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washingtonpost.com
Sophie Turner asks judge to ‘reactivate’ Joe Jonas divorce after failing to come to settlement
The Jonas Brothers member filed for divorce from the "Game of Thrones" alum in September 2023 after four years of marriage.
5 m
nypost.com
Social media influencer charged for her role in Jan. 6 attack
Isabella DeLuca allegedly helped steal a table used by rioters as a weapon against police.
6 m
cbsnews.com
Hong Kong Adopts Sweeping Security Laws, Bowing to Beijing
The legislation targets “external interference” and the theft of state secrets, with implications for businesses, journalists, civil servants and others.
nytimes.com
Footage captures moment cops fatally shoot gunman who targeted couple in NYC
Dramatic video footage captured the moment police gunned down a shooter who targeted a couple in Brooklyn Monday evening. A man and a woman are seen running away from the shooter at Remsen Avenue and East 57th Street in East Flatbush just as cops pull up to the scene in an unmarked car. A group...
nypost.com
Andy Cohen Is a Kate Middleton Truther
"Is this Princess Kate?" Cohen asked his 5 million Instagram followers, after footage of the royal was published online on Monday.
newsweek.com
Alaska Airlines plane’s windshield cracks while landing in latest drama for a Boeing jet
The flight from Washington DC was descending at the Portland International Airport when crew members noticed a small crack on the inner windshield, airline officials told KIRO.
nypost.com
The average Wall Street bonus fell a bit last year — to $176,000
The average Wall Street bonus fell 2% last year — to $176,500, New York state officials say. The bonus' high water mark was $240,400 in 2021, and its relative low was $111,400 in 2011.
cbsnews.com
The Sports Report: Complete team effort leads Lakers past Hawks
All five starters finished with at least 12 points and all five got to spend most of the fourth quarter on the bench.
latimes.com
'He brings that punch': Why the Clippers' Norman Powell could win sixth-man award
Three-time award winner Jamal Crawford knows what it takes to be a star sixth man and he says Norman Powell "can get everybody else on track.”
latimes.com
Chronic fatigue patients are bravely offering their illnesses to science
One woman’s struggle with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome might help millions of Americans.
washingtonpost.com
Underdog Wagner unfazed by what’s standing in way of Cinderella March Madness run
It has been 21 years since Wagner appeared in its lone NCAA Tournament, an 87-61 loss to Pittsburgh in the Round of 64.
nypost.com
Wife of Saints’ Juwan Johnson already getting ‘thousands’ of messages about NFL matchmaking project
The wife of New Orleans Saints tight end Juwan Johnson is determined to set up NFL power couples — and “thousands” are already interested in her matchmaking abilities. “The amount of emails I get daily,” influencer and TikTok star Chanen Johnson told The Post in a recent interview. “I get thousands of emails daily with...
nypost.com
Oregon man found guilty of murder after DNA links him to 1980 cold case
An Ore., judge has found man guilty of first-degree murder in a 1980s cold case involving a college student. The man was arrested in 2021 after DNA technology linked him to the crime.
foxnews.com
China Is Growing Old Before It Gets Rich: Economist
Beijing's sunny economic forecast this year belies the difficulty of escaping the middle-income trap, a Chinese analyst says.
newsweek.com
Notre Dame Cathedral: A timeline of events in the restoration project
The restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, following a fire in April 2019, has been a story of perseverance, and progress has continued steadily.
foxnews.com
Donald Trump Rages at Letitia James Over Massive $464m Bond
The former president accused the New York attorney general of carrying out an "unlawful witch hunt" against him.
newsweek.com
Russian TV Fans Alaska Secession Flames
Russian state TV referenced a YouGov poll of 35,000 U.S. adults which found that support for independence in Alaska was at 36 percent.
newsweek.com
Judge Cannon's Two Scenarios 'Direct Jury To Find Trump Not Guilty'—Lawyer
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney, called Judge Aileen Cannon's latest Mar-a-Lago case order "perplexing."
newsweek.com
Alabama A&M student injured after shootout with campus police
A student at Alabama A&M University engaged in a shootout with a campus police officer in a dormitory stairwell on Monday afternoon, authorities said.
foxnews.com
'Suicidal' teen shot dead by Florida Keys deputy after pointing gun at police: authorities
A suicidal girl was shot dead by police in The Florida Keys early Monday after she pointed a stolen gun at deputies. The deadly incident occurred on Stock Island.
