Top 100 momentsNo. 100
Clark and the new crowd
Caitlin Clark’s Iowa run, then her WNBA rookie year, pull ratings and sellouts the women’s game had been told to wait for. The audience stops being theoretical.
Iowa against LSU, Iowa in the Final Four, a logo three from the logo. Caitlin Clark’s college last act is a television event. The WNBA, which had survived on belief and a smaller budget, drafts her first overall. Attendance and viewership jump. Other stars — Reese, Bueckers, a league already full of them — get a bigger room.
Women’s basketball did not begin in 2024. It had been excellent in empty gyms. Clark is the distribution: a style that looks like a video-game cheat code, a rivalry cycle, a country that suddenly wants tickets.
Title IX’s grandchildren fill a league that can finally charge what the product is worth. The 100th moment is not a single buzzer-beater. It is a crowd that showed up and did not leave.