David Remnick: And it is that time of year again, March Madness, when at least for a month, college basketball is the thing in sports. It's inescapable.

Commentator: -score. It's Butler with two seconds. He's got to put it up. And he wins it. He wins it--

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David Remnick: The men's game is changing in ways that have been controversial for fans and to some disappointing. I'm thinking about the advent of the transfer portal and the one-and-done stints for student-athletes.

Michael Wilbon: It ain't what it used to be. It ain't what I hope it returns to. I'm not saying I don't want kids to have the same freedom as coaches or sportswriters or anybody to move any-- I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is, the product ain't that good right now.

David Remnick: Meanwhile, women's college basketball has emerged as an increasingly electrifying force on the sports scene. It's drawing record ratings. Right now, Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes is as well known to fans in the game as LeBron James. That's not something I would've foreseen in my early days as a sportswriter, so I sat down the other day with the New Yorker's sportswriter, Louisa Thomas.

What in God's name has happened to men's college basketball? It used to be a very exciting thing. March would come around and there would be a pool in every workplace in America and people would have all kinds of opinions. There were established stars and all the rest, and now, I got to say, not so much.

Louisa Thomas: I want to note that you just did something that a year ago, two years ago would've been completely unheard of. You qualified college basketball as men's college basketball.

David Remnick: Fair enough.

Louisa Thomas: Men's college basketball is still very big, and CBS will be paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the honor of airing it. Last year more than 12 million people watched the finals. That was a record low. More than nine million people watched the women's final. That was a record high. Twelve million is still more than nine million. Let's not get way too carried away, but it's true.

Part of that has to do with the turnover in college basketball because the best players leave for the N.B.A. very early and there hasn't been a kind of charismatic superstar like Zion Williamson at Duke, where the sort of the big school and the big player were just the perfect match and kind of attracted all this dynamic attention. Part of it is there is a kind of just excitement about the newness of the women's game that has people talking. It's not just Caitlin Clark. It's Angel Reese at L.S.U. It's the coaches. Kim Mulkey is a huge figure.

Reporter: Coach Mulkey, 10 minutes to get to a Final Four. What do you tell your team to get there now?

Kim Mulkey: Make free throws and layups. If I was watching this game, I'd turn it off. Look at that score, would you? That's some bad, offensive basketball. It might be something to these balls being too bouncy, but that's some bad ball. Make your laps, make your free throws, play hard for 10 minutes and see what happens.

Reporter: All right, thanks coach.

Kim Mulkey: You're welcome.

Louisa Thomas: Dawn Staley is a huge figure. Gino Auriemma is a huge figure. The men's coaches are kind of like-- they're yesterday's superheroes.

David Remnick: It's like Rick Pitino whining at press conferences.

Louisa Thomas: Exactly. We've seen that bef-- we saw that a decade ago. His scandals are old. They're stale.

David Remnick: He doesn't even throw a chair across the court.

Louisa Thomas: Exactly.

David Remnick: What kind of shit fit is that?

Louisa Thomas: Exactly. Can't hold a candle to one of Kim Mulkey's sequin outfits.

David Remnick: There you go.

Louisa Thomas: I think that's part of it too. They're just these kind of great, dynamic characters and budding rivalries and a sort of sense of freshness to the whole thing.

David Remnick: It makes no sense in the men's game. If you're a star in your freshman year or sophomore year, it makes absolutely no sense to play in your junior and senior year for economic reasons. Why would you risk a career-ending injury in your junior year or senior year and then be forced to make a living like a normal human being as opposed to someone who could quite possibly make a fortune as a pro basketball player?

Louisa Thomas: It might not even make sense to go to college at all. You could go to the G League, you could go to Europe. Great MVPs are coming out of Europe these days. Now, there is an argument that with the NIL money, name, image and likeness money. You can get sponsorships, you can get millions of dollars, even if you are playing college basketball. The best college basketball player in the country, Zach Edey, who plays for Purdue, is making a lot of money, and he's not a freshman. That's part of the reason why. Still, I think you're right. There's just not a great reason to stick around for four years unless you just really love the college experience.

David Remnick: One other question about the men's game, although this may spread everywhere. It was amazing to me when I saw my news alerts the other day that the Dartmouth men's basketball team - the Dartmouth men's basketball team - unionized. In all due respect to Dartmouth, this is not a good basketball team. [laughter] This is not a basketball team that its players are making a fortune or that there's a fortune to share. How did this happen, why Dartmouth, and what is it going to lead to?

Louisa Thomas: That's a huge question, a good question, and the N.C.A.A. would like to know very much the answer, thank you. [laughter] Dartmouth is writing a very kind of carefully worded statement about how it really respects unions and it's very happy that it has all these unions; however, student-athletes are students first, and therefore this is an academic enterprise and they are not athletes at all, kind of--

David Remnick: Dartmouth is resisting this effort.

Louisa Thomas: Yes. They're expected to appeal. I don't actually know if they've appealed yet.

David Remnick: All right. Let's get to the subject that we really want to talk about. I'm watching these games and I'm watching these highlights on SportsCenter in the morning of Caitlin Clark. It's not that she's good, it's not that she's great, she's insane.

Commentator 2: Up in time. Clark for the win.

David Remnick: She dribbles down the court and she stops at the logo 40 feet away. It's not like it's the end of the quarter or the end of the half. She's just pulling up and dumping them in from 40 feet. What is going on?