foxnews.com
Hong Kong Security Law Could Damage City’s Image as Financial Hub
Some firms have already moved staff out of the city since the Chinese government took a heavier hand in 2020.
nytimes.com
Trump claims any Jew who votes Democrat 'hates their religion' after Schumer speech on Senate floor
Former President Donald Trump made a series of inflammatory remarks against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, claiming the Democrat has pivoted against Israel for votes.
foxnews.com
Justice Jackson ripped for worrying about the First Amendment 'hamstringing' government: 'Literally the point'
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was ridiculed on Monday after voicing her concerns that the First Amendment could limit the federal government.
foxnews.com
Three Times You Should Never Brush Your Teeth, According to a Dentist
Newsweek spoke to Dr. Shaadi Manouchehri about her video that has 12 million views on TikTok.
newsweek.com
From an Azerbaijan prison, a dissident writes home: ‘Save my life’
Ilham Aliyev, the strongman leader of Azerbaijan, continues to silence independent journalists and punish a prominent critic with inhumane conditions in prison.
washingtonpost.com
The remaining big roster decisions Mets face before opener
Team officials had a good idea before camp began of the 26 players they plan to take north. But the X factor is always injuries, with spring training performance also not completely dismissed.
nypost.com
Haiti, US Embassy entrance area plunge into darkness as vandals attack power plant and substations
Haiti's national utility says attacks on a power plant and four substations in Port-au-Prince has left the facilities "completely dysfunctional."
foxnews.com
Sullivan rips reporter's question on Biden swearing as asking 'when did you stop beating your spouse?'
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan took issue with the premise of a question about President Biden from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy.
foxnews.com
France Set to Trial Four-Day Week for Divorced Parents
Gabriel Mello/Getty ImagesFrance will offer divorced parents who share custody of their kids the opportunity to work four-day weeks as part of a trial scheme to be introduced later this year.Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered details of the plan to La Tribune, with civil servants in some government departments given the chance to work just four days a week when their children are staying in their homes from September.Attal introduced the idea in France’s finance ministry in 2022 and is now seeking to roll out the policy to the broader workforce in an effort to increase the quality of French working life, according to The Times.Read more at The Daily Beast.
thedailybeast.com
NY AG accused of bullying women, George W Bush assassination plot unraveled and more top headlines
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.
foxnews.com
Former Nickelodeon Stars Slammed Over Comments About Controversy
Three former "Ned's Declassified" cast members are being criticized over their comments in a TikTok live that's been shared on X.
newsweek.com
3 things to watch for in Tuesday's primaries
The presidential nominations are locked up -- but the primaries remain, along with any tea leaves they might provide.
abcnews.go.com
Chiefs' Harrison Butker hopes Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce 'get married and start a family'
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker opened up about meeting Taylor Swift for the first time and what he hopes for her and Travis Kelce for the future.
foxnews.com
US and Japan call for ban of nuclear weapons in outer space
The U.S. and Japan are jointly sponsoring a United Nations Security Council resolution urging nations not to deploy or develop nuclear weapons in space.
foxnews.com
Dylan Mulvaney's 'Days of Girlhood' Reaches Major Milestone
The influencer released a song about "the basics of being a girl"—and it is already a chart-topper.
newsweek.com
What to Know About Hong Kong’s Article 23 Legislation
The legislation marks another significant erosion of freedom in a former British colony once known for its relative autonomy from Beijing.
nytimes.com
Ohio Supreme Court primary begins as Democrats try to flip court from Republican control
The Democratic primary for one of Ohio's Supreme Court seats has begun. The state's Supreme Court has a 4-3 Republican majority, but Democrats hope to flip that in their favor.
foxnews.com
FTC to return nearly $100M to buyers of Benefytt's fake health plans
Nearly half a million U.S. consumers lured into buying sham insurance from Benefytt Technologies will get refunds.
cbsnews.com
New York governor orders probe of marijuana licensing program 'disaster' amid black market surge
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has ordered a probe of the state's recreational marijuana licensing program due to issues that have hindered its success.
foxnews.com
MLS continues to embarrass itself with its handling of the referee lockout
At a critical time for a league looking to capitalize on Lionel Messi and other stars, MLS is gambling away its reputation in the referee labor dispute.
latimes.com
Don’t defund the fight against Russia and China’s disinformation
A modest U.S. government organization that attempts to fight overseas disinformation is facing possible closure.
washingtonpost.com
Four things to watch as USC begins spring football practice
As USC prepares to open spring practice on Tuesday, here are four things to watch, including the quarterback competition to replace Caleb Williams.
latimes.com
America's Lead Crisis Demands a Comprehensive Solution | Opinion
Any amount of lead exposure to the body is harmful, and young children are especially vulnerable to its effects.
newsweek.com
Andy Cohen, more royal fans believe ‘fake’ Kate Middleton appeared in farm stand video
The King of Bravo shared his skepticism about the Princess of Wales as conspiracy theorists believe she had a "double" during the outing with Prince William.
nypost.com
A Former Pro Climber On Enduring Chronic Illness
slate.com
Whatever Happened to Teen Babysitters?
