July 8, 2025 • 50 mins
Caitlin Clark is electrifying crowds and breaking records—and igniting a complicated national conversation. Christine Brennan joins Katie to dissect the making of a sports icon, the WNBA’s missed opportunities, and the fraught media narratives surrounding Clark, Angel Reese, and race. It’s the subject of Brennan’s new book, On Her Game, and one of the most urgent stories in sports.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if there were a way to reduce cancer deaths
by half in the next twenty five years. This is
the future Exact Sciences works toward every single day because
they believe it's possible. Exact Sciences is a dedicated team
of cancer fighters united by a purpose to help eradicate
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(00:23):
Visit exactsciences dot com to learn more. Hi everyone, I'm
(00:56):
Katie Kuric and this is next question. My friend Christine
Brennan and I have known each other since the eighties,
when we both started out in our respective fields, Christine
as a sportscaster and sports writer and me, of course,
as a cup reporter back in Washington, d C. She's
(01:18):
now written a book called On her Game, Caitlyn Clark
in The Revolution in Women's Sports. I'm so excited to
talk to you, Christine. Nice to see you, Thanks for
coming in.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh my gosh, Katie, great to see you. And we
did important to say. We did start when we were
in kindergarten in the eighties. Grank you, Yes, in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
No, it's okay. I'm proud of my age. Christine. We
need to be. But this book is so interesting and
it's really about a phenom, as you call it, in
the sports world, Caitlyn Clark. You spent six weeks on
the road with Caitlin and the Indiana Fever, covering games,
practices and press conferences, interviewing players, coaches, administrators, and fans,
(01:59):
and you have been in Caitlyn Clark world for quite
a while. How would you describe her?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
She is, of course, as you said, a phenomenon. As
we say in the book, she is the all American
girl grown up. She frankly is that girl that parents
see in the kitchen every morning who is racing off
to soccer practice, changing in the car to switch to
volleyball practice or lacrosse, or the neighbor who waves at
(02:28):
the girl going trudging off with the bag on her
shoulder to another sports practice. What we have created in
this country, Katie, and you know this with your daughters,
is the opportunity for girls, the other half of our population,
to learn these life lessons about sports that for generations
we were saying no no to girls and women. You
cannot learn about sports, winning and losing at a young age, teamwork, sportsmanship.
(02:49):
Because of title nine, which by the way, is just
celebrated its fifty third anniversary and has really come of
age over the last twenty thirty years. And so Caitlyn
Clark is that person.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's a beneficiarya she's a beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
She is, frankly, what we created, and the nation has
fallen in love with what it is created. Usually, you know,
team sports. Obviously tennis and other sports are part of
the conversation too, but what do girls play at age
five and six? Soccer, t ball? It's about team sports.
And when we see the professional side, we often see
the great names obviously Serena and Venus Williams tennis and
(03:25):
individual sport, or the Olympic stars like Katie Ledecki Simone
Biles again individual sports. So this is that first huge
breakthrough team sport athlete. Thank you title nind That literally
the guy that wouldn't have been caught dead watching women's sports,
that guy who thinks that just inferior would never have
(03:47):
been seen outside in a women's sports jersey. That's the guy.
And I interviewed a lot of these guys who are
putting on the number twenty two jersey going to the
grocery store, going to the game, planning their evenings around
the starting time of Caitlin Clark's game. And you know,
you and I have been around a long time. I
almost cannot believe that I'm saying these sentences about a
(04:08):
female athlete, that this has happened in our lifetime. I
didn't really think it would happen with the kind of
TV ratings, the audience. But it's about a person that
the nation I think has correctly fallen in love with,
who is as publicly appreciative an athlete as I have
ever seen. The maturity, the poise handling every issue, lots
(04:29):
of stuff thrown at her, lots of controversy, as you know,
and everything about her and elegance, intelligence, and just also
a sense of humor that you would hope to see
in someone. And America, there she is.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I want to backtrack a second, Christine, and have you
explain why Title nine was so important and what it did, because,
as you said, this was fifty three years ago, we're
now seeing the fruits of that presenting itself today. What
did Title nine do exactly?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
June twenty third, nineteen seventy two basically mandated that if
a school was receiving federal funding, which all schools, even
private schools, receive federal funding, pelgrants, what have you, that
they could not discriminate against female students in any way.
The original intent was law schools and med schools. Within
(05:22):
a few years it started to be seen in terms
of the athletic fields and opportunity for girls and women
to play sports. And the idea is proportional. So if
a school is fifty three percent female enrollment and forty
seven percent male, the idea then is you should have
fifty three percent of your sports opportunities for women forty
(05:42):
seven percent for men. So now you have dads out
throwing the baseball or the softball with their daughter the
way they did with their sons a generation or two ago,
because you see that caret of potentially what one hundred
thousand dollars a year a college scholarship that your daughter
can have just like your son from the past.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But also it's about resources and facilities, right that you
have to devote resources, and you have to give women's
teams areas to work out and weight rooms just like
you do for the men.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right, well, exactly, locker room size should be the same.
Now we'll say this you and I not born yesterday.
It doesn't happen everywhere, and most schools are not in
compliance with Title nine even now. But one of the
three prongs of being able to follow the law is
actually that you're showing you're working towards compliance. Now, if
(06:36):
this happened with another law, you'd say what kind of
law is that?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
But in this case, Title nine has been very forgiving
for those athletic departments.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
How did Title nine directly impact? Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
So you have this, as I said, it's a law,
for sure, and it's a law that is still working
its way through in terms of being followed. And of
course you throw anil the money that is now being paid,
and that's not equal at all. But there's the other
part of it that I mentioned a moment ago mindset,
the nation's mindset that it was acceptable for girls and
women to play sports when you and I were growing up,
(07:10):
you and Arlington me in the suburbs of Toledo. If
our moms and dads drove buy a field and there
was a girl on that field, the odds are that
she was there telling your brother it was time to
come home for dinner. I mean, what was that girl
doing on a sports field? Now, people driving through those neighborhoods,
do you even have a second clance, third glance if
(07:31):
you see a whole team of girls playing soccer or
lacrosse or you know, running, you know through the neighborhood.
Of course not. That's the mindset thing that I'm talking about,
the sense that we not only expect it, we want
our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters to be doing this. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So, really it was the attitude shift that came with
Title nine that created the environment for someone like Caitlin
Clark to really thrive.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Exactly because now and also I think another key part
of this, and I say this in the book, so
nineteen seventy two and Kaylen Clark doesn't come along till
two thousand and two, so it's a long time. So
thirty years, basically thirty years there's stepping stones in the
history of women's sports. You and I both know Billy
jan King very well. So when we're still kids in
our respective homes nineteen seventy three, September of seventy three,
(08:21):
Billy Jean beats Bobby Riggs a very big deal, right,
especially for empowering, for girls growing up. You move on
to say, the Atlanta Olympics in nineteen ninety six, I
think you were probably there. I was, yes, for a
certain network doing great work. I was there as well.
You're watching the Women's Olympics, where everything is about the
(08:41):
great female athletes. Moving ahead three years later, the nineteen
ninety nine Women's World Cup, the soccer tournament, and of
course you've got you know, Brandy Chastain and Nicole and
you know, whipping her shirt over her head and yeah,
all of that and so that to me, that was
forty million viewers on TV. It was July tenth of
nineteen ninety nine, and it was over ninety thousand people
(09:04):
in the Rose Bowl. Rose Bowl, of course, well known
as a great college football facility, packed to the rafters,
to the gills. I guess there's no rafters in the
Rose Bowl, but packed to whatever, to the top row
for women's soccer in this country in nineteen ninety nine,
a revelation. I'm going to give you a trivia note
for your next cocktail party. Name the one story in
(09:26):
the history of stories that made the cover of Time, Newsweek, People,
and Sports Illustrated the same week. I've obviously given it away.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
The World Cup.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yes, Brandy Chastain and the teammates.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, but I'll never forget that shot of Brandy, you know,
kneeling on the field in her.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Sports bra right right, because she'd taken her shirt off
and the people thought, oh, she's probably trying to sell
the sports bra. No, no, no. She watched men's soccer for
years because she had no women's soccer to watch growing up.
And she's born in nineteen sixty eight, so she's, you know,
coming along at that time. The title nine is really exploding,
and so she's watching European men'sawa what do they do
when they have an important goal? They take off their
(10:02):
shirt and they whip it over the head. So she said,
that's what she did, which we of course loved Brandy
for that. So anyway, that's happening. The nation has just
fallen in love again with what it is created. And
then two and a half years later, a little girl
is born in Des Moines, Iowa, and we have no
idea who she is, and she's the one in terms
of team sports that comes along at the exact right
(10:25):
time as our nation is just loving everything that we
have created.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Christine as I mentioned you spent six weeks on the road.
Were you able to actually sit down and do an
interview with Caitlin Clark, because at one point I know
this was being called an unauthorized biography.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yes, it is an unauthorized biography, and still it still is.
