Is the WNBA Afraid of Caitlin Clark?

The Wall Street Journal ^ | June 11, 2024 | Jason L. Riley

[MinorityRepublican]

I started playing golf after my father’s elder brother introduced me to the game during the summer of 1985, when I turned 14. Like millions of others, however, I started watching golf only because of Tiger Woods.

Uncle Larry was a military veteran who lived in suburban Washington, which gave him access to the nearby Andrews Air Force Base, where your tax dollars maintain two spectacular 18-hole championship golf courses frequented by service men and women, federal workers, presidents and in my case lucky nephews. In the 1980s and 1990s, golf was perceived mainly as a diversion for country club types, and while Mr. Woods wasn’t the first black professional golfer, his success has done more than anyone before or since to broaden the sport’s appeal. Along the way, he made professional golf far more lucrative for his fellow competitors.In 1996, the year Mr. Woods turned pro, purses on the PGA Tour totaled $68 million. By 2018 that number had climbed to $363 million, and it had everything to do with the eyeballs that Mr. Woods attracted to the game and the advertising dollars that followed.

“The tournaments he played in shattered attendance marks throughout the world and consistently set viewership records on television,” Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian wrote in their biography of Mr. Woods. “At the height of Tiger’s career, golf beat the NFL and the NBA in Nielsen ratings.” And in the process of making the sport more popular, “he helped make multimillionaires of more than four hundred Tour pros.”

There’s a lesson here for women’s basketball, yet the league seems to be in no danger of learning it. In terms of popularity, WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark is the Tiger Woods of her sport. She left college as the NCAA’s all-time scoring leader for women and men.

[adorno]

So they won't be able to pressure her into becoming a lesbian.

You took my post seriously?

But, she better remain ready for the bumps and bruises she'll be getting from the lesbos. They can't beat her at basketball, but they can beat her up. ;)