Money Ruins Everything

Caitlin Clark was an Iowa kid, who lived to play basketball, and was amazingly good at it.  She played when she was in college, at the University of Iowa, and the team were the regional basketball champions. 

Then Caitlin was scouted out by the Indiana Fever (a professional basketball team), and joined them for the 2024 season. 

At first, she focused mainly on getting hoops from whereever she was on the court whenever she got possession, and the team only did moderately well, or actually, quite poorly.  Then, by some magic, the team began to do better; they put together moves that involved several of the players in combination, and began winning games.  After the Olympic break, the Fever came roaring back, and began to get the big reputation. 

Ɓut there were lots of challenges to those who claimed that Caitlin was instrumental in the team's improved playing.  There were initially challenges to Caitlin's value from rivals within the team; it was said that the media was ignoring senior players who had put in years of service to the team, in favor of this rookie who was the big sensation from college.  There were remarks that the media loved Caitlin mostly because she was White, in contrast to most of the other players. 

Meanwhile, the statisticians were pointing out that the WNBA was making millions of dollars more from ticket sales and TV ratings than they had ever done before, and were ascribing it to Caitlin's presence; people wanted to watch Caitlin play, they declared.  The league, and the Fever, were rolling in money that they had earned since Caitlin had joined the league.  That seemed to clinch the argument: Caitlin was making money for the WNBA, and the Fever.

At this point, I was thoroughly frustrated.  It seemed to me—being unfamiliar with the way things are valued in sports—that this attitude cheapened Caitlin's value as a team player, but there was no sign that Caitlin herself was disappointed. 

Meanwhile, the athletic bean-counters were gleefully estimating how much more money Caitlin was going to make the Fever and the WNBA over the season, once they had got into the playoffs. 

But the Fever was eliminated in the first round.  And an entirely expected—to me, anyway—consequence was that the Caitlin fans stopped watching the Fever games, stopped attending the playoffs, and stopped watching the women's basketball sportscasters, and all the organizations that depended on TV ratings started losing money. 

At first, I was quite amused.  Well, there you go, I thought to myself, Caitlin may not be as great a player as we thought, but once she stops playing, the WNBA sure loses a lot of real money. 

Well, it's not money that they had already earned; it was money that they were hoping to earn.  It was chickens they had counted that hadn't been hatched yet.  But it seemed to me that a lot of professional sports is about estimating unhatched chickens.