And you know that can sound ominous. It couldn't be
further from the truth. It's unauthorized because I wanted it
to be journalistic. If it's an authorized book, you're then
working with the person, right And I want to continue
to cover these stories. And I am continuing to cover
the stories involving Kaitlin Clark, women's sports, the Olympics, everything
(11:05):
else that I cover. And if I had been in
business with Kaitlyn Clark, I couldn't cover for again.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I mean, but having said that, did she sit down
with you and did you have a long conversation or
did you just capture moments?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
More capturing moments I asked her probably about fifty questions.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Well that's the lot.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, not bad. I think. You know, it's funny as
you look back on actually writing the book, I think
I probably used about one third of her quotes and comments,
So I had so much because she is you know,
she's a great talker, and she goes on and on
and she answers a question, then she'll go off on
a tangent that you care very very much about.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
So did you sit down with her, Christine, or did
you just kind of grab her during quiet moments?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, what happened was press availabilities, which often involved just
a few reporters. I could ask her anything, no holds barred,
nothing was off limits, of course, I mean that would
never I would never agree to anything like that. Ask
her tough questions, ask her, you know, literally anything. For example,
after she liked the Taylor Swift post that was, of
course Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris. The next day I
(12:08):
was in DC, and then that next morning I flooded
Indy for that game. Often she'll have three times of
press availabilities during a day morning shoot around, and then
before the game and after the game. And so in
this case it was I of course wanted to ask
her about the liking of that Taylor Swift post, because,
as you and others might remember, not only was that
(12:28):
a big deal, but within a few minutes on x
and other social media, a news story and other things
came out about who liked the post, and it was
Oprah Winfrey, and it was Kylie Kelsey and Jennifer Aniston
and Caitlyn Clark. So she's a celebrity now being in
the news about liking the post, and so of course
I asked her. And I started out in a friendly
(12:50):
way because this is sports and she is twenty two,
and I've been known to ask a lot of tough
questions and get people occasionally mad at me over the years,
and that's part of being a journals as you know well,
and that's you know, whether people like you or not,
you're doing your job. But I started out by saying,
as you know, you'd like to post that got a
lot of attention last night, big smile, And I said,
(13:12):
I'm just curious what Taylor Swift's post meant to you,
and are you potentially endorsing Kamala Harris for president? And
Caitlin Clark answered the first part in about a minute
answer and then did not answer the second part, and
I think that's probably a smart move by her. But
going back to your question, she and I did meet
and have a one on one, but that was basically
(13:34):
just a first meeting off the record, which was lovely.
And then I also was in some practices where no
other journalists were, and of course had plenty of time
to talk to all kinds of people, her friends, her coaches,
in depth interviews to get those stories that she might
not tell. She never said no comment, she never said
I don't want to talk about this. I can't thank
(13:54):
her enough for spending the time, and that was usually
again just around the team settings, because it was because
with the deal, you know, the book deal, and then boom,
now I'm writing this book quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right well, tell us a little bit about her childhood, Christine,
because she sounds like she was a true multi hyphen
it when it comes to sports. She played soccer, basketball.
She was also National Honors Society presidential Honor role. Give
us just a glimpse into her family life, her parents,
her siblings, and how this young woman was really formed
(14:27):
and created.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
If you will, you know she was formed and created
on a basketball court or a soccer field or a
golf course by a mom and dad who loved sports
and had sports in their lives, big brother and a
little brother. And of course the big brother was very
helpful in terms of kind of toughening her up, and
she started playing basketball. She wanted to play at age five,
and there were no girls leagues for her, so her
(14:50):
dad was coaching a boys league and she started playing
against the boys. And when I spent a lot of
time talking to her, AAU coach, a man named Dixon Jensen,
who was fantastic, coached her all the way through on
the club level, not the high school level. What he
said was that time she spent playing against the boys,
which she went far longer, Katie, than most girls do.
(15:11):
You know, after a while, most of the girls kind
of fall away and go play against the girls, which
is what we want. You know, the boys are getting
a little stronger, a little tougher. Caitlyn stayed till like,
you know, fifth sixth grade, she was playing against the boys,
and as Dixon Jensen said, it was perfect for her
because the boys are a little tougher, a little stronger,
and I love this when he said this, a little meaner,
(15:32):
and Caitlyn was learning to play against them. And there
was one player who's ended up playing for the Iowa
men's basketball team who in second grade, his team lost
to Caitlyn's team, and he said even do all girls
play basketball like this?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You know?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
He was like, my gosh, is this what all girls
are like? And obviously she was born for this.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I was going to ask, did her parents and siblings
and community and friends realize she was preternaturally talented right away?
Or was it something that they sort of discovered when
she was in high school? You know? What separated her
from a really good basketball player who enjoyed the game
(16:13):
to somebody who was next level?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know? She says now she has says, I hate
to lose. I hate to lose. I want to win everything.
I want to be the best. So I think what
we're looking at here is someone who, at the youngest
age knew what she loved, knew she was good at it,
really good at it, tall enough and big enough. The
sport that she was actually excellent at early on in
(16:36):
high school was soccer, and she was scoring goals like crazy.
And she said she learned through soccer with the angles,
the passing angles, because so much about soccer was passing, right,
it's not scoring. But she gave up soccer because now
her basketball career is taking off. There's these younger teams
that go internationally in play. So she made those USA teams.
So now she's away, you know, overseas playing basketball. But
(16:59):
again I go back to the nation saying, this is
the moment, right, There's not a soul on earth who's
telling her no. Right, which girls growing up our age
got it all the time, and what a shame? What
were we thinking? But also now go back to the kitchen,
go back to mom and dad with their dad, a
two sport athlete in D three. Her mother's father, the grandfather,
(17:22):
was a legendary high school football coach at the same
high school that Caitlin went to. You've got the older
brother who's playing sports, played football at Iowa State.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So really in their blood. And did you get a
chance to talk to her parents when you were writing
this book?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I met both mom and dad, but they preferred not
to talk to me anymore about that, which is fine
because I had plenty of other material from other people.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, be interesting to talk to them at some point
to really do a profile of them.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I would love to do that. And as I said
to them in the private conversations I had with both
of them, I looked at them and I said, what
an amazing daughter you have raised.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Not only as an apple Fleet, but as the person
in terms of the way she's handled herself. What if
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in the next twenty five years. What if it were
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(18:20):
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(18:44):
including COLIGUARD and anchotype DX that inspire life changing action.
Visit exactsciences dot com to learn more. I know you
start the book with watching Caitlin play for the first time.
(19:08):
Tell us about that experience.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Well, I'm on my iPad in my kitchen in Northwest DC,
and I was watching the Indiana Iowa women's basketball game
February of twenty twenty three, and I was actually watching
the game to watch the Indiana team, which was ranked
second in the country. Because all my siblings went to
Indiana University, I went to Northwestern and this team is great,
(19:31):
So I'm just kind of keeping an eye on the
game and I was losing and last inbound, you know,
second half left, and the ball goes to Caitlin Clark
and everyone knows it's going to Kaitlin Clark, and she's
kind of sideways and one legs this way and the
other legs this way, as we've come to realize and
know what it looks like. And she's just throwing that
ball up and it goes in and she just runs
(19:53):
off the court and goes crazy and everyone's following her around.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
They win the game by one.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Point exactly, and you know what it was. I mean,
I've covered a lot and have you know, seen pretty
amazing sports feeds as you have at the Olympics and
other places. And I have to say that I kind
of watched the replan. I watched the replay again.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And what was it?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And this really helped me understand the nation's fascination with her, Katie.
To be honest with you, you realize you just kind of
you can't take your eyes off of her. Have we
seen a female athlete who is really a high wire act? Right?
Sports and athletic for sure, but really an entertainer, and
I've felt very lucky at that moment to have this
(20:38):
experience of kind of just wandering into watching this finale
and in this incredible shot, and they do win the game.
And then of course, within a few weeks she's now
going to the Final four, and they're upsetting South Carolina,
and now she's taking an Iowa team that was not
expected to do anything all the way to the final game,
and now the nation is just kind of falling in
(20:59):
love with this athlete that you're watching. I understand that,
and I think that's helped inform me and understand what
people might be thinking, because I kind of went through
it at that moment in my kitchen.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
There was a confluence of factors that allowed Caitlin's career
to skyrocket. One was nil name, image, likeness, you said quote.
By the time Clark was done with college, she reportedly
had at least eleven NIL deals worth more than three million,
including TV commercials such as her ubiquitous State Farm spots
(21:34):
that made her even more recognizable. What did these brand deals,
What impact did they have on her celebrity and really
on the entire WNBA.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
If you think back to athletes a generation ago. At
college athletes, you know, you'd be watching them and then
they go off your TV or you'd go to the
game and then whatever, they disappear. Right, they're not hanging
around from you know, one minute to the net. The
thing that always hit me about Kaitlin Clark. She's playing
in this game and she's probably doing something pretty crazy
(22:05):
and amazing. Then it goes to a commercial, and if
it's a State Farm commercial, now she's there, like literally
two or three seconds after you just watched her in
the game. They've gone to a timeout, and now she's
in her uniform standing there may well be the exact
same uniform, and it's like there she is, there, she is,
She never leaves. She is a part of our culture.
(22:28):
She's not just an athlete on the court. She is
now a pitch woman. She's selling products, she is forging
her path in a whole new way.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
She's part of the culture and not just through her sports.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
And once you've crossed over, you know, we've got quite
a few athletes over the years that have done that,
certainly Serena and Venus and Serena especially right the way
she's done that, I mean, some own biles Katie Ledecki,
any number of quarterbacks, running backs, baseball players, etc. But
when we're talking about that, of the hundreds of the
thousands of athletes who have graced us with their presence,
(23:03):
you know, and been cheered in stadiums around the country,
it is still the very few that then crossover and
are part of the culture. And here's Caitlyn Clark doing it.
And to the point you're making about nil, she's doing
it while she's still in college.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
There has been a lot of discussion, as you know, Christine,
and here we are two white ladies discussing this about
the rural race has played in the ascendants of Caitlyn Clark.
Angel Reese. The star at LSU has often been pitted
against Caitlyn Clark being cast sort of in her view
as the villain role in the media and by the public,
(23:43):
and she has said that hasn't been easy. She also
said quote all year I was critiqued about who I was.