Babysitting used to be both a job and a rite of passage. For countless American teens, and especially teen girls, it was a tentative step toward adulthood—responsibility, but with guardrails. Perhaps you didn’t cook dinner, but you did heat some leftovers for the kids. Maybe you arrived to find them already tucked in, and you read them a story, turned out the lights, and watched TV until the car turned into the drive. You knew who to call if anything serious came up. Paula Fass, a historian of childhood at UC Berkeley, told me that she started sitting around 1960, when she was 12 or 13. By the time she’d arrive, she remembers, the parents had put their kids to bed and stocked the fridge for her to raid. They recognized that she was grown-up enough to be an extra eye in the home—but childlike enough to go looking for snacks.Sitting was a “quintessentially American experience,” Yasemin Besen-Cassino, a Montclair State University sociologist and the author of The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap, told me. For decades, working a part-time job was common for teens in the U.S.—perhaps a reflection of the cultural emphasis on hard work, discipline, and financial independence. Even tweens would babysit. And something about that position, teetering between dependence and independence, got lodged in our cultural imagination. Starting in the mid-20th century, the young sitter became an emblem of American girlhood—both a classic coming-of-age character and a locus of anxieties about girls’ growing autonomy. Just how mature are these teens? How much control should they have? And what kind of adults are they on the cusp of turning into? Those concerns preoccupied people not only in real life but also in a plethora of books, shows, and movies.Today, the teen babysitter as we knew her, in pop culture and in reality, has all but disappeared. People seem to worry less about adolescents and more for them, and for their future prospects. As Fass put it, “Teenagers don’t seem very grown-up these days.” There’s not much reason to fear or exalt babysitters anymore—because our society no longer trusts teens to babysit much at all.[Read: Teen brains are perfectly capable]The 1920s were boom times for leisure. New technologies made chores easier, freeing up couples’ time, and growing wages gave people more disposable income. Meanwhile, restaurants and movie theaters proliferated, and car ownership exploded. Parents were going out at night—and more mothers were working during the day too. At the same time, traditional child-care providers were becoming less available, Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, wrote in her book Babysitter: An American History; grandparents, for instance, were enjoying social lives of their own. Working-class families, Fass told me, would still have been likely to enlist older siblings to watch the young ones. But middle-class parents could also afford to pay a few bucks to the kid down the block, who—as companies were marketing products, more and more, to youths—now had a reason to want pocket money. The teen babysitter was born.From the beginning, the role was viewed with suspicion. Granting a young person unmonitored control over your children and your house may naturally have been a little worrisome—but beyond that, the sitter took on brewing cultural anxieties. Given that she was working outside her own home—and earning her own pay—she represented teen girls’ growing autonomy, according to Forman-Brunell. She was also associated with women’s liberation. After all, parents needed her partly because moms were starting not only to work but also to enjoy free time on the town. (Before the ’20s, Fass told me, “that kind of leisure had not been common to married women.”)Those domestic worries came through in pop-culture depictions of the sitter. In the midst of the 1960s sexual revolution, she was often portrayed as a temptress, seducing fathers when mom was away; in the ’70s, she started showing up in horror movies, trapped with a killer in the house and kids to protect—perhaps a way, Forman-Brunell suggests, to see her punished for her self-sufficiency or for the irresponsible behavior audiences seemed to imagine. None of that was likely helping sitters’ reputation, but parents still needed them. That’s when The Baby-Sitters Club, the ’80s book series about a group of tweens running a sitting business—and solving mysteries in their spare time—came to the PR rescue. The novels exemplified what Forman-Brunell calls the “supersitter” trend, portraying fun but well-behaved, competent girls: role models for kids, and also a comfort for nervous parents. Teens’ trustworthiness was a tug-of-war.But that cultural battle has quieted. There’s little point in it now, perhaps, because actual teens may not be babysitting so much anymore. The field is hard to track precisely, because it’s so informal by definition, but sources told me that many parents today are looking for professionalized child care, or at least older and more experienced caregivers. Teens, meanwhile, are given few opportunities for responsibility—especially with the kind of training wheels that babysitting used to entail.