The first thing is that for the next two years any player who comes here is going to live way back under the shadow of Clark. Sorry, but the most elite players don’t want to do that. Clark is worth a few million bucks now and the college game has been and will continue to be seriously lucrative for her, much more so than the WNBA would be. No truly elite player wants to go to a place where they’re going to be the red headed step child for two years.
The second big thing is the setting. Yeah WBB got pretty popular in Iowa City this year, but would you rather play for a flashy west coast team with a bunch (not just one) of semi superstar players on the west coast or southern US, or would you rather go spend your winter being known as “not-Caitlin Clark” in a tiny town in Flyover, USA where you can’t go outside without a coat, hat, and gloves for 5 months out of the year?
Let’s take the Old Gold goggles off for a second and objectively look at the situation. Yeah, teams and staffs at LSU, South Carolina, UCLA might be asshole personalities, but they have a whole lot of flash, panache, and national media attention, not to mention beautiful year round weather for the most part…Oceans nearby, close to the glitz of Hollywood, LA, New Orleans, Texas gulf shores, etc which is huge to kids.
Be honest. If you were a 20 something elite women’s player won’t zero connections to the state of Iowa would you want all that stuff I just mentioned and a bunch of NIL to boot, or would it be more enticing to you to get a HyVee commercial and hang out at the Ped Mall with a bunch of local yokels at the Airliner when it’s 20 below outside, listening to everyone talk about Caitlin Clark?
Let’s get real here.