I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit in the
box that y'all want me to be in. I'm too hood,
I'm too ghetto. So I'm curious about the fact that
Caitlin Clark has been so celebrated, and in some ways,
(24:06):
Angel Reese has been so criticized.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Oh, without a doubt. Now, part of it is rivalries,
right in sports. I mean Red Sox, Yankees, Michigan, Ohio State.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
This is more than that. When you're talking about the
Yankees and the Red Sox, it's not really about the
racial no, no, no, it's really about the region, right, without
a doubt.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And no, what I'm saying is everyone's looking for a rivalry, right,
That's a fact. The quote you just read is in
the book, and I make a very strong effort to
obviously quote Angel throughout and in fact, I tried, I
think about three times with Angel's people to get her
to talk to me for the book, and she did
not want to do that, and that was a disappointment
(24:47):
because I wanted her voice more. I wanted to be
able to ask her some things, but that was, of
course her choice. What happens with Angel is that final game,
LSU wins, Big Iowa loses. Angel is the national Caitlin
is not. Near the end of the game, Angel was
following Caitlyn around and putting her hand in front of
(25:07):
her face, mimicking something that Caitlyn had done a week
or so earlier. Everyone thought it was to an opponent.
Turns out that was wrong. The opponent even said that
it was to Caitlin's bench. So something that kind of
got going and became quite a thing, a meme and
everything else. Turns out the genesis of it was wrong.
(25:28):
Caitlyn was not mocking an opponent by doing the John Sanna,
you can't see anything. She was sending it to her bench.
So Angel picks it up as something that Caitlyn was
doing to an opponent. So Angel does it to Caitlin.
She also made sure to point to her ring finger
where her ring was going to go, and of course
(25:48):
everything explodes from there. There was a positive in all this.
People were talking about women's sports in a way we
haven't in a long time. That's the positive. The negative,
as we have now come to see, and as you're
alluding to with your questions, is how this all of
a sudden became racial, pitting people against each other in
are very polarized society, and there's a lot of hate
(26:11):
and a lot of negativity. And I think it's important
in the book when I quote Angel, I did ask
one question at a press conference where she says, you know,
I don't hate Caitlin, and Caitlyn says I don't hate Angel,
and so this world around them have created a rivalry.
And then you throw in race, and you throw in
(26:31):
quote unquote taunting, which is something that happens in all sports,
and Caitlyn certainly can throw it back at people. Caitlyn
is not a saint out there. She's not the mother
Teresa out on the court. I mean she's also throwing
it back at people as well. But this is how
this started.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It seems to me that whenever this happens and women
are involved, it becomes so exaggerated. You know, this desire
to create these so called cat fights. Right where I
think it meant we're doing this, or male athletes were
engaging in this kind of taunting or activity or whatever,
(27:07):
it would be sort of part for the course. But
I feel like when it's women, it's just put under
this microscope. Do you think that's true, Oh, certainly that's
the case.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
But then there's a flip side, which is people are
paying attention and the microscope is.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
There well, and you think all publicity is good publicity, No,
not all necessarily, But in this case, here's how I'll
frame it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Angel wins, and I mean it is crystal clear. Angel's
the defending champion, Caitlin loses. You've got doctor Jill Biden
then saying well, we want Kaitlin in Iowa to come
to the White House too, And of course Angel reeson
analyis you. They're furious about that, and then even Caitlin
Clark says, no, We're not going to the White House.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So there was a lot going on, right, There's a
lot going on. Absolutely there is a racial component to
all of it. I am absolutely aware of that as
a journalist. You are aware of that. As a journalist,
would be foolish and not doing our jobs to not
realize that. Right, But what you've also got is a
story about again going into the mainstream, crossing over out
(28:11):
of sports. That is a positive. That night, I'm on
CNN and again talking about it. And the real kicker
was Thursday of the Masters. I'm now down at Augusta
National Tiger Woods is teeing off? Am I at the
first tea? No, I'm not. I am doing another TV
hit on my laptop. What am I talking about? Angel
Reese and Caitlin Clark? There is an element to this
(28:35):
that is good because if you have been wanting coverage
for women's sports, which I certainly have worked my career
for in the addition to covering obviously many men's sports,
this is a moment that you'd say, good, people are
discussing this and talking about it. And when Caitlyn passes
the ball in the All Star Game to Angel and
Angel makes the shot and that's an assist, and the
(28:57):
place goes crazy, and the announcers say, this is what
you've been waiting for, and they slap palms on the
way down. All right, now, there's a little moment that
shows you they respect each other as athletes and as people.
And I truly believe that's the way Caitlin Clark looks
at Angel Reese, and that's the way Angel Reese also
looks at Kaitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I think one of the things that has exacerbated this
dynamic is the fact that the WNBA is historically and
overwhelmingly black seventy four percent of players or black or
mix race. Last year, there was a huge backlash from
the WNBA Players Association when you asked Dja Carrington whether
or not she pote Caitlin Clark in the eye, and
(29:39):
the statement they said, quote that's so called interview in
the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bet
a professional athlete into participating into a narrative that is
false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol
on social media. Why do you think that question was
so provocative for Carrington and the rest of the team.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That certainly was a very important moment. First things first,
the seventy four percent is something obviously that I worked
to make sure I got that exactly right. And I
have a whole chapter, as you know, on the foundation
of the WNBA, which by the way, I covered way
back when. And you know, this is a league that
is known as a black league. A sizable portion of
the women are gay. I deal with all that in
(30:24):
the book. I want to deal with that in the book,
and I think it helps people understand frankly, where we
are now. This is a league that is again seventy
four percent black league. And now you've got this white
woman from Iowa coming in and being the superstar.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
If I were a black player, that would bug the
shit out of me. It's only natural that people would
feel that way.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Exactly. And this is the failure of the WNBA leadership.
And this is a big part of the book, as
you know that how on earth can you not see
all of junior year of Caitlin Clark, the crowds senior
year people standing in line in January and February for
hours waiting to get into Big Tan arenas, eighteen twenty
thousand packed to the rafters to see this woman and
(31:08):
not go. You know what, maybe we should talk to
our athletes about this, Maybe we should prepare them, Katie.
Not because they're damsels in distress.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
They are not.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
They are terrific, strong, fabulous women who've gone through a lot,
and our great athletes and have reached the pinnacle of
their sport, women who I praise in the book and
my columns in USA Today. How they fought for Britney
Grinder to get her back from Russia. I don't think
there's ever been a finer moment in professional sports history
in the United States than what the WNBA players did
(31:38):
to get Britney Grinder back fighting for her. When we
think of twenty sixteen, Black Lives Matter, we think of
Colin Kaepernick. Right a full month before Colin Kaepernick took
a knee and made headlines the Minnesota Links, who, by
the way, young Caitlin Clark's favorite team, the Minnesota Links.
Their players started the protesting of the order of several
(32:00):
black men, and that was again in July of twenty sixteen,
and the other WNBA teams followed suit. So the WNBA
was a month ahead of Colin Kaepernick. Yet people in
our culture would never know. That shows you how little
coverage they got and how you can understand how wait
a minute, what about us.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
How frustrating it for them. In fact, you write about
Brittany Griner, and you wrote in USA today, if this
were a male athlete, not a female athlete, people would
care a lot more about this story. If say Lebron
James or Tom Brady were being held hostage by Vladimir Putin,
well they wouldn't be hostages anymore. They'd be home because
America would have demanded it right away. It was a
(32:44):
valid point. Not that either James or Brady ever would
have been in the position of having to leave their
country to make a good living playing their sport as
Griner did. Griner received more publicity and coverage for being
in prison in Russia than for her then thirteen years
as one of the biggest stars in this basketball It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
The lack of coverage, the lack of attention, the lack
of respect that these women got.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The lack of resources, the lack of salary. Right even
if you look at what Caitlin Clark was making when
she was drafted compared to the male basketball players.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, seventy six thousand to fifty seven million, right, I
know it's not even close. Yes, So about the DJJ
Carrington questions, I asked a question and a follow up. Obviously,
the Players Association was very upset with me and wanted
to ban me.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Well, it seemed like you were pushing the narrative of
a rivalry to me with those questions. To Christine, I
have to be honest, you know, so let me ask
you this.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
So, those are the kind of questions that I've asked
Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps and hundreds of male athletes.
So are we saying that we cannot ask women the
same kind of questions we would ask men? In twenty
twenty four?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Point taken were the two questions?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah? Oh sure, so I asked it when she went
to DJA Carrington and obviously this is a group of
us around her. This story was just exploding on social
media and so many criticizing DJA Carrington for with Kaitlyn
Clark in Game one of the playoffs where she's kind
of swatting at the ball. Caitlyn it turns out is passing,
(34:23):
not shooting. Her fingers end up right in Caitlyn Clark's eye.
And she's been accused, being accused of things, She's being denigrated,
she's being criticized. Carrington Carrington is when people are saying
she did this on purpose? How dare you do this
to Kaitlin Clark, Katie, There is only one thing for
(34:43):
a journalist to do. Ask a straight question, direct question,
exactly purpose right, because that allows the athlete to hit
it out of the park. Maybe this is another failing
of the WNBA to not have prepared its players for
national scrutiny, which is a shame, But they haven't had
much national scrutiny, so most athletes know you can hit
(35:05):
that out of the park either way, yes or no.
Could you describe what happened? That question is certainly the
most analyzed question I've ever asked, and that's fine. Again,
that's totally fine. I would ask that question of any
NFL player, of any Olympian. I'm not comparing the issues.
