Caitlin Clark is coming to Indy, and now everything changes -- for the Fever, for the city and for the sport

The No. 1 pick hasn't scored a single WNBA point yet, but she's an iconic figure who's going to turn her franchise, and her new league, upside-down.

When I was a kid, girls didn’t play sports. (I know, I’m ancient.) They were deemed too frail, too soft, too lacking in competitive zeal. Even after Title IX came along when I was 12 years old, women’s participation was highly limited. A small minority of athletes emerged, but they were few and far between, and if I’m being honest, we thought they were tomboys, and yes, that was a pejorative term at the time.

Now, Title IX is 52 years old and women’s sports is on an epic rise. Just weeks after the women’s national title game drew more eyeballs than the men’s final, Fever general manager Lin Dunn is talking to local media after Caitlin Clark was selected first overall in Monday’s WNBA Draft and she is marveling at how far the game, and all of women’s sports, have come.

“I never thought I’d live to see the women’s national championship game outdraw the men’s,” she said late in the evening. “I never thought I’d see that happen.

“This is a special moment in our sports. We’ve had lot of great players in our game but we didn’t have the TV, we didn’t have the visibility;  they were secret heroes and secret stars. Now what Caitlin has done is put a spotlight on the women’s game and now everybody is seeing what a great game it is…I’m thankful I’m still alive to see it.”

The Caitlin Effect.

Tickets are flying out the door. Thirty-six of 40 Fever games will be televised on national networks or streaming platforms, with eight of them being shown on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. Advertisers have come calling. There’s a mural of Clark (and Tyrese Haliburton) downtown. When the Fever go on the road, home teams are marketing her arrival in their city, even moving games to larger venues to accommodate the multitudes.

The Fever just drafted The Beatles, and will be a traveling circus wherever they go.

“The day she declared (for the WNBA Draft) in February, we immediately started selling tickets,” Dunn said. “I mean, wow, that’s unheard of. So from the business side, she’s already had a huge impact on this city. You can’t overestimate what she’s already accomplished in college with breaking all these records, and with every record she broke, the media got more excited and there was more visibility…When she chased down Pistol Pete (Maravich), that ignited everybody. It was phenomenal. She’s created this incredible attention, but she’s earned it.”