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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 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.
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.
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, and you have been in Caitlyn Clark world for quite a while. How would you describe her?
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 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. 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.
It's a beneficiarya she's a beneficiary.
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 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 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 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 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.
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?
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 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
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.
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.
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 this happened with another law, you'd say what kind of law is that?
Right?
But in this case, Title nine has been very forgiving for those athletic departments.
How did Title nine directly impact? Caitlin Clark?
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,
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 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.
So, really it was the attitude shift that came with Title nine that created the environment for someone like Caitlin Clark to really thrive.
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, 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
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
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 the history of stories that made the cover of Time, Newsweek, People,
and Sports Illustrated the same week. I've obviously given it away.
The World Cup.
Yes, Brandy Chastain and the teammates.
Yeah, but I'll never forget that shot of Brandy, you know, kneeling on the field in her.
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
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 time as our nation is just loving everything that we have created.
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.
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
else that I cover. And if I had been in business with Kaitlyn Clark, I couldn't cover for again.
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?
More capturing moments I asked her probably about fifty questions.
Well that's the lot.
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.
So did you sit down with her, Christine, or did you just kind of grab her during quiet moments?
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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 and created.
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 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. 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,
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?
You know?
He was like, my gosh, is this what all girls are like? And obviously she was born for this.
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 to somebody who was next level?
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 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 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, 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.
So really in their blood. And did you get a chance to talk to her parents when you were writing this book?
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.
Yeah, be interesting to talk to them at some point to really do a profile of them.
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.
Not only as an apple Fleet, but as the person in terms of the way she's handled herself. What if there were a way to reduce cancer deaths by half in the next twenty five years. What if it were the future our children, our loved ones, our world could actually wake up to. This is the future Exact Sciences works toward every day, but they believe it's possible. Exact Sciences is a dedicated team of cancer fighters united by a purpose to help eradicate cancer by preventing it, detecting
it earlier, and guiding personalized treatment. They bring together the best and visionary thinking and scientific rigor to create tests, 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. Tell us about that experience.
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, 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 off the court and goes crazy and everyone's following her around.
They win the game by one.
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.
And what was it?
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 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 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.
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 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.
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
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. 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.
She's part of the culture and not just through her sports.
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, 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.
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, 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, Angel Reese has been so criticized.
Oh, without a doubt. Now, part of it is rivalries, right in sports. I mean Red Sox, Yankees, Michigan, Ohio State.
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.
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 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 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. 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 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
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 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.
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, 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.
But then there's a flip side, which is people are paying attention and the microscope is.
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.
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.
You know.
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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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
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.
If I were a black player, that would bug the shit out of me. It's only natural that people would feel that way.
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 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.
They are not.
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
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 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.
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
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.
The lack of coverage, the lack of attention, the lack of respect that these women got.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Point taken were the two questions?
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, 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 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 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 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
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
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.
And a chance to really explain exactly.
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.
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 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 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, it gave people the impression the only thing you cared about was Caitlin Clark.
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.
Now, I think because they felt like you were ignoring other players or the bigger picture of the WNBA.
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 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 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 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 logical thing that someone might be writing a book about Caitlin Clark.
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 how much attention he had brought to that game.
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, 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.
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?
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. 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 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.
What about within the WNBA. What do you think she's done for the entire league?
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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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 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?
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 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 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, so we may get some Stewie's and some Sabrinas.
Right, hopefully we would.
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.
Right, I mean Michael George, but.
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 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.
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.
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 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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
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