But young Michael Phelps at age nineteen, his agent had
(35:28):
me talk to him for forty five minutes about his DUI. Again,
I am not comparing DUI with the fingers right whatever,
not at all. Forty five minutes Michael Phelps answered questions
from me like tough questions. We're not their pr people,
as you would know well, and maybe they have not
been used to scrutiny. But with Caitlin Clark's arrival comes
(35:50):
national scrutiny. And again the failing of the league to
prepare the players for the moment is truly one of
the stories of this particular era in the WNBA. It
is such a huge failure. I think it's important to
say I don't frame every question based on what people
on social media are asking. Of course not, but when
you see the magnitude of the coverage and the concern
(36:14):
about these issues. Again, if I'm the player's agent, which
I am not, I'm saying you want these questions so
that you can finally equivocally answer them and put the
issue to bed. Obviously that's not how Dijne Carrington and
the Players Association saw it, But I thought I was
giving them the respect that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And a chance to really explain exactly.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And again, I think it's all stems from the WNBA
not preparing these players for what might be coming when
you get national scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, when not for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. How
(37:13):
problematic was it, Christine that you were writing a book
about Caitlin Clark while you were covering the WNBA, Because
I read a quote by a former editor of The
Athletic and The Washington Post. You asked him to talk
to you for the book and he said he didn't
want to, and he claimed your coverage had gone way
(37:34):
beyond what is normal. He said, the way she's covering Clark.
I'm sure you've seen this, Christine. You're asking is she
Caitlyn Clark's PR agent? So I'm curious about how you
tried to balance covering the league while you're writing a
book on Caitlyn Clark, and I think as a result,
(37:54):
it gave people the impression the only thing you cared
about was Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So many books have been written by sports journalists about
Tom Brady, what have you, And I don't think anyone
has ever complained that those journalists have been asking questions
about Tom Brady. In other words, for some reason, it
bothered people tremendously that I was asking questions about Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Now, I think because they felt like you were ignoring
other players or the bigger picture of the WNBA.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Right, And of course I'm probably the only one still
standing who was covering the WNBA in nineteen ninety nine,
so I certainly haven't ignored it over the years. This
notion that I only focused on Caitlin Clark, are only
talked to athletes about Caitlin Clark is ridiculous. In that
same story that you were referring to by a journalist
who I've talked to quite a bit, who I support
and want to do well, he interviewed someone about my
(38:47):
questions who could have been around me only three times
out of about twenty games. This journalist, this young broadcaster, Sure,
go ahead, and do it. But how could that person
know the questions I asked. It was surprising to me
that they felt this way because I've been around dozens
of my colleagues, are colleagues friends writing books who have
(39:09):
focused entirely on one athlete, and no one cared at all,
No one was upset. What was it about this book
that got everyone so upset? My guess is that they
think I was working with Caitlin, which I wasn't. And
of course, by the way, the notion that I'm a
(39:29):
fan or that I'm pro Caitlin. There are things in
this book, as you know, that obviously show Caitlin, and
you know with her behavior on the court that maybe
she won't like. Obviously she's not read the book. She
has no editorial control, which again is the beauty of
a journalistic look at someone. My way of reporting this
was the same way I've done for my entire career.
But that must be it, because it's kind of a
(39:52):
logical thing that someone might be writing a book about
Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
That was an interesting way to look at it, because
you talk about coverage of Tiger Woods and the fact
that you wrote so many stories about him and that
you weren't writing about all the other golfers, and that
was because of his talent, his skill, his charisma, and
(40:16):
how much attention he had brought to that game.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I would have been not doing my job if I
was focusing on someone who finished tenth in the golf tournament.
I think you can make a very strong case again
the book deal, yes, But even before the book deal,
I wrote maybe three or four columns, including the Olympic snob.
I broke that news, the charter flight story. I broke
that news. News is news when someone is in the headlines,
(40:41):
when someone is creating news, when someone is getting these
TV ratings. As a journalist, what would you want someone
to do? I would love to talk to them. I
love the two way street. If they want to tell me,
they can, they can call me any time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
I know that you feel strongly, Christine, that are rising
tide lifts all boats, and you feel like Caitlin Clark
is a rising tide. Do you believe she has lifted
all boats? And how has she done that? In your review?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It's a great question. I think she is and can be.
For example, you look at what's going on with the
Indiana fever, so This is, of of course her team.
It is with the Indiana Pacers, much more established, been
around for years, much more money, as we've just talked about,
and in Indiana people are crazy about the entire team.
(41:34):
Caitlin Clark cannot do every appearance, right, she cannot go
to every gas station and every supermarket. Well guess what
her teammates go. And they are getting obviously some kind
of an honorarium. They are getting the opportunity to see
the fans, their names are out there, they're getting all
kinds of potential deals. Players want to come and play
(41:58):
for Indiana. I mean we're seeing that. We're seeing players
who were competitive with her last year, like don't want
to Bonner having a year contract now with the Indiana
Fever after being in Connecticut. So I think, I mean,
there's a perfect example locally within her team.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
What about within the WNBA. What do you think she's
done for the entire league?
Speaker 2 (42:17):
When you've got TV ratings through the roof as never before,
when you've got attendance that's literally again historic. Clearly, that's
more money in the bank, right, that's more money in
the owner's pocket. At least they've got the collective bargaining
agreement that is now up and they're going to have that.
There is no doubt that the players will be getting
bigger salaries because of the wonderful, very rosy and sunny
(42:42):
economic forecast, because of the new TV deals, which is
four times what they had before. All of this is
because of the Caitlin Clark effect. Perfect example, here, you've
got Sheila Johnson, who I've known for a long time.
You probably know she I know she yeah, yes, yeah,
I mean we're friends and you know see here at events,
and Sheila is the owner of the Washington Mystics. The
(43:03):
Mystics play in a four thy, two hundred seed arena.
When Caitlin and the fever came, they moved those games,
Sheila Johnson did to Capital One Arena, where they had
over twenty thousand, including the record regular season crowd, biggest
crowd in WNBA history twenty thousand, seven hundred eleven in September,
(43:24):
all because of one person, Caitlin Clark. So that is
I think at least probably what a million dollars each
game right to the Mystics. So that's clearly a positive
for the team and for Sheila Johnson. Sheila Johnson then,
of course is the person who quizzically, I'd love to
speak to her about it. She then goes on CNN
(43:44):
and is upset that Caitlin Clark won the Time Athlete
of the Year award and said it should have been
the League of the Year and that something clicked, but
didn't think that Caitlyn deserved the credit. I would love
to know the impetus, love to know the mindset. I'd
love to know what she's thinking. Again, going back to
the things we talked about before, we don't know the
(44:06):
life that Sheila lived, right, a black woman, incredible leader,
lovely person, great role model. Everything about Shila and I
gave her gosh. I tried five or six times to
ask her those questions, which is what we do, right
we are journalists trying to figure things out.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I guess I would ask you, does Caitlin Clark to
serve all the credit for the rise and popularity of
the WNBA. For example, the New York Liberty. You know,
I'm going to New York Liberty games. My daughter really
loves the Liberty. Caitlin Clark has absolutely nothing to do
with the New York Liberty, and I think some people
(44:44):
would argue that the WNBA is growing more popular because
people are appreciating all the players, So is it fair
to give all the credit to Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Obviously not all the credit. Proportionality is yes, oh totally.
I mean, the New York Liberty have an incredible fan based,
incredible success story. Obviously the defending champions. But during the
regular season, twenty one of the twenty four games that
were over a million viewership involved Caitlin Clark and the
Indiana Fever. There's three that weren't right. I think it
(45:18):
is undeniable that this woman is the most important and
best thing to ever happen to women's basketball. Katie. I'm
gonna say something that I actually hadn't thought of till
basically right now. I wish she wasn't. I wish it
had been all those incredible, fabulous women that we covered
at the Atlanta Olympics. I wish the nation had been
(45:40):
ready for it then, or had wanted it then, or
whatever racist feelings people had. It would have been great
if it had happened. Maya Moore is a perfect example.
Maya Moore is won the greats of all time. She
got nowhere near the attention. We went out. If we
walked on the street right now and said found ten
people said name a women's basketball player. We're in New York,
(46:00):
so we may get some Stewie's and some Sabrinas.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Right, hopefully we would.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Maybe we'd get a lot of them, but I guarantee
we'd probably get a few Caitlin Clarks. But we would
get no Maya Moores, right, I mean talking about Maya
Moors like talking about you know, Babe Ruth lou Gerigg.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Right, I mean Michael George, but.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
I mean one of the greats. But we wouldn't get that.
The nation, and Casey Wasserman, the LA Olympic twenty twenty
eight chair, even said this, we weren't ready for it
for some reason. So we're ready now. And that's why
I spend several chapters talking about Title nine Iowa and
this launching pad that this young woman had. So it's
(46:41):
not just her alone by any means, it's the nation
being ready for it. As we discussed earlier. I wish
it was twenty years ago. I thought those battles, but
we weren't there. Now we're here and this is all
opened up nationally because of her.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
And has given you the opportunity to not only a
book about Caitlin Clark, but satisfy the interests that now
people everywhere will have in women's professional basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Well, exactly, you've correctly, of course, asked me about things
that are so important journalistically right and so important in
our country. I don't have all the answers on these things.
You don't have all the answers right. As a journalist,
you lay it out there, and that's certainly what I
do in this book and trying to have the voices
to give people the best view that I could in
(47:32):
like writing it in like four or five months, which
was kind of crazy, but I did it. To have
this book out now, this is an extraordinary time, and
you know, I hate to see the vitriol, the racism
and all the things that were out there on social media.
How on earth did the WNBA not see this coming?