Louisa Thomas: Just like the coach drew up the play, right?

David Remnick: Oh my God. It's insane.

Louisa Thomas: I actually turned on an Iowa game earlier this season and I thought I was watching the highlights, like I thought it was halftime and they were showing the highlights, but no, it was playing in real time. It was just one logo three after another. It was absolutely bananas. You know the whole old cliché, she's got ice in her veins? I'm sorry, but she does.

David Remnick: I can't think of any other player including Pete Maravich, who didn't shoot threes because of when he played, but even Steph Curry doesn't shoot from 40 feet on a regular basis. Is it a case of unbelievable skill or radical impatience?

Louisa Thomas: I think that players know to crowd her as soon as she gets anywhere near the three-point line, which is one of the reasons why she is also the best passer in the country.

David Remnick: Well, she seems to look to pass-- I know it sounds insane after what I just said, but she also looks to pass first.

Louisa Thomas: Phenomenal passer. She has such great court vision.

David Remnick: Tell me a little bit about Caitlin Clark. Where did she come out of? How did this player become herself?

Louisa Thomas: I'll give you one guess. [laughs] What led her to Iowa? Iowa led her to Iowa. [laughter] She wants to stay home. She's from Iowa. There is a statue of her in butter at the Iowa State Fair. She is a pretty low-key person. She's declined most interview requests, including my own, but still hoping to change that. She's very wealthy now because of these NIL deals.

David Remnick: Do we know how wealthy and what those deals are like?

Louisa Thomas: It's several million. It's Gatorade. It's Nike. They're big, big deals. She's managed by Excel, which is one of the top basketball endorsement agencies in the world, or in the country, certainly. She's making a lot of money and it's in the seven figures.

David Remnick: What are her plans?

Louisa Thomas: She has declared for the W.N.B.A. draft. She will be the number one pick by the Indiana Fever, so she's going to stick around in the Midwest, but she could potentially change the landscape of women's sport. The question is whether or not she can carry that attention with her into the pros and also whether or not she can leave some of that attention behind, like to what extent is this a unique phenomenon around a unique player, and to what extent is this something people are turning in and they're going to watch women's basketball now?

David Remnick: Let's ask the uncomfortable question. She's certainly not the first phenomenal basketball player in the women's game. What role, if any, does race have to play with her popularity and the amount of attention she's getting?

Louisa Thomas: Oh, you can't ignore it. Certainly there have been-- women's basketball, like men's basketball, is a predominantly Black sport and the stars are predominantly white historically.

David Remnick: In the women's game.

Louisa Thomas: In the women's game. That does not mean that these women don't deserve to be-- Sue Bird is one of the great all-time players. Diana Taurasi is the greatest ever, just full stop. These women are great players in their own right and I don't think anyone would dispute that. At the same time, it's disproportion-- the attention they get is-- it's startling to see how many of the game's biggest stars are white given how many of the game's greatest players are Black. You can see some of the racial disparity. It kind of came to the fore last year during the finals when the L.S.U. team, which was led by Angel Reese, who was a very outspokenly proud Black woman was--

David Remnick: And a phenomenal player.

Louisa Thomas: And a phenomenal player and one of the best players in the country, and still one of the best players in the country, was criticized for making these kind of taunting gestures that Caitlin Clark had also made and Caitlin Clark was never criticized for the same thing. There's a racial element to that.

David Remnick: In other words, Angel Reese's gestures were racialized in the attention that got in the press.

Louisa Thomas: Exactly. You can't ignore that. At the same time, I don't think there's any person who's-- you yourself have watched her. You can't say that Caitlin Clark doesn't deserve the attention that she's got.

David Remnick: No, she plays her heart out. She's extraordinary, as is Angel Reese.

Louisa Thomas: You also see it playing out now in that South Carolina is the best team in the country, and it's led by Dawn Staley, who is another outspoken Black woman. That team doesn't get the attention that it deserves and the respect that it deserves. It's undefeated again. It was undefeated last year, would've probably won the championship if not for a very, very cold shooting night from outside and for Caitlin Clark herself. This is the team that, yes, it deserves more attention. Does race play a part? This is America; probably.

David Remnick: Now, one amazing dimension to sports in general, but even college sports, that has changed things is the legalization of gambling. The legalization of gambling is just ubiquitous, both as a matter of advertising, as a matter of activity. How has that changed the sport, if any? How aware are the players of this dimension of their jobs?

Louisa Thomas: Betting has been around for a long time. Legalized betting is relatively new, but when I was in fourth grade, I won 50 bucks on my mom's office pool. [laughs]

David Remnick: Wait a minute. You won 50 bucks? That is seriously impressive.

Louisa Thomas: I know. Well, thank you. But yes, just to say that gambling's been around, but it's in the billions of dollars. I've seen estimates of last year. This is an estimate of how much money they thought people were going to pay, but it was $15 billion or something. What's actually more unnerving to me than a lot of people are placing bets-- Most of these bets that people are placing are $20 bets in their office pool. What's more unnerving to me and where I really see it is how much betting money is infiltrating the coverage of these games.

David Remnick: Totally.

Louisa Thomas: It's just like--

David Remnick: It's talked about as part of the conversation-

Louisa Thomas: Exactly.

David Remnick: -of the sport. You watch an N.F.L. game, you watch any game of anything and it's just Shