A season that made winners of everyone
The Iowa women’s basketball team helped create victories that reach beyond the court
These days, we’re supposed to hate participation trophies. You know, those shiny little things that convey the message that everyone is a winner when all anyone really wants is to go to Dairy Queen.
Yet as the sun set on the 2024 Women’s Final Four and NCAA championship game it really did seem like everyone was a winner. No doubt the Iowa team itself was bummed about the loss to South Carolina and there were tears shed in the crowd (and probably by people watching on TV).
But the next day and the day after? I bet not.
So I guess I’m offering a participation trophy here. Lots of media hot takes now are about winners and losers, declaring both at the end of big events. But this isn’t X/Twitter, I don’t have a radio call-in show and if you’ve seen my metrics then you’d know I don’t do clickbait.
Who needs the negativity? The gift of the 2023-24 women’s basketball season, for the Iowa Hawkeyes and beyond, was the joy. We’re going to talk about winners here with just one negative – you’re going to have make your own trip to Dairy Queen.
Who are all these winners? Here’s my take, hot or not:
Women’s basketball
Week after week, the numbers just got better. First, the Iowa-Ohio State game on Fox drew an audience of 3.39 million viewers and women’s games outdrew men’s on the network this season. Then it was the NCAA tournament with audiences that just got bigger until Sunday’s final drew 18.7 million viewers, nearly doubling last year’s ratings and topping the men’s game that drew 14.8 million the next night.
Iowa’s season ticket sellout was impressive, but even so the Hawkeyes didn’t lead the nation in attendance. That honor went to South Carolina, which averaged 16,067 fans a game. There might have been a Caitlin Clark bump at a lot of arenas when Iowa played, but some schools drew just fine without her. LSU averaged 11,450 fans. Iowa State averaged 9,611 without its game against Iowa that drew a crowd of 14,267. Colorado, Columbia and Kansas State were among the teams to sell out arenas this season. The home-and-home series between USC and UCLA sold out each team’s home arena.
The Beatles-like mania that Iowa created with its road games might be over for the Hawkeyes, but interest isn’t going away across the country.
Female athletes
If there’s one big thing that thrills longtime followers of women’s sports, it’s the respect the athletes get now. And it goes way beyond Clark and the Hawkeyes. If this maniacal interest recedes after Clark, the respect the athletes get for being, well, athletes is not going anywhere.
Why? Because it’s already there. Like basketball, the NCAA volleyball and gymnastics championships are also on network TV (ABC). The new Pro Volleyball Federation launched this winter and the Omaha team has averaged nearly 10,000 fans. Kansas City’s pro women’s soccer team, the Current, opened its new stadium this spring and sold out its season tickets.
The new Professional Women’s Hockey League launched this winter; the Minnesota team drew 13,316 in its home opener and is averaging more than 5,000 per game. This summer the Northwoods League, a wood-bat baseball league primarily for college players, will add softball teams in four cities (Madison and La Crosse in Wisconsin; Mankato, Minn.; and Minot, N.D.).
Don’t forget that crowd of 92,003 for Nebraska volleyball last fall. And in Dubuque, an April 26 exhibition volleyball match between Northern Iowa and Wisconsin sold out, and another spring exhibition match for the Badgers sold out the 7,000-plus-seat UW Field House.
And “Saturday Night Live,” that bastion of snark for 49 years, even had a sketch that praised women’s basketball – basketball players from Iowa no less – and a New York crowd responded with cheers of approval. Crazy.
To quote the musical “Hamilton”: This is not a moment, it’s the movement.
The state of Iowa
Have you ever noticed that since about the time of “Purple Rain,” Minnesotans continue to obsess about Prince? If you were around in the 1980s, a general conversation with a Minnesotan went something like this: “Hi, I’m Erik Nelson. Did you know Prince is from Minneapolis?”
There have certainly been famous people from Iowa, but unfortunately among the biggest talking points are that this is where Captain James T. Kirk will be born and where Buddy Holly died. Now there’s Caitlin Clark, who has drawn unsolicited and enthusiastic conversation with Iowans across the country. (A friend’s son was on the Washington, D.C., subway when total strangers saw a sweatshirt and just wanted to talk about Clark.)
That home-state, hometown pride is immense here and Clark has given Iowans a talking point for the ages. Besides, we don’t really want to talk about the caucuses all the time anyway, do we?
People who want to watch women’s basketball on TV
As much as ESPN likes to position itself as women’s basketball’s BFF, it wasn’t long ago that they’d show a game or two and never talk about it on their other programs. The Worldwide Leader has had women’s basketball tournament rights since 1996 but only since 2021 have all NCAA tournament games been shown as opposed to local or “whip-around coverage” while giving prime slots to the men’s NIT. CBS wasn’t much better; the 1992 semifinals were squeezed in before the men on Saturday and began at 9:30 a.m. local time in Los Angeles, where the tournament was held.
Now Peacock wants this stuff. And Fox. And of course the Big Ten Network. Like everything else on TV, you need a field guide to figure out what is where and ponder if you need to subscribe to yet another streaming service. But it’s no different than it is for even the NFL in this current climate, and at least it is there – somewhere.
As for the WNBA, this week the Indiana Fever (Clark’s presumptive team after Monday’s draft) announced that 36 of their 40 games will be on national TV.
People who want to watch women’s sports in bars
At least twice this past season, someone texted me to tell me they were in a bar watching Iowa women’s basketball when men’s basketball fans got mad because the game they wanted wasn’t on the big TV or maybe not any TV at all.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
While there is a cool trend of bars opening that cater to women’s sports fans, such as the new A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis, the attention women’s basketball has gotten this season should make it less difficult to ask for this stuff in the future. I’ll forgive a place if they can’t track down the Women’s Euro soccer qualifiers for me, but it won’t be unreasonable to ask a place to devote a TV or two to Audi Crooks and Iowa State women’s basketball team come November.
(Seems worth mentioning here that Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City is hosting a WNBA Draft Watch Party at 6 p.m. on Monday.)
Kids
Years ago, a friend of mine’s young son loved the Drake women’s basketball team so much he said, “I want to be a Drake women’s basketball player!” He was just a small boy, he didn’t know the difference. He just knew what he loved.
Because of Clark and this moment in women’s basketball, a lot of kids won’t know or even notice the difference anymore. They will just want to be great, or they will just be thrilled when any athlete is great – male or female. The girls won’t have to be made to feel inferior and hopefully the boys who are proudly wearing those Caitlin Clark T-shirts now will support the female athletes in their world in the future.
One can dream, right? Because as the Iowa women’s basketball team showed people for the past couple years, dreams can come true.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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Yes! It's true. I was in Florida and it was great to be from Iowa. I felt I was riding on the coattails of Caitlin Clark a bit. I was just so proud!