In the NBA, which owns what sixty percent of the WNBA,
(47:53):
have them be a part of this to prepare these
fabulous athletes for what was coming, the way that NFL
players have understood for you years, the way that Major
League Baseball. This is new for women's sports. It's not
a bad thing, but it required leadership, and unfortunately that
leadership failed the players over and over again as Caitlin
Clark was coming in the league.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Well, it's a fascinating read and she is really so
much fun to watch, as are a lot of the
other players. And I'm so glad that you came to
talk to me about this book, Christine.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Thank you, Katie anything anytime. We've talked about a lot
over the years. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be chatting about
And I'm.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Sure it wasn't easy for you to be the focal
point of some of these stories. As a journalist, you
never really want to be the story. You want your
subject to be the story. But you know, she's an
incredible athlete and it's going to be fun to see
what she does in the future too.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
But as that spotlight shines on Caitlyn Clark, it shines
on all these players. People who never cared are now
looking at all the other players and are seeing and
appreciating them for the first time. That is a huge
positive one of the many positives about Kaitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
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(49:27):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
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(49:49):
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Visit exactsciences dot com to learn more. Hi everyone, I'm
(00:56):
Katie Kuric and this is next question. My friend Christine
Brennan and I have known each other since the eighties,
when we both started out in our respective fields, Christine
as a sportscaster and sports writer and me, of course,
as a cup reporter back in Washington, d C. She's
(01:18):
now written a book called On her Game, Caitlyn Clark
in The Revolution in Women's Sports. I'm so excited to
talk to you, Christine. Nice to see you, Thanks for
coming in.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh my gosh, Katie, great to see you. And we
did important to say. We did start when we were
in kindergarten in the eighties. Grank you, Yes, in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
No, it's okay. I'm proud of my age. Christine. We
need to be. But this book is so interesting and
it's really about a phenom, as you call it, in
the sports world, Caitlyn Clark. You spent six weeks on
the road with Caitlin and the Indiana Fever, covering games,
practices and press conferences, interviewing players, coaches, administrators, and fans,
(01:59):
and you have been in Caitlyn Clark world for quite
a while. How would you describe her?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
She is, of course, as you said, a phenomenon. As
we say in the book, she is the all American
girl grown up. She frankly is that girl that parents
see in the kitchen every morning who is racing off
to soccer practice, changing in the car to switch to
volleyball practice or lacrosse, or the neighbor who waves at
(02:28):
the girl going trudging off with the bag on her
shoulder to another sports practice. What we have created in
this country, Katie, and you know this with your daughters,
is the opportunity for girls, the other half of our population,
to learn these life lessons about sports that for generations
we were saying no no to girls and women. You
cannot learn about sports, winning and losing at a young age, teamwork, sportsmanship.
(02:49):
Because of title nine, which by the way, is just
celebrated its fifty third anniversary and has really come of
age over the last twenty thirty years. And so Caitlyn
Clark is that person.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's a beneficiarya she's a beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
She is, frankly, what we created, and the nation has
fallen in love with what it is created. Usually, you know,
team sports. Obviously tennis and other sports are part of
the conversation too, but what do girls play at age
five and six? Soccer, t ball? It's about team sports.
And when we see the professional side, we often see
the great names obviously Serena and Venus Williams tennis and
(03:25):
individual sport, or the Olympic stars like Katie Ledecki Simone
Biles again individual sports. So this is that first huge
breakthrough team sport athlete. Thank you title nind That literally
the guy that wouldn't have been caught dead watching women's sports,
that guy who thinks that just inferior would never have
(03:47):
been seen outside in a women's sports jersey. That's the guy.
And I interviewed a lot of these guys who are
putting on the number twenty two jersey going to the
grocery store, going to the game, planning their evenings around
the starting time of Caitlin Clark's game. And you know,
you and I have been around a long time. I
almost cannot believe that I'm saying these sentences about a
(04:08):
female athlete, that this has happened in our lifetime. I
didn't really think it would happen with the kind of
TV ratings, the audience. But it's about a person that
the nation I think has correctly fallen in love with,
who is as publicly appreciative an athlete as I have
ever seen. The maturity, the poise handling every issue, lots
(04:29):
of stuff thrown at her, lots of controversy, as you know,
and everything about her and elegance, intelligence, and just also
a sense of humor that you would hope to see
in someone. And America, there she is.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I want to backtrack a second, Christine, and have you
explain why Title nine was so important and what it did, because,
as you said, this was fifty three years ago, we're
now seeing the fruits of that presenting itself today. What
did Title nine do exactly?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
June twenty third, nineteen seventy two basically mandated that if
a school was receiving federal funding, which all schools, even
private schools, receive federal funding, pelgrants, what have you, that
they could not discriminate against female students in any way.
The original intent was law schools and med schools. Within
(05:22):
a few years it started to be seen in terms
of the athletic fields and opportunity for girls and women
to play sports. And the idea is proportional. So if
a school is fifty three percent female enrollment and forty
seven percent male, the idea then is you should have
fifty three percent of your sports opportunities for women forty
(05:42):
seven percent for men. So now you have dads out
throwing the baseball or the softball with their daughter the
way they did with their sons a generation or two ago,
because you see that caret of potentially what one hundred
thousand dollars a year a college scholarship that your daughter
can have just like your son from the past.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But also it's about resources and facilities, right that you
have to devote resources, and you have to give women's
teams areas to work out and weight rooms just like
you do for the men.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right, well, exactly, locker room size should be the same.
Now we'll say this you and I not born yesterday.
It doesn't happen everywhere, and most schools are not in
compliance with Title nine even now. But one of the
three prongs of being able to follow the law is
actually that you're showing you're working towards compliance. Now, if
(06:36):
this happened with another law, you'd say what kind of
law is that?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
But in this case, Title nine has been very forgiving
for those athletic departments.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
How did Title nine directly impact? Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
So you have this, as I said, it's a law,
for sure, and it's a law that is still working
its way through in terms of being followed. And of
course you throw anil the money that is now being paid,
and that's not equal at all. But there's the other
part of it that I mentioned a moment ago mindset,
the nation's mindset that it was acceptable for girls and
women to play sports when you and I were growing up,
(07:10):
you and Arlington me in the suburbs of Toledo. If
our moms and dads drove buy a field and there
was a girl on that field, the odds are that
she was there telling your brother it was time to
come home for dinner. I mean, what was that girl
doing on a sports field? Now, people driving through those neighborhoods,
do you even have a second clance, third glance if
(07:31):
you see a whole team of girls playing soccer or
lacrosse or you know, running, you know through the neighborhood.
Of course not. That's the mindset thing that I'm talking about,
the sense that we not only expect it, we want
our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters to be doing this. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So, really it was the attitude shift that came with
Title nine that created the environment for someone like Caitlin
Clark to really thrive.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Exactly because now and also I think another key part
of this, and I say this in the book, so
nineteen seventy two and Kaylen Clark doesn't come along till
two thousand and two, so it's a long time. So
thirty years, basically thirty years there's stepping stones in the
history of women's sports. You and I both know Billy
jan King very well. So when we're still kids in
our respective homes nineteen seventy three, September of seventy three,
(08:21):
Billy Jean beats Bobby Riggs a very big deal, right,
especially for empowering, for girls growing up. You move on
to say, the Atlanta Olympics in nineteen ninety six, I
think you were probably there. I was, yes, for a
certain network doing great work. I was there as well.
You're watching the Women's Olympics, where everything is about the
(08:41):
great female athletes. Moving ahead three years later, the nineteen
ninety nine Women's World Cup, the soccer tournament, and of
course you've got you know, Brandy Chastain and Nicole and
you know, whipping her shirt over her head and yeah,
all of that and so that to me, that was
forty million viewers on TV. It was July tenth of
nineteen ninety nine, and it was over ninety thousand people
(09:04):
in the Rose Bowl. Rose Bowl, of course, well known
as a great college football facility, packed to the rafters,
to the gills. I guess there's no rafters in the
Rose Bowl, but packed to whatever, to the top row
for women's soccer in this country in nineteen ninety nine,
a revelation. I'm going to give you a trivia note
for your next cocktail party. Name the one story in
(09:26):
the history of stories that made the cover of Time, Newsweek, People,
and Sports Illustrated the same week. I've obviously given it away.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
The World Cup.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yes, Brandy Chastain and the teammates.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, but I'll never forget that shot of Brandy, you know,
kneeling on the field in her.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Sports bra right right, because she'd taken her shirt off
and the people thought, oh, she's probably trying to sell
the sports bra. No, no, no. She watched men's soccer for
years because she had no women's soccer to watch growing up.
And she's born in nineteen sixty eight, so she's, you know,
coming along at that time. The title nine is really exploding,
and so she's watching European men'sawa what do they do
when they have an important goal? They take off their
(10:02):
shirt and they whip it over the head. So she said,
that's what she did, which we of course loved Brandy
for that. So anyway, that's happening. The nation has just
fallen in love again with what it is created. And
then two and a half years later, a little girl
is born in Des Moines, Iowa, and we have no
idea who she is, and she's the one in terms
of team sports that comes along at the exact right
(10:25):
time as our nation is just loving everything that we
have created.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Christine as I mentioned you spent six weeks on the road.
Were you able to actually sit down and do an
interview with Caitlin Clark, because at one point I know
this was being called an unauthorized biography.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yes, it is an unauthorized biography, and still it still is.
