Court on Feb. 15, 1997.
See, even though I’d had big plans to become a sportswriter as a kid, by the time I got to college, I’d started to think I’d rather be out there committing more important acts of journalism – until that game pulled me back in.
We found ourselves part of a big, rowdy crowd that afternoon in that aluminum shoebox of a gym at the University of Oregon. An impeccable, cacophonous stage for us to watch as the teams “touched, pushed, battled, fought” (the Eugene Register-Guard’s Ron Bellamy) in a game Stanford won, 69-66.
I remember the drama, Oregon’s coach neglecting to shake hands, a Duck being quoted afterward: “It’s always Stanford this and Stanford that …”
I remember thinking maybe covering this stuff could, in a sense, be important? And imagining a world where thousands of people came together regularly to lose their collective minds over women’s basketball.
Oh, buddy.
Twenty-seven years later, we are so there.
We are covering women’s basketball. And America has lost its mind over women’s basketball.
It’s the talk of the American sports world: Caitlin Clark’s reception in the WNBA! Chennedy Carter hip checking her! Angel Reese’s part in this story! Are Clark’s new colleagues jealous? Petty? Resentful? Appreciative? Understandably any and/or all of the above?
Everyone chime in at once!
Monica McNutt deserves a damn raise !!
She was being tagged team by Shannon/Stephen A. the whole show and she HELD HER GROUND.
They spent 40 minutes (!!!!!) discussing this, which is definitely the most First Take has EVER covered the W in the show’s history.
Wheww… I’m… pic.twitter.com/gpHRwTyliO
— Vanshay Murdock (@VanshayM) June 3, 2024
Combustible, hot-button topics that needed just a whiff of oxygen to explode – and with air to fill on ESPN’s morning debate shows during a slow late-spring sports week? Ka-boom!
And holy smokes, I hate it. And I love it. And I love it, and I hate it. So much that I’m reticent to even touch it, because what is there to add when already way too much has been said and spouted and tweeted and shouted? Sean Hannity has weighed in, as have the ladies on “The View.” The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board took a stand – defending Clark and admonishing the Chicago Sky.
But I, too, can’t stop thinking about it.
And, yes, I grew up to be a sportswriter and now I get to write columns for a living, so I ought to deposit my two cents, which are: Caitlin stepped onto the scene swishing logo 3-pointers at a time when Steph and Dame and Trae made logo 3s cool. Women aren’t going to throw down like your favorite NBA dunker, but she can shoot like your favorite NBA sniper. That’s part of it.
Also, we are in a place, at long last, where the public is starting to not be so obstinate about women’s sports. Credit the previous quarter-century of the WNBA for that. And all of the great players who came before its advent. Credit the U.S. women’s national soccer team. And Serena Williams. And Jackie Joyner-Kersee. And so on … credit all the competitive daughters who made being a #GirlDad a thing. And #MeToo and #TimesUp. Credit editors and executives who dedicated resources to covering it, and those reporters whose coverage was mostly – or entirely – a labor of love. That’s some of it.
And, yes, beyond her marvelous skill set, Clark – a white player from Iowa – has an appeal to part of the public that didn’t fall fast in love with her idol, Maya Moore, a former UConn star who is Black. That’s a piece of it too.
So, yeah, women’s basketball is totally having a moment – one that anthropologists will study for years to come, this collision at the intersection of race and gender, sport and politics, media and social media. All those forces plowing head-first and full speed into one another and causing a gnarly collision from which none of us seems able to look away.
It’s a pileup that I sense – when I try to pan back, way, way, wayyy back – will be seared into our collective consciousness forever more.
And as uncomfortable or infuriating and fascinating as it is now, I think – I think – it will be good for the sport.
Remember a couple of years ago, when Clark was living up to her growing hype with 41 points in Iowa’s upset of South Carolina in the NCAA semifinals? A whopping 5.5 million folks tuned in, at the time the third-largest ESPN audience for women’s college basketball.
But then 9.9 million people watched LSU beat Iowa for the NCAA crown and saw Reese wave her hand like it was a wand because suddenly – poof! – this country was under their spell, seemingly everyone was feeling some type of way about what had transpired in this women’s basketball game.
Folks flooded the airwaves and social media with opinions about something that happened on the court, those takes at least replacing the dismissive “kitchen” replies that previously appeared below women’s basketball-related posts.
Some of the discourse, like this week’s, was inane and headache-inducing or downright offensive – and if that ain’t the ticket.
Because, in America, if it bleeds it leads. This is the home of TMZ and reality TV, the land of negative campaign ads and online toxicity, and if you really want our attention, our emotional investment? You’ve got to give us something beyond an explanation for the ways the New Orleans Pelicans are using Zion Williamson as a primary ball handler.
And without even meaning to, women’s basketball is giving. That’s why more than 12 million tuned in for the LSU-Iowa rematch in the Elite Eight, why 24.1 million sat down to see South Carolina beat Iowa in the title game.
Why 1.53 million were watching a regular-season game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky on Saturday, when Carter bumped Clark on an inbounds play – and why millions more are going to tune in for their next showdown June 16 (9 a.m., CBS).
And I’m sorry to the hoopers at the center of this who want just to hoop. Players like USC graduate transfer Talia von Oelhoffen, who posed the question on social media Monday: “What if we stopped talking so much about growing women’s basketball and just actually watched and consumed it the same way we do other sports?”
what if we stopped talking so much about growing women’s basketball and just actually watched and consumed it the same way we do other sports? in this essay i will-
— talia von oelhoffen (@TaliaVono) June 4, 2024
How about we do it now? Because later Monday, basketball fan and podcaster Darian Vaziri (@DimeDropperPod) mixed it up and posted his favorite player from every WNBA team with a question of his own: “What’s yours?”
He got hundreds of interactions, and only one that I saw from someone who needed it to be known he isn’t a fan. Otherwise, though, we are so here: It’s normal now for basketball fans to know enough about the WNBA to have a favorite player on every team.
Because it’s 2024, and for better or worse – and eventually, for better – everyone has an opinion about women’s basketball.
Since there’s been so much toxic discourse that has nothing to do with the being played, I’m gonna give my favorite player from each team besides my own!
Chicago: Marina Mabrey (I actually love her)
Seattle: Nneka (duh)
NY: Stewie
Vegas: Chelsea Gray (duh)
Indiana:…— Dime Dropper (@DimeDropperPod) June 4, 2024
"We are so caught up on dissecting the growth of the women's game, that we are missing out on the goodies. … Why can't all growth, all ways that women compete, be good for the game?"
—@chiney on competition in the WNBA pic.twitter.com/6TaSrR1jpf
— First Take (@FirstTake) June 4, 2024