[Read: Why adolescence feels so intense]The archetypal sitter lived just a few doors down. She was the daughter of your friends; she was the girl you’d been watching grow up for years. But Americans today tend to be less well acquainted with neighbors than they used to be, and they trust other people less in general. If you’re not familiar with the high-schooler on your block, you might not feel comfortable placing your children in her questionably capable hands. Even more than that: You might never connect in the first place.Even if parents do know potential young sitters nearby, they may still hesitate to rely on them. In the past few decades, as “intensive parenting” has become a child-rearing ideal across classes, grown-ups have broadly begun to see kids as fragile and in need of constant oversight. Tweens or younger teens might not seem like comforting sources of protection—they might seem like children in need of watching themselves. As Fass pointed out, it didn’t used to be unusual for 12-year-olds to babysit. Now more than two-thirds of American parents think kids should be 12 or older before they’re even left home alone. Several states have guidelines issuing a similar age limit; in Illinois, kids legally can’t be left unattended until age 14.The intensive-parenting approach isn’t just about physical safety; it’s also about ensuring kids’ future financial security, using every spare moment to “enrich” them with skills. Besen-Cassino found in her reporting that this was very much part of parents’ calculus when it came to their children’s care. Many families don’t want their kids wasting time sitting in front of the TV or even just playing, she told me; they want them learning, say, math or piano or another language. And if kids are spending time in scheduled activities led by adults, they don’t need a sitter. The same trend means teens themselves are also likely to be preoccupied—too busy with SAT prep or Model UN to be babysitting. Indeed, teen-labor participation has been dropping for decades, driven in part by adolescents turning instead to academic pursuits and internships. (High-schooler employment rates rose slightly after 2020—perhaps partly because employers, strapped while emerging from pandemic lockdown, were more willing to accommodate teens’ hectic schedules—but remain lower than they were in the latter half of the 20th century.) Part-time employment used to be a milestone in many kids’ transition to adulthood. But today, the period between childhood and adulthood seems to be longer than ever—psychologists call it “extended adolescence.” Americans are getting married, having kids, and buying houses at older ages, and spending longer on education and career exploration beforehand. So teens don’t just seem unfit for babysitting; babysitting might also seem unfit for teens. It’s not the kind of thing you think to put on a résumé.Of course, not every teen has the privilege of doing an unpaid internship rather than making money; not every family can afford to fill their kids’ time with tutoring or extracurriculars. But intensive parenting isn’t limited to the superrich; it was initially described as a middle-class phenomenon, and more recently it’s spread, at least as an aspiration, across classes. So while less wealthy families are particularly likely to rely on unpaid child care from relatives or friends, many other parents are scrambling to give their kids a leg up with activities—or, if they’re really rich, leaning also on au pairs or boarding schools. It’s unclear who exactly the clientele for the humble babysitter really is anymore.The result is that babysitting today feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era than a normal part of how teens come of age. The glut of babysitting pop-culture content has thinned significantly; even the TV reboot of The Baby-Sitters Club, which was such a massive hit as a book series, was canceled in 2022 after two seasons. The creator, Rachel Shukert, told Vulture that she believes that was partly because Netflix marketed it to girls rather than to grown-ups: “A show like this has tremendous nostalgic potential,” she said. “But if you’re 35 and you loved the books … Netflix is not going to show The Baby-Sitters Club to you.” It doesn’t sound like it hit teens particularly hard, perhaps because the experience of babysitting isn’t relatable to them.Or maybe it just didn’t hit a cultural nerve because our fears are evolving. The Baby-Sitters Club was a blueprint for girls becoming women in a time when people were anxious about them maturing the right way. But most of the main characters are 12 or 13 when the series begins; Mallory, initially one of the club’s charges, starts babysitting herself at 11. It might no longer seem like a coming-of-age narrative because people may be less likely to see 11-to-13-year-olds as coming of age at all—just as kids.[Read: Why don’t we teach people how to parent?]Teen babysitters still exist, but they’re facing a different field than they once might have—more structured and formal. A 2020 study found that sitters tended to prepare carefully for their role, taking safety courses and planning a slate of activities in advance—and parents were comforted by those displays of seriousness. When Besen-Cassino spoke with sitters for her research, she learned that they had used their free time not just to get CPR training or lifeguard certifications or driving lessons but also to take classes so they could offer to help kids learn math or music or sports. They advertised themselves, she told me, as “not just a babysitter but someone who can change the life of that child.”Especially given that babysitting has long been undervalued and underpaid, it seems unfair that teen girls should have to make all that extra effort just to get their foot in the door. And