And you know that can sound ominous. It couldn't be
further from the truth. It's unauthorized because I wanted it
to be journalistic. If it's an authorized book, you're then
working with the person, right And I want to continue
to cover these stories. And I am continuing to cover
the stories involving Kaitlin Clark, women's sports, the Olympics, everything
(11:05):
else that I cover. And if I had been in
business with Kaitlyn Clark, I couldn't cover for again.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I mean, but having said that, did she sit down
with you and did you have a long conversation or
did you just capture moments?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
More capturing moments I asked her probably about fifty questions.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Well that's the lot.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, not bad. I think. You know, it's funny as
you look back on actually writing the book, I think
I probably used about one third of her quotes and comments,
So I had so much because she is you know,
she's a great talker, and she goes on and on
and she answers a question, then she'll go off on
a tangent that you care very very much about.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
So did you sit down with her, Christine, or did
you just kind of grab her during quiet moments?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, what happened was press availabilities, which often involved just
a few reporters. I could ask her anything, no holds barred,
nothing was off limits, of course, I mean that would
never I would never agree to anything like that. Ask
her tough questions, ask her, you know, literally anything. For example,
after she liked the Taylor Swift post that was, of
course Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris. The next day I
(12:08):
was in DC, and then that next morning I flooded
Indy for that game. Often she'll have three times of
press availabilities during a day morning shoot around, and then
before the game and after the game. And so in
this case it was I of course wanted to ask
her about the liking of that Taylor Swift post, because,
as you and others might remember, not only was that
(12:28):
a big deal, but within a few minutes on x
and other social media, a news story and other things
came out about who liked the post, and it was
Oprah Winfrey, and it was Kylie Kelsey and Jennifer Aniston
and Caitlyn Clark. So she's a celebrity now being in
the news about liking the post, and so of course
I asked her. And I started out in a friendly
(12:50):
way because this is sports and she is twenty two,
and I've been known to ask a lot of tough
questions and get people occasionally mad at me over the years,
and that's part of being a journals as you know well,
and that's you know, whether people like you or not,
you're doing your job. But I started out by saying,
as you know, you'd like to post that got a
lot of attention last night, big smile, And I said,
(13:12):
I'm just curious what Taylor Swift's post meant to you,
and are you potentially endorsing Kamala Harris for president? And
Caitlin Clark answered the first part in about a minute
answer and then did not answer the second part, and
I think that's probably a smart move by her. But
going back to your question, she and I did meet
and have a one on one, but that was basically
(13:34):
just a first meeting off the record, which was lovely.
And then I also was in some practices where no
other journalists were, and of course had plenty of time
to talk to all kinds of people, her friends, her coaches,
in depth interviews to get those stories that she might
not tell. She never said no comment, she never said
I don't want to talk about this. I can't thank
(13:54):
her enough for spending the time, and that was usually
again just around the team settings, because it was because
with the deal, you know, the book deal, and then boom,
now I'm writing this book quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right well, tell us a little bit about her childhood, Christine,
because she sounds like she was a true multi hyphen
it when it comes to sports. She played soccer, basketball.
She was also National Honors Society presidential Honor role. Give
us just a glimpse into her family life, her parents,
her siblings, and how this young woman was really formed
(14:27):
and created.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
If you will, you know she was formed and created
on a basketball court or a soccer field or a
golf course by a mom and dad who loved sports
and had sports in their lives, big brother and a
little brother. And of course the big brother was very
helpful in terms of kind of toughening her up, and
she started playing basketball. She wanted to play at age five,
and there were no girls leagues for her, so her
(14:50):
dad was coaching a boys league and she started playing
against the boys. And when I spent a lot of
time talking to her, AAU coach, a man named Dixon Jensen,
who was fantastic, coached her all the way through on
the club level, not the high school level. What he
said was that time she spent playing against the boys,
which she went far longer, Katie, than most girls do.
(15:11):
You know, after a while, most of the girls kind
of fall away and go play against the girls, which
is what we want. You know, the boys are getting
a little stronger, a little tougher. Caitlyn stayed till like,
you know, fifth sixth grade, she was playing against the boys,
and as Dixon Jensen said, it was perfect for her
because the boys are a little tougher, a little stronger,
and I love this when he said this, a little meaner,
(15:32):
and Caitlyn was learning to play against them. And there
was one player who's ended up playing for the Iowa
men's basketball team who in second grade, his team lost
to Caitlyn's team, and he said even do all girls
play basketball like this?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You know?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
He was like, my gosh, is this what all girls
are like? And obviously she was born for this.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I was going to ask, did her parents and siblings
and community and friends realize she was preternaturally talented right away?
Or was it something that they sort of discovered when
she was in high school? You know? What separated her
from a really good basketball player who enjoyed the game
(16:13):
to somebody who was next level?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know? She says now she has says, I hate
to lose. I hate to lose. I want to win everything.
I want to be the best. So I think what
we're looking at here is someone who, at the youngest
age knew what she loved, knew she was good at it,
really good at it, tall enough and big enough. The
sport that she was actually excellent at early on in
(16:36):
high school was soccer, and she was scoring goals like crazy.
And she said she learned through soccer with the angles,
the passing angles, because so much about soccer was passing, right,
it's not scoring. But she gave up soccer because now
her basketball career is taking off. There's these younger teams
that go internationally in play. So she made those USA teams.
So now she's away, you know, overseas playing basketball. But
(16:59):
again I go back to the nation saying, this is
the moment, right, There's not a soul on earth who's
telling her no. Right, which girls growing up our age
got it all the time, and what a shame? What
were we thinking? But also now go back to the kitchen,
go back to mom and dad with their dad, a
two sport athlete in D three. Her mother's father, the grandfather,
(17:22):
was a legendary high school football coach at the same
high school that Caitlin went to. You've got the older
brother who's playing sports, played football at Iowa State.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So really in their blood. And did you get a
chance to talk to her parents when you were writing
this book?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I met both mom and dad, but they preferred not
to talk to me anymore about that, which is fine
because I had plenty of other material from other people.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, be interesting to talk to them at some point
to really do a profile of them.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I would love to do that. And as I said
to them in the private conversations I had with both
of them, I looked at them and I said, what
an amazing daughter you have raised.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
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Visit exactsciences dot com to learn more. I know you
start the book with watching Caitlin play for the first time.
(19:08):
Tell us about that experience.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Well, I'm on my iPad in my kitchen in Northwest DC,
and I was watching the Indiana Iowa women's basketball game
February of twenty twenty three, and I was actually watching
the game to watch the Indiana team, which was ranked
second in the country. Because all my siblings went to
Indiana University, I went to Northwestern and this team is great,
(19:31):
So I'm just kind of keeping an eye on the
game and I was losing and last inbound, you know,
second half left, and the ball goes to Caitlin Clark
and everyone knows it's going to Kaitlin Clark, and she's
kind of sideways and one legs this way and the
other legs this way, as we've come to realize and
know what it looks like. And she's just throwing that
ball up and it goes in and she just runs
(19:53):
off the court and goes crazy and everyone's following her around.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
They win the game by one.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Point exactly, and you know what it was. I mean,
I've covered a lot and have you know, seen pretty
amazing sports feeds as you have at the Olympics and
other places. And I have to say that I kind
of watched the replan. I watched the replay again.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And what was it?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And this really helped me understand the nation's fascination with her, Katie.
To be honest with you, you realize you just kind of
you can't take your eyes off of her. Have we
seen a female athlete who is really a high wire act? Right?
Sports and athletic for sure, but really an entertainer, and
I've felt very lucky at that moment to have this
(20:38):
experience of kind of just wandering into watching this finale
and in this incredible shot, and they do win the game.
And then of course, within a few weeks she's now
going to the Final four, and they're upsetting South Carolina,
and now she's taking an Iowa team that was not
expected to do anything all the way to the final game,
and now the nation is just kind of falling in
(20:59):
love with this athlete that you're watching. I understand that,
and I think that's helped inform me and understand what
people might be thinking, because I kind of went through
it at that moment in my kitchen.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
There was a confluence of factors that allowed Caitlin's career
to skyrocket. One was nil name, image, likeness, you said quote.
By the time Clark was done with college, she reportedly
had at least eleven NIL deals worth more than three million,
including TV commercials such as her ubiquitous State Farm spots
(21:34):
that made her even more recognizable. What did these brand deals,
What impact did they have on her celebrity and really
on the entire WNBA.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
If you think back to athletes a generation ago. At
college athletes, you know, you'd be watching them and then
they go off your TV or you'd go to the
game and then whatever, they disappear. Right, they're not hanging
around from you know, one minute to the net. The
thing that always hit me about Kaitlin Clark. She's playing
in this game and she's probably doing something pretty crazy
(22:05):
and amazing. Then it goes to a commercial, and if
it's a State Farm commercial, now she's there, like literally
two or three seconds after you just watched her in
the game. They've gone to a timeout, and now she's
in her uniform standing there may well be the exact
same uniform, and it's like there she is, there, she is,
She never leaves. She is a part of our culture.
(22:28):
She's not just an athlete on the court. She is
now a pitch woman. She's selling products, she is forging
her path in a whole new way.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
She's part of the culture and not just through her sports.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
And once you've crossed over, you know, we've got quite
a few athletes over the years that have done that,
certainly Serena and Venus and Serena especially right the way
she's done that, I mean, some own biles Katie Ledecki,
any number of quarterbacks, running backs, baseball players, etc. But
when we're talking about that, of the hundreds of the
thousands of athletes who have graced us with their presence,
(23:03):
you know, and been cheered in stadiums around the country,
it is still the very few that then crossover and
are part of the culture. And here's Caitlyn Clark doing it.
And to the point you're making about nil, she's doing
it while she's still in college.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
There has been a lot of discussion, as you know, Christine,
and here we are two white ladies discussing this about
the rural race has played in the ascendants of Caitlyn Clark.
Angel Reese. The star at LSU has often been pitted
against Caitlyn Clark being cast sort of in her view
as the villain role in the media and by the public,
(23:43):
and she has said that hasn't been easy. She also
said quote all year I was critiqued about who I was.
I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit in the
box that y'all want me to be in. I'm too hood,
I'm too ghetto. So I'm curious about the fact that
Caitlin Clark has been so celebrated, and in some ways,
(24:06):
Angel Reese has been so criticized.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Oh, without a doubt. Now, part of it is rivalries,
right in sports. I mean Red Sox, Yankees, Michigan, Ohio State.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
This is more than that. When you're talking about the
Yankees and the Red Sox, it's not really about the
racial no, no, no, it's really about the region, right, without
a doubt.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And no, what I'm saying is everyone's looking for a rivalry, right,
That's a fact. The quote you just read is in
the book, and I make a very strong effort to
obviously quote Angel throughout and in fact, I tried, I
think about three times with Angel's people to get her
to talk to me for the book, and she did
not want to do that, and that was a disappointment
(24:47):
because I wanted her voice more. I wanted to be
able to ask her some things, but that was, of
course her choice. What happens with Angel is that final game,
LSU wins, Big Iowa loses. Angel is the national Caitlin
is not. Near the end of the game, Angel was
following Caitlyn around and putting her hand in front of
(25:07):
her face, mimicking something that Caitlyn had done a week
or so earlier. Everyone thought it was to an opponent.
