Prof. Pam Creedon
Professor Emerita, The University of Iowa. Co-editor of Media, Women and the Transformation of Sport: From Title IX to NIL (Routledge, 2024), she edited Media, Women and Sport: Challenging Gender Values (Sage, 1994). She continues her research in gender and inclusion focused on political intersection.
Email: pam-creedon@uiowa.edu
Dr. Laura A. Wackwitz
Director at Cable Creek Publishing & Productions. Co-editor of Media, Women and the Transformation of Sport: From Title IX to NIL (2024, Routledge). Her research examines the intersection of discourse, power, and sport, including an early history of sex testing and an analysis of the category “women.”
Email: laura@cablecreekpublishing.com
Fan interest in the 2024 U.S. women’s Olympic 5×5 basketball team dribbled around the selection of Caitlin Clark, the first WNBA draft pick in 2024. When Caitlin didn’t make the Olympic roster, social media dubbed it the “Clark Snub.”
The 2024 U.S. women’s team, which had won gold in the previous seven Olympics, raised fan concern over the player selection process. Some questioned the selection of Chelsea Gray over Clark, both of whom are guards. Gray, who hadn’t played for nearly a year in the WNBA due to a foot injury, attended the Olympic training camp in March but did not return to game play until June 19, 2024. Clark couldn’t attend Olympic training camp because her University of Iowa team was in the NCAA Final Four.
Concern over player selection for Team USA women’s basketball is not confined to the Paris Games. Thirty-year-old Candace Parker was snubbed in 2016, arguably because the Olympic team coach Geno Auriemma didn’t want her. In 2021, 30-year-old Nneka Ogwumike reportedly was snubbed by then Olympic coach Dawn Staley’s decision regarding the status of Ogwumike’s knee injury.
The “Clark Snub” controversy rested on the five-member U.S. Women’s National Team Player Selection Committee that chose the 2024 team players. Seven of the 12 players selected have Olympic 5×5 experience, two have 3×3 experience and three are first time Olympians. The committee was comprised of Staley, University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach, U.S. Olympic Tokyo games coach, and three time Olympic gold medalist (2008, 2012, 2016); Seimone Augustus, Louisiana State University assistant women’s basketball coach, who played on three U.S. Gold medal teams (2008, 2012, 2016); Delisha Milton-Jones, Old Dominion University basketball coach and two time Olympic gold medalist (2000, 2008); Jennifer Rizzotti, Connecticut Sun president, who is head coach of the 2024 U.S. 3×3 Olympic team; and Bethany Donaphin, WNBA head of league operations, who played two seasons in the WNBA. Rizzotti explained the committee’s team selection, saying: “The 12 that we selected, we felt were the best when it boiled down to a basketball decision.”
The Selection Committee “Clark Snub” was a three-pointer for Christine Brennan of USA Today. Brennan, who has reported on every summer Olympics since 1984, described the decision not to include Clark as an “airball on opportunity:” lamenting that “USA Basketball had it within its power to give women’s basketball the most significant global platform it has ever had…and it failed to do so.”
ESPN sports analyst Stephen A. Smith would agree. He called the decision “dumb period,” arguing that Clark provided the ultimate opportunity for the WNBA to build its brand. Brand building is an Olympic sport as well with the 2024 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) positioning Team USA as a brand at center court for the Paris games. The USOPC has a new power forward: One for All, a brand platform to improve fan engagement by bringing Team USA to “the center of cultural conversation.” Of this effort, Jess Park, USOPC Chief of Brand & Fan Engagement, asks the question, “How do we ignite that talkability of Team USA and our athletes so that we are unavoidable?” Clark fans have an answer.
Clark’s global fan appeal and visibility in the games garnered social media posts clamoring less than a week before the Paris opening ceremony, when the WNBA All-Stars beat the Olympic Team USA. Later, during Team USA’s preliminary Olympic game—a rematch of the 2021 Olympic games between 2021 Gold U.S and Silver Japan—a Japanese fan held up a poster “You need Caitlin Clark to beat us.” Fans trolled his image, and the baiting went around the world. Headlines described it as brutal and a disaster. At the next preliminary game, German fans wearing Clark #22 shirts spotted in the stands said they had been “following her since high school.” And the image of young girls cheering Team USA hit social media with the combination of their Clark jerseys and a sign that read “Make us dream.”
Interviewed at the start of the Olympic games, Selection Committee member Staley summed it up: “If we had it to do over all again… she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people.”
For her part, Clark has demonstrated her ability to score deep threes on and off the court, showcasing her worth as a team player with a winning attitude. Clark commended the 2024 U.S. Olympic team, adding “I was a kid that grew up watching the Olympics. It’ll be fun to watch them.”
Without Clark, Team USA added to its gold medal count, defeating France by a single point. But it lost an opportunity to turn around lackluster fan performance on the world stage—according to a recent Gallup study of summer Olympic sport viewing choices, women’s basketball was at the bottom of respondents’ first choices with only 2%. Brennan summed it up, saying, “USA Basketball left the woman who would have changed all of this at home.”