yet, caregiving is serious work; the fact that parents are taking it seriously is warranted. For so long, it’s been treated as something girls and women do naturally, not as labor that requires skills and deserves fair compensation. If we acknowledge that babysitting is more than just a starter job, maybe it makes sense for adults to take it on.But young people do need some opportunities for growth. Rebecca Raby, a professor of child and youth studies at Brock University, in Canada, told me that first jobs can be extremely formative, even empowering experiences. She’s found that many young babysitters have a sense of pride in their craft and their earning ability. In the liminal space of early teenhood—a time of feeling awkward, misunderstood, and largely powerless—having a job can grant you dignity. And to be a role model for a younger kid might be nothing short of profound. Ideally, society could acknowledge the gravity of caregiving but also support the teens who want to do it—and some people are working toward just that. Margaret House, a coordinator for Oregon State University’s community-partnership program, runs a babysitting-training program through the youth-leadership organization 4-H. She teaches teens about child development but also how to impress wary parents: the dos and don’ts of being in someone else’s home, different parenting styles, how to talk about yourself in interviews. They discuss how this work can lead to a real career—working in a day-care center, teaching preschool, researching early childhood—and how they might include babysitting on a résumé. Still, she doesn’t forget that this work is about creating trust in communities. Sure, it takes a village to raise a child, she told me, but “there is no village.” So grown-ups have to build it themselves.House does sometimes have trouble connecting her sitters to parents. Recently, she tried to do a meet and greet at the local library, and she remembers that only a couple of adults showed up. But she doesn’t doubt that there’s an audience out there. She reminds the teens to tell parents about any extra talents they have, yes, but she boosts them up regardless: “Parents might want someone who’s older and going to be able to teach them multiple languages or whatever.” But just by being present and attentive, they’re offering a valuable service. “So don’t shortchange yourself,” she tells them.Families still need help caring for their kids. Teens still need money, and chances to practice responsibility. And neighbors could stand to trust one another more—to start building their village. That won’t look just like it did in 1950, but that’s for the best. Perhaps we’ll find a way to finally treat adolescents as just what they are: not children and not adults, not scary and not superhuman. Just young people who, with a bit of support, can be capable of a great deal.
theatlantic.com
Caitlin Clark Is Just the Beginning
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Caitlin Clark’s remarkable season is how many people have been watching it.All but two of the University of Iowa women’s basketball games have sold out or set an attendance record, according to the university’s athletic department. Iowa sold out its season-ticket allotment in August—three months before the first game—and teams hosting Clark have found her to be a one-woman boon to the local economy. An Associated Press analysis found that Iowa road games have seen a 150 percent increase in average attendance. Tickets to the February game in which Clark set the all-time college women’s scoring record were, at about $400 on the secondary market, the most expensive in the history of women’s college basketball—until the game, two weeks later, in which she passed the men’s all-time scoring leader, when the average resale ticket went for $546. Clark has made Iowa games competitive in TV viewership with NBA games and the highest-profile men’s college matchups. Heading into the NCAA tournament, she is easily the most famous player in college basketball, if not all of college sports.And yet Clark’s singular level of stardom obscures an even bigger shift taking place in college sports: After decades of treatment as second-class citizens, women are surpassing men in popularity, interest, and financial potential. The second-most-famous player in American college basketball is also a woman. So, arguably, are the third-, fourth-, and fifth-. Aside from dedicated hoops fans, most Americans probably don’t know much about Zach Edey, Purdue’s hulking center and the presumptive men’s national player of the year for the second year in a row. Many more people have heard of Angel Reese and JuJu Watkins. Eventually, the men’s game will get another zeitgeist-dominating star, but it could be a while, given that the most famous men’s prospects don’t spend much time, if any, in college. Zion Williamson came through the ranks for one year in 2019. Victor Wembanyana didn’t play in college at all, nor did three other top-five picks in last year’s NBA draft.[Adam Harris: San Antonio, the Spurs, and me]Clark’s greatness as a player is a big part of her mainstream breakthrough, but it’s not the whole story. Clark sits at the intersection of several major shifts in the economics of college sports, and she arrived at the perfect moment to accelerate and take advantage of those changes. The new ability of college athletes to monetize themselves and build individual brands has led to a women’s hooper, not a football or men’s-basketball player, becoming the biggest draw. Clark is the first star of this magnitude to emerge from women’s college sports, but she will not be the last. More than any scoring record, her legacy will be proving that there’s no ceiling on how popular women’s sports can be.Clark is astonishing to watch. She makes shots from every zip code and slings deft passes that call into question how many eyeballs she has. The only college-basketball fan who can look away from her is the Ohio State student who ran into her while rushing the court after one of Iowa’s rare losses. Clark seems comfortable with her stardom. She signs endless autographs, takes pictures with kids, and talks often with the press. “Watch her postgame, trying to leave the gym,” the longtime Iowa sports writer Patrick Vint told me. “It’s like the Beatles.”But all of that talent and charisma would probably not have been enough to make Clark such a cultural sensation even five years ago. Women’s sports have historically gotten short shrift from campus administrators and the NCAA, who too often have treated women’s sports as little more than a box to be checked for Title IX–compliance purposes.Only recently have sports’ power brokers come to see women’s athletics less as an obligation than as a potential growth property. Some of that stems from an obvious and overdue realization: Fans enjoy watching women’s sports. Softball competes with and sometimes beats college baseball for viewers. Ratings are up for gymnastics and volleyball. But just as crucial was the NCAA’s 2021 decision, made under legal and political pressure, to allow athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness. That reform didn’t just permit booster payments from the local car dealership. It created a financial incentive for college athletes to build their individual brands on social media and leverage those followings into lucrative endorsement deals. The biggest college stars today are well-known personalities—athlete-influencers, essentially—who carry individual marketing value. And, perhaps surprisingly, given the dominance of football compared with other college sports, these stars are disproportionately women. The Olympic gold-medal gymnast Suni Lee, who competed until November 2022 at Auburn, has about 3.1 million total followers on Instagram and TikTok. She sometimes shared a gym with LSU’s Olivia Dunne, who has 13 million. Compare that with LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels, the most recent winner of the Heisman Trophy, who has just shy of 200,000 Instagram followers.At the highest levels of stardom, collegiate women have outpaced men at building online followings. (Two notable exceptions are the University of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders and the University of Southern California guard Bronny James. Not coincidentally, their fathers are two of the most famous American athletes of all time.) Basketball has the most stars: Clark, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, LSU’s Reese and Hailey Van Lith, USC’s Watkins, and Stanford’s Cameron Brink are among the big-ticket social-media presences. This freshly monetized star power is combining with the broader recognition of how fun the games are to generate an overall boom for the sport itself. The right to broadcast the NCAA women’s-basketball tournament is valued at $65 million a year in a new agreement with ESPN, more than triple its worth under the previous agreement, signed in 2010.[Read: How men muscled women out of surfing]Clark is at the tip of the spear, having proved to be a sought-after partner for blue-chip companies, including Gatorade, Nike, State Farm, and Goldman Sachs. Some commentators have speculated that she may be at the top of her earning capacity right now, rather than in the WNBA, where she will make roughly $77,000 in salary as a rookie next year. The WNBA doesn’t have as big a fan base as the college game. Attendance is rising, but no WNBA team sold out more than 12 of 20 games in the 2023 season. Even Brittney Griner’s return last May—a marquee event celebrating a marquee player—didn’t fill the house. In professional markets with lots of entertainment competition, the roar of the crowd will not be the same as it was on campus.But we’ve also never seen a player enter the WNBA with as much hype as Clark. As the recent No. 1 WNBA draftee Aliyah Boston explained in an interview with the sports reporter Khristina Williams, “These brands still want to follow you. Your fan base does not change.” Clark, as the consensus best player in the draft, will join Boston on the Indiana Fever, which once again owns the first pick. Clark already has a deal in place with the Indiana company that sponsors the team’s arena.Clark’s economic power is even more striking considering the broader sports-business dynamics right now: With the notable exception of the NFL, getting fans excited about anything in sports these days is a big lift. Attention spans are short. Young people are interested in other things. Leagues are scrambling to make games shorter in order to keep spectators engaged, and many teams across sports are struggling to get butts in seats. One person in the college-sports industry right now has a demonstrated ability to cut through those headwinds, to make every game she plays feel like the most important game that’s ever been played. She happens to be a woman. And whoever succeeds her as the face of college basketball will probably be a woman too.
theatlantic.com