Turns out that was wrong. The opponent even said that
it was to Caitlin's bench. So something that kind of
got going and became quite a thing, a meme and
everything else. Turns out the genesis of it was wrong.
(25:28):
Caitlyn was not mocking an opponent by doing the John Sanna,
you can't see anything. She was sending it to her bench.
So Angel picks it up as something that Caitlyn was
doing to an opponent. So Angel does it to Caitlin.
She also made sure to point to her ring finger
where her ring was going to go, and of course
(25:48):
everything explodes from there. There was a positive in all this.
People were talking about women's sports in a way we
haven't in a long time. That's the positive. The negative,
as we have now come to see, and as you're
alluding to with your questions, is how this all of
a sudden became racial, pitting people against each other in
are very polarized society, and there's a lot of hate
(26:11):
and a lot of negativity. And I think it's important
in the book when I quote Angel, I did ask
one question at a press conference where she says, you know,
I don't hate Caitlin, and Caitlyn says I don't hate Angel,
and so this world around them have created a rivalry.
And then you throw in race, and you throw in
(26:31):
quote unquote taunting, which is something that happens in all sports,
and Caitlyn certainly can throw it back at people. Caitlyn
is not a saint out there. She's not the mother
Teresa out on the court. I mean she's also throwing
it back at people as well. But this is how
this started.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It seems to me that whenever this happens and women
are involved, it becomes so exaggerated. You know, this desire
to create these so called cat fights. Right where I
think it meant we're doing this, or male athletes were
engaging in this kind of taunting or activity or whatever,
(27:07):
it would be sort of part for the course. But
I feel like when it's women, it's just put under
this microscope. Do you think that's true, Oh, certainly that's
the case.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
But then there's a flip side, which is people are
paying attention and the microscope is.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
There well, and you think all publicity is good publicity, No,
not all necessarily, But in this case, here's how I'll
frame it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Angel wins, and I mean it is crystal clear. Angel's
the defending champion, Caitlin loses. You've got doctor Jill Biden
then saying well, we want Kaitlin in Iowa to come
to the White House too, And of course Angel reeson
analyis you. They're furious about that, and then even Caitlin
Clark says, no, We're not going to the White House.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So there was a lot going on, right, There's a
lot going on. Absolutely there is a racial component to
all of it. I am absolutely aware of that as
a journalist. You are aware of that. As a journalist,
would be foolish and not doing our jobs to not
realize that. Right, But what you've also got is a
story about again going into the mainstream, crossing over out
(28:11):
of sports. That is a positive. That night, I'm on
CNN and again talking about it. And the real kicker
was Thursday of the Masters. I'm now down at Augusta
National Tiger Woods is teeing off? Am I at the
first tea? No, I'm not. I am doing another TV
hit on my laptop. What am I talking about? Angel
Reese and Caitlin Clark? There is an element to this
(28:35):
that is good because if you have been wanting coverage
for women's sports, which I certainly have worked my career
for in the addition to covering obviously many men's sports,
this is a moment that you'd say, good, people are
discussing this and talking about it. And when Caitlyn passes
the ball in the All Star Game to Angel and
Angel makes the shot and that's an assist, and the
(28:57):
place goes crazy, and the announcers say, this is what
you've been waiting for, and they slap palms on the
way down. All right, now, there's a little moment that
shows you they respect each other as athletes and as people.
And I truly believe that's the way Caitlin Clark looks
at Angel Reese, and that's the way Angel Reese also
looks at Kaitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I think one of the things that has exacerbated this
dynamic is the fact that the WNBA is historically and
overwhelmingly black seventy four percent of players or black or
mix race. Last year, there was a huge backlash from
the WNBA Players Association when you asked Dja Carrington whether
or not she pote Caitlin Clark in the eye, and
(29:39):
the statement they said, quote that's so called interview in
the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bet
a professional athlete into participating into a narrative that is
false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol
on social media. Why do you think that question was
so provocative for Carrington and the rest of the team.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That certainly was a very important moment. First things first,
the seventy four percent is something obviously that I worked
to make sure I got that exactly right. And I
have a whole chapter, as you know, on the foundation
of the WNBA, which by the way, I covered way
back when. And you know, this is a league that
is known as a black league. A sizable portion of
the women are gay. I deal with all that in
(30:24):
the book. I want to deal with that in the book,
and I think it helps people understand frankly, where we
are now. This is a league that is again seventy
four percent black league. And now you've got this white
woman from Iowa coming in and being the superstar.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
If I were a black player, that would bug the
shit out of me. It's only natural that people would
feel that way.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Exactly. And this is the failure of the WNBA leadership.
And this is a big part of the book, as
you know that how on earth can you not see
all of junior year of Caitlin Clark, the crowds senior
year people standing in line in January and February for
hours waiting to get into Big Tan arenas, eighteen twenty
thousand packed to the rafters to see this woman and
(31:08):
not go. You know what, maybe we should talk to
our athletes about this, Maybe we should prepare them, Katie.
Not because they're damsels in distress.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
They are not.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
They are terrific, strong, fabulous women who've gone through a lot,
and our great athletes and have reached the pinnacle of
their sport, women who I praise in the book and
my columns in USA Today. How they fought for Britney
Grinder to get her back from Russia. I don't think
there's ever been a finer moment in professional sports history
in the United States than what the WNBA players did
(31:38):
to get Britney Grinder back fighting for her. When we
think of twenty sixteen, Black Lives Matter, we think of
Colin Kaepernick. Right a full month before Colin Kaepernick took
a knee and made headlines the Minnesota Links, who, by
the way, young Caitlin Clark's favorite team, the Minnesota Links.
Their players started the protesting of the order of several
(32:00):
black men, and that was again in July of twenty sixteen,
and the other WNBA teams followed suit. So the WNBA
was a month ahead of Colin Kaepernick. Yet people in
our culture would never know. That shows you how little
coverage they got and how you can understand how wait
a minute, what about us.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
How frustrating it for them. In fact, you write about
Brittany Griner, and you wrote in USA today, if this
were a male athlete, not a female athlete, people would
care a lot more about this story. If say Lebron
James or Tom Brady were being held hostage by Vladimir Putin,
well they wouldn't be hostages anymore. They'd be home because
America would have demanded it right away. It was a
(32:44):
valid point. Not that either James or Brady ever would
have been in the position of having to leave their
country to make a good living playing their sport as
Griner did. Griner received more publicity and coverage for being
in prison in Russia than for her then thirteen years
as one of the biggest stars in this basketball It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
The lack of coverage, the lack of attention, the lack
of respect that these women got.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The lack of resources, the lack of salary. Right even
if you look at what Caitlin Clark was making when
she was drafted compared to the male basketball players.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, seventy six thousand to fifty seven million, right, I
know it's not even close. Yes, So about the DJJ
Carrington questions, I asked a question and a follow up. Obviously,
the Players Association was very upset with me and wanted
to ban me.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Well, it seemed like you were pushing the narrative of
a rivalry to me with those questions. To Christine, I
have to be honest, you know, so let me ask
you this.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
So, those are the kind of questions that I've asked
Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps and hundreds of male athletes.
So are we saying that we cannot ask women the
same kind of questions we would ask men? In twenty
twenty four?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Point taken were the two questions?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah? Oh sure, so I asked it when she went
to DJA Carrington and obviously this is a group of
us around her. This story was just exploding on social
media and so many criticizing DJA Carrington for with Kaitlyn
Clark in Game one of the playoffs where she's kind
of swatting at the ball. Caitlyn it turns out is passing,
(34:23):
not shooting. Her fingers end up right in Caitlyn Clark's eye.
And she's been accused, being accused of things, She's being denigrated,
she's being criticized. Carrington Carrington is when people are saying
she did this on purpose? How dare you do this
to Kaitlin Clark, Katie, There is only one thing for
(34:43):
a journalist to do. Ask a straight question, direct question,
exactly purpose right, because that allows the athlete to hit
it out of the park. Maybe this is another failing
of the WNBA to not have prepared its players for
national scrutiny, which is a shame, But they haven't had
much national scrutiny, so most athletes know you can hit
(35:05):
that out of the park either way, yes or no.
Could you describe what happened? That question is certainly the
most analyzed question I've ever asked, and that's fine. Again,
that's totally fine. I would ask that question of any
NFL player, of any Olympian. I'm not comparing the issues.
But young Michael Phelps at age nineteen, his agent had
(35:28):
me talk to him for forty five minutes about his DUI. Again,
I am not comparing DUI with the fingers right whatever,
not at all. Forty five minutes Michael Phelps answered questions
from me like tough questions. We're not their pr people,
as you would know well, and maybe they have not
been used to scrutiny. But with Caitlin Clark's arrival comes
(35:50):
national scrutiny. And again the failing of the league to
prepare the players for the moment is truly one of
the stories of this particular era in the WNBA. It
is such a huge failure. I think it's important to
say I don't frame every question based on what people
on social media are asking. Of course not, but when
you see the magnitude of the coverage and the concern
(36:14):
about these issues. Again, if I'm the player's agent, which
I am not, I'm saying you want these questions so
that you can finally equivocally answer them and put the
issue to bed. Obviously that's not how Dijne Carrington and
the Players Association saw it, But I thought I was
giving them the respect that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And a chance to really explain exactly.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And again, I think it's all stems from the WNBA
not preparing these players for what might be coming when
you get national scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, when not for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. How
(37:13):
problematic was it, Christine that you were writing a book
about Caitlin Clark while you were covering the WNBA, Because
I read a quote by a former editor of The
Athletic and The Washington Post. You asked him to talk
to you for the book and he said he didn't
want to, and he claimed your coverage had gone way
(37:34):
beyond what is normal. He said, the way she's covering Clark.
