Clay Travis says the Indiana Fever should sign a man to “wreck bitches” who foul Caitlin Clark

Caitlin Clark Phenomenon Is Perfect Look At Modern Era Of Society | Clay Travis

Caitlin Clark makes people watch

Ratings say 18.7 million people watched Iowa’s women play against South Carolina this past March. That’s roughly triple the audience of any NBA playoff game so far this year. Way more people are interested in watching Caitlin Clark play basketball than Luka Doncic or Jayson Tatum. I’ll admit, I didn’t see that coming.

And while the audience for the WNBA games has been nowhere near that level of viewership, the data reflects that the Caitlin Clark obsession has produced record ratings for the WNBA too.

Right now everyone in sports has an opinion on Caitlin Clark. Heck, she nearly broke ESPN Monday when in consecutive shows Stephen A. Smith got called out by one of his guests for not talking about the WNBA enough over the past three years and Pat McAfee had to apologize for calling Caitlin Clark a white bitch. (He meant it as a compliment, but context isn’t always easy to convey on the Internet where everyone clips 30 seconds of what you say and reacts to it.)

Regardless, if I’d told you two years ago ESPN was going to have a day where its primary story line was a WNBA foul controversy and that I’d write several thousand words about a women’s basketball player, most of you would have called me crazy. And two years ago I would have agreed with you.

But here we are, the Caitlin Clark phenomenon is real, she’s the biggest story in sports and she’s the first woman to ever ascend to my sports talk hypothetical summer season doldrum filler, you can say “Caitlin Clark is…” and ask your callers to fill in the blank and every line will be immediately lit nationwide and the opinions will be incredibly varied.

Not many athletes, male or female, have reached this level on phenomenon

That’s not a huge list, by the way. LeBron has been on it for most of his career, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, and Cam Newton have been white-hot topics for substantial amounts of time, Tiger Woods, Colin Kaepernick, there aren’t many athletes that will load lines without the host even giving you his opinion, but Caitlin Clark is on it right now. We talked about her on Clay & Buck yesterday and we could have done an entire three-hour show on her if I were still hosting the OutKick morning radio show.

That’s how many people care right now.

That’s unheard of for a women’s athlete. In fact, the only other woman that would fit this bill,that I can think of were Ronda Rousey and Simone Biles and both of these were relatively short-lived periods of time, Biles after she pulled herself out of the Olympics and Ronda Rousey at the peak of her UFC career, maybe Megan Rapinoe because sports fans came to hate her, but the list is small.

That’s it.

And I’d argue that Caitlin Clark, based on the audience numbers, is bigger than all of these women, the most hot take producing female athlete in any of our lives.

What’s more, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Caitlin Clark, right now, is the highest paid woman to ever play basketball in the history of the sport. She’s making at least $10 million a year, probably $20 million, and almost all of that is from endorsements, not from her WNBA contract which only pays her around $75k a year.

Yet, at this particular moment, she’s probably not one of the 20 best WNBA players. (I will readily admit that I can name like five WNBA players, but I went and looked at the stats. Caitlin Clark is presently the 18th leading scorer in the league. Someone named Arike Ogunbowale is the leading scorer. Here are the other top nine. A’Ja Wilson, Kahleah Copper, Napheesa Collier, Jo March, Dearica Hamby, Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd.

Do you know any of these women?