{"id":91854,"date":"2024-03-28T12:34:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T16:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=91854"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:23","slug":"opinion-nwakerendu-waboso-and-taylor-mckee-discuss-crossroads-faced-by-ncaa-womens-basketball-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2024\/03\/opinion-nwakerendu-waboso-and-taylor-mckee-discuss-crossroads-faced-by-ncaa-womens-basketball-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Nwakerendu Waboso and Taylor McKee discuss crossroads faced by NCAA women\u2019s basketball stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article written by Nwakerendu Waboso, a Child and Youth Studies PhD student at Brock University, and Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, originally appeared in The Conversation.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s basketball superstars are standing at a crossroads for collegiate basketball, professional women\u2019s sport, and the relationship between race and gender more broadly.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s NCAA women\u2019s basketball championship between Louisiana State University and the University of Iowa saw\u00a0controversy arise when LSU\u2019s Angel Reese\u00a0made a hand gesture that many perceived as rude toward Iowa player Caitlin Clark.<\/p>\n

Reese, a Black woman, received immediate\u00a0misogynoiristic\u00a0backlash online for the gesture, despite Clark having made a similar gesture earlier in the game.<\/p>\n

The situation placed undue, uninvited stress and attention on both Reese and Clark and evoked the long history of racially-coded conflicts across sport. It prompted fans and critics to consider the social roles traditionally given to white and Black athletes and how these persisting expectations continue to inform broader perceptions of individual athletes.<\/p>\n

As this year\u2019s NCAA tournament unfolds, it might yet again represent a new high water-mark for women\u2019s sport as new standards are set for ratings and even more pressure falls on the game\u2019s superstars.<\/p>\n

The rise of women\u2019s NCAA basketball<\/strong><\/p>\n

The increasing interest in collegiate women\u2019s basketball has become impossible to ignore, buoyed in large part by the emergence of stars like Clark, Reese, University of Southern California freshman guard JuJu Watkins and University of Utah senior forward Alissa Pili.<\/p>\n

The 2023 NCAA women\u2019s basketball tournament\u00a0averaged 6.5 million viewers for the two final four games and 9.9 million for the championship game. By comparison,\u00a0the 2023 NHL Stanley Cup averaged 2.6 million viewers in the United States, 4.6 million in 2022 and 2.5 million in 2021.<\/p>\n

NCAA men\u2019s basketball, in comparison,\u00a0has experienced a decline over the years\u00a0because of its relationship to the NBA draft. Beginning in 2006, the\u00a0NBA mandated players must be at least one-year removed from high school graduation\u00a0and 19 years old to be eligible for the draft. Prior to 2006, players were eligible to enter the draft directly out of high school.<\/p>\n

The ability to enter the NBA at 18 was\u00a0a privilege only granted after a 1967 Supreme Court decision\u00a0allowed University of Detroit forward Spencer Haywood to sign an NBA contract despite the league\u2019s requirement that players not be drafted until four years after high school graduation.<\/p>\n

As author Chuck Klosterman mentioned in an interview, players used to stay in school for three or four years,\u00a0allowing audiences to become fans by watching players evolve. Now, the NBA sees players drafted after spending only months on college campuses, which has led to an erosion of interest in men\u2019s collegiate basketball.<\/p>\n

It is possible this sense of disconnection has drawn larger audiences to the women\u2019s collegiate game, where fans are able to develop more long-lasting relationships with players and witness intense rivalries between teams due to a greater continuity of talent.<\/p>\n

The changing faces of women\u2019s basketball<\/strong><\/p>\n

Described as a \u201ctransformational talent,\u201d \u201cthe supernova driving women\u2019s basketball to new heights\u201d and\u00a0inspiring what is known as the \u201cCaitlin Clark Effect,\u201d\u00a0Clark is now a household name across North America.<\/p>\n

Her influence is a strong, positive experience that disrupts traditional gender marginalization and stereotypes within collegiate sports. Clark\u2019s accomplishments directly challenge the stereotype that\u00a0female athletes are less athletic than male athletes.<\/p>\n

This is a harmful and historical trope for a host of reasons, one of which is that it subjugates women as inferior athletes and undermines efforts to break down the\u00a0patriarchal barriers\u00a0that have traditionally disenfranchised female athletics as a whole.<\/p>\n

Within her role as a student athlete ambassador, Clark is also able to disrupt traditional views around femininity in sports. Her identity as a white woman and her wealth also matter tremendously.<\/p>\n

Because\u00a0whiteness is still privileged and treated as the normative identity in collegiate athletics\u00a0across America, Clark is well-positioned to disrupt traditional ideas around femininity in a way that a non-white athlete cannot.<\/p>\n

Wealth in women\u2019s sports<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0lucrative landscape surrounding NIL (name, image, likeness) regulations\u00a0means the stars of NCAA women\u2019s basketball stand to earn far more than previous generations of women\u2019s players. NIL rules allow players to monetize their name, image and likeness through sponsorships and other activities.<\/p>\n

There is speculation Clark will declare for the WNBA\u2019s 2024 season, where she is highly touted to be the number one overall draft pick. It is reported that Clark\u2019s 11 NIL contracts are worth a combined US$3 million \u2014 a number that stands in stark contrast to\u00a0the usual $100,000 rookie salary of top WNBA first round picks.<\/p>\n

But this opportunity has the potential to create a great deal more pressure for those carrying the banner for women\u2019s basketball. It\u2019s new and uncharted territory for female collegiate athletes and foreshadows possible tensions for athletes who eventually transition to professional basketball.<\/p>\n

The younger generation of stars may well enter into the WNBA with more wealth amassed over their collegiate careers than some long-standing WNBA players have ever made.<\/p>\n

Clark, Reese and a new generation of collegiate superstars are now not only tasked with navigating their place in an inequitable sporting marketplace, but are also pioneers of a new age of wealth in women\u2019s sport.<\/p>\n

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, so the saying goes, and Clark appears to bear that weight deftly. However, as a new generation of players transitions into the professional game from a collegiate game they\u2019ve helped supercharge, it\u2019s important to consider how much weight is reasonable for any athlete to bear, no matter how battle-tested and celebrated the player.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nwakerendu Waboso, a Child and Youth Studies PhD student at Brock University, and Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about the crossroads faced by NCAA women\u2019s basketball stars. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,6,38],"tags":[7488,522,10659,10657,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91854"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91858,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91854\/revisions\/91858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}