I'm sure you've seen this, Christine. You're asking is she
Caitlyn Clark's PR agent? So I'm curious about how you
tried to balance covering the league while you're writing a
book on Caitlyn Clark, and I think as a result,
(37:54):
it gave people the impression the only thing you cared
about was Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So many books have been written by sports journalists about
Tom Brady, what have you, And I don't think anyone
has ever complained that those journalists have been asking questions
about Tom Brady. In other words, for some reason, it
bothered people tremendously that I was asking questions about Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Now, I think because they felt like you were ignoring
other players or the bigger picture of the WNBA.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Right, And of course I'm probably the only one still
standing who was covering the WNBA in nineteen ninety nine,
so I certainly haven't ignored it over the years. This
notion that I only focused on Caitlin Clark, are only
talked to athletes about Caitlin Clark is ridiculous. In that
same story that you were referring to by a journalist
who I've talked to quite a bit, who I support
and want to do well, he interviewed someone about my
(38:47):
questions who could have been around me only three times
out of about twenty games. This journalist, this young broadcaster, Sure,
go ahead, and do it. But how could that person
know the questions I asked. It was surprising to me
that they felt this way because I've been around dozens
of my colleagues, are colleagues friends writing books who have
(39:09):
focused entirely on one athlete, and no one cared at all,
No one was upset. What was it about this book
that got everyone so upset? My guess is that they
think I was working with Caitlin, which I wasn't. And
of course, by the way, the notion that I'm a
(39:29):
fan or that I'm pro Caitlin. There are things in
this book, as you know, that obviously show Caitlin, and
you know with her behavior on the court that maybe
she won't like. Obviously she's not read the book. She
has no editorial control, which again is the beauty of
a journalistic look at someone. My way of reporting this
was the same way I've done for my entire career.
But that must be it, because it's kind of a
(39:52):
logical thing that someone might be writing a book about
Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
That was an interesting way to look at it, because
you talk about coverage of Tiger Woods and the fact
that you wrote so many stories about him and that
you weren't writing about all the other golfers, and that
was because of his talent, his skill, his charisma, and
(40:16):
how much attention he had brought to that game.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I would have been not doing my job if I
was focusing on someone who finished tenth in the golf tournament.
I think you can make a very strong case again
the book deal, yes, But even before the book deal,
I wrote maybe three or four columns, including the Olympic snob.
I broke that news, the charter flight story. I broke
that news. News is news when someone is in the headlines,
(40:41):
when someone is creating news, when someone is getting these
TV ratings. As a journalist, what would you want someone
to do? I would love to talk to them. I
love the two way street. If they want to tell me,
they can, they can call me any time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
I know that you feel strongly, Christine, that are rising
tide lifts all boats, and you feel like Caitlin Clark
is a rising tide. Do you believe she has lifted
all boats? And how has she done that? In your review?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It's a great question. I think she is and can be.
For example, you look at what's going on with the
Indiana fever, so This is, of of course her team.
It is with the Indiana Pacers, much more established, been
around for years, much more money, as we've just talked about,
and in Indiana people are crazy about the entire team.
(41:34):
Caitlin Clark cannot do every appearance, right, she cannot go
to every gas station and every supermarket. Well guess what
her teammates go. And they are getting obviously some kind
of an honorarium. They are getting the opportunity to see
the fans, their names are out there, they're getting all
kinds of potential deals. Players want to come and play
(41:58):
for Indiana. I mean we're seeing that. We're seeing players
who were competitive with her last year, like don't want
to Bonner having a year contract now with the Indiana
Fever after being in Connecticut. So I think, I mean,
there's a perfect example locally within her team.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
What about within the WNBA. What do you think she's
done for the entire league?
Speaker 2 (42:17):
When you've got TV ratings through the roof as never before,
when you've got attendance that's literally again historic. Clearly, that's
more money in the bank, right, that's more money in
the owner's pocket. At least they've got the collective bargaining
agreement that is now up and they're going to have that.
There is no doubt that the players will be getting
bigger salaries because of the wonderful, very rosy and sunny
(42:42):
economic forecast, because of the new TV deals, which is
four times what they had before. All of this is
because of the Caitlin Clark effect. Perfect example, here, you've
got Sheila Johnson, who I've known for a long time.
You probably know she I know she yeah, yes, yeah,
I mean we're friends and you know see here at events,
and Sheila is the owner of the Washington Mystics. The
(43:03):
Mystics play in a four thy, two hundred seed arena.
When Caitlin and the fever came, they moved those games,
Sheila Johnson did to Capital One Arena, where they had
over twenty thousand, including the record regular season crowd, biggest
crowd in WNBA history twenty thousand, seven hundred eleven in September,
(43:24):
all because of one person, Caitlin Clark. So that is
I think at least probably what a million dollars each
game right to the Mystics. So that's clearly a positive
for the team and for Sheila Johnson. Sheila Johnson then,
of course is the person who quizzically, I'd love to
speak to her about it. She then goes on CNN
(43:44):
and is upset that Caitlin Clark won the Time Athlete
of the Year award and said it should have been
the League of the Year and that something clicked, but
didn't think that Caitlyn deserved the credit. I would love
to know the impetus, love to know the mindset. I'd
love to know what she's thinking. Again, going back to
the things we talked about before, we don't know the
(44:06):
life that Sheila lived, right, a black woman, incredible leader,
lovely person, great role model. Everything about Shila and I
gave her gosh. I tried five or six times to
ask her those questions, which is what we do, right
we are journalists trying to figure things out.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I guess I would ask you, does Caitlin Clark to
serve all the credit for the rise and popularity of
the WNBA. For example, the New York Liberty. You know,
I'm going to New York Liberty games. My daughter really
loves the Liberty. Caitlin Clark has absolutely nothing to do
with the New York Liberty, and I think some people
(44:44):
would argue that the WNBA is growing more popular because
people are appreciating all the players, So is it fair
to give all the credit to Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Obviously not all the credit. Proportionality is yes, oh totally.
I mean, the New York Liberty have an incredible fan based,
incredible success story. Obviously the defending champions. But during the
regular season, twenty one of the twenty four games that
were over a million viewership involved Caitlin Clark and the
Indiana Fever. There's three that weren't right. I think it
(45:18):
is undeniable that this woman is the most important and
best thing to ever happen to women's basketball. Katie. I'm
gonna say something that I actually hadn't thought of till
basically right now. I wish she wasn't. I wish it
had been all those incredible, fabulous women that we covered
at the Atlanta Olympics. I wish the nation had been
(45:40):
ready for it then, or had wanted it then, or
whatever racist feelings people had. It would have been great
if it had happened. Maya Moore is a perfect example.
Maya Moore is won the greats of all time. She
got nowhere near the attention. We went out. If we
walked on the street right now and said found ten
people said name a women's basketball player. We're in New York,
(46:00):
so we may get some Stewie's and some Sabrinas.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Right, hopefully we would.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Maybe we'd get a lot of them, but I guarantee
we'd probably get a few Caitlin Clarks. But we would
get no Maya Moores, right, I mean talking about Maya
Moors like talking about you know, Babe Ruth lou Gerigg.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Right, I mean Michael George, but.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
I mean one of the greats. But we wouldn't get that.
The nation, and Casey Wasserman, the LA Olympic twenty twenty
eight chair, even said this, we weren't ready for it
for some reason. So we're ready now. And that's why
I spend several chapters talking about Title nine Iowa and
this launching pad that this young woman had. So it's
(46:41):
not just her alone by any means, it's the nation
being ready for it. As we discussed earlier. I wish
it was twenty years ago. I thought those battles, but
we weren't there. Now we're here and this is all
opened up nationally because of her.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
And has given you the opportunity to not only a
book about Caitlin Clark, but satisfy the interests that now
people everywhere will have in women's professional basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Well, exactly, you've correctly, of course, asked me about things
that are so important journalistically right and so important in
our country. I don't have all the answers on these things.
You don't have all the answers right. As a journalist,
you lay it out there, and that's certainly what I
do in this book and trying to have the voices
to give people the best view that I could in
(47:32):
like writing it in like four or five months, which
was kind of crazy, but I did it. To have
this book out now, this is an extraordinary time, and
you know, I hate to see the vitriol, the racism
and all the things that were out there on social media.
How on earth did the WNBA not see this coming?
In the NBA, which owns what sixty percent of the WNBA,
(47:53):
have them be a part of this to prepare these
fabulous athletes for what was coming, the way that NFL
players have understood for you years, the way that Major
League Baseball. This is new for women's sports. It's not
a bad thing, but it required leadership, and unfortunately that
leadership failed the players over and over again as Caitlin
Clark was coming in the league.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Well, it's a fascinating read and she is really so
much fun to watch, as are a lot of the
other players. And I'm so glad that you came to
talk to me about this book, Christine.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Thank you, Katie anything anytime. We've talked about a lot
over the years. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be chatting about
And I'm.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Sure it wasn't easy for you to be the focal
point of some of these stories. As a journalist, you
never really want to be the story. You want your
subject to be the story. But you know, she's an
incredible athlete and it's going to be fun to see
what she does in the future too.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
But as that spotlight shines on Caitlyn Clark, it shines
on all these players. People who never cared are now
looking at all the other players and are seeing and
appreciating them for the first time. That is a huge
positive one of the many positives about Kaitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(49:27):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(49:49):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What if there
were a way to reduce cancer desks by half in
the next twenty five years. What if it were the
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