Should Caitlin Clark stay at Iowa or go to WNBA? How about the Olympics? It's complicated

The Greatest Show in Sports is humming along, barnstorming the nation, hitting logo threes and breaking records as February works its way to the madness of March, bringing us closer to the answer to two intriguing questions:

Will Caitlin Clark stay at Iowa for her fifth COVID year or will she go to the WNBA? 

And, is she going to represent the United States at the Olympics this summer in Paris?

The first question is totally in her control and all hers to answer. Does Clark, a fourth-year senior who gets a COVID year if she wants it, come back to Iowa to sink three-point shots and thread no-look passes and pack arenas around the Big Ten and the nation, which will be basically one and the same by the time the 2024-25 season begins?

Or does she go to the WNBA, where she will be the No. 1 pick in the draft and immediately become the best-known pro in the women’s game, even if there will be the inevitable learning curve playing with and against the best players in the world? 

Does she remain or does she leave? It’s Brexit for sports.

Several layers to Clark's decision

Clark is said to be torn, and who can blame her? Conventional wisdom says she will go to the WNBA because what more could she possibly do in college once she passes Pete Maravich to become the all-time leading scorer in Division I basketball? She has single-handedly lifted the national perception of the women’s game to a level that would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago, so she certainly owes us nothing more. 

On the other hand, she will never be more loved as a basketball player than when she’s playing in her home state of Iowa, and it’s not like the WNBA won’t be there, waiting for her, a year from now.

My guess is she’s going, but I really think she should stay. She should take advantage of that fortunate gift of an extra year at Iowa to turn next season into the most remarkable farewell tour the college game has ever seen. 

There are many layers to that decision, but first, there’s another looming question surrounding Clark, and it's coming quickly now. The 2024 Summer Olympics start July 26 in Paris, and USA Basketball has a choice to make. Does it somehow make room somewhere on a stacked roster of the world’s greatest players on the most dominant sports team on earth for a 22-year-old college megastar? 

The U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team hasn’t lost since 1992, and isn’t likely to lose in Paris. So it doesn’t need Clark. 

Or does it?

Summer Olympics: What should USA Basketball do?

For all of their victories and medals, the U.S. women’s basketball players are often largely ignored by the sports media at the Olympic Games. The gymnasts and swimmers and runners and of course the U.S. women’s soccer team get so much more attention. It’s a crowded couple of weeks with dozens of medals being handed out every day, so the competition for headlines is always intense. 

I’ve covered quite a few U.S. women’s gold-medal basketball games at the Olympics, and when I look around and see a half-empty press tribune and wonder why, the answer I receive from my peers is that the Americans are just too good for their own good. People already know they’re going to win.

That’s a terrible reason to not report on a team, and we of course know that race is always a part of this conversation, but the fact remains that U.S. sports journalists do not cover this team as they should. 

So, what if USA Basketball could somehow tap into the nation’s fascination with Caitlin Clark to help? 

Women’s sports are always about more than sports. Someday that won’t be the case, but we’re not there yet. It’s why so many great female sports stars sign every autograph and pose for every selfie and talk about the number of girls in the stands and answer every question about Title IX and the growth of their sport. They are athletes and they are advocates, they are players and they are pioneers, and that’s just the way it is. 

How many American sports fans, turning their attention to the Olympics a few days before they begin this summer, will ask this question: Is Caitlin Clark on the women’s basketball team?

Doesn’t the answer “No” sound strange?

If USA Basketball wants more eyeballs on this fabulous Olympic team, Clark will surely bring them, even if she is spending a good portion of her time on the bench — although who doesn’t want a three-point shooter and playmaker like her in international basketball? 

Clark has become the human gateway to women’s hoops for hundreds of thousands, likely even millions, of girls and boys, women and men. USA Basketball certainly could draw on her enormous reach to help promote not only its 2024 Olympic team, but the women’s game in general. It wouldn’t hurt to honor the popularity of the college game in this manner, and it has been done before, with collegians like Christian Laettner, Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart making U.S. Olympic teams over the years.

There are of course so many reasons to not put Clark on the Olympic team. The team is just too good, filled with superstars up and down the roster. Who on earth do you cut to make room for Clark? That’s a nightmare of a decision. But for this once-in-a-generation moment, USA Basketball should figure it out and put her on the team. 

No matter what happens with the Olympics, Clark will return to the court soon enough in either Iowa City for her fifth year or in Indianapolis for the continuation of her inaugural WNBA season as the first-round pick of the Indiana Fever. 

Rare fifth-year opportunity at Iowa

So, which is it? She’ll win more with the Hawkeyes than the Fever, and she’ll probably have more fun, although some of her running mates on this year’s Iowa team are in their fifth year and will be gone by next season. Will Iowa bring in a couple of transfers if Clark stays? Who wouldn’t relish being on the receiving end of those beautiful passes? And with the Big Ten expanding to the West Coast, the prospect of an Iowa-USC matchup, Clark vs. current freshman phenom JuJu Watkins, is utterly delightful. 

Clark will sell out every college arena if she stays, once again playing the role of a singular version of the Harlem Globetrotters. Will she sell out WNBA arenas? She should, but the WNBA fan base isn’t as big or as passionate as the fan base for the women’s college game. It’s a shame that the visibility of women’s professional basketball is dwarfed by the women’s college game, but that’s the reality Clark faces. Over time, with her help, perhaps that will no longer be the case. 

With her growing stable of national sponsors, the financial aspects of her stay-or-go decision probably are a wash. She will earn a salary and bonuses and a potential marketing deal in the WNBA, but she’s already making hundreds of thousands of dollars now with the new rules in college sports. Most if not all of those deals are certain to follow her into the pros. 

If Iowa were to win the 2024 NCAA title, Clark would almost certainly declare for the WNBA draft because there’s no better ending for her than that. Things would happen quickly in that case. The Final Four is April 5 and 7 in Cleveland. The draft is April 15 in New York. She would need to declare for the draft by April 1 if Iowa doesn’t make the Elite Eight, or 48 hours after her last game if it does. 

If Iowa doesn’t win, and perhaps doesn’t even make it back to the Final Four, does that spur Clark to come back for one more try? It’s certainly not going to be easy for her to leave Iowa. She could start studying for a master’s degree and be close to home for one more year. There’s nothing insignificant about that.

I’m one of the lucky people who has seen Clark play in person, with a half-dozen family members at the University of Maryland a few weeks ago. We bought tickets; no press pass for me. It was like being at a concert, or the opera, where you’re there to watch one person: the rock star, the diva. I’ve never seen Maryland’s arena so full, 17,950 spectators officially, with the last row of seats in the rafters as packed as the seats on the floor.

Even though you know what you’re there for, her first three-pointer comes with such surprising ease and certainty that you almost can’t believe what you just saw. The fact that it happens again and again, like that magical start the other night to pass Kelsey Plum for the women’s NCAA record, leaves you laughing and smiling and a little bit stunned. It’s all just so much fun. 

So if Clark goes to the WNBA, that’s her call and that’s wonderful and of course we’ll be watching. But there’s something about this rare fifth-year opportunity to do what no one else has done, in front of the most raucous, passionate crowds on college campuses around the nation, that is so incredibly appealing. 

What if she, and we, get to do it all again next year? How much bigger could Caitlin Clark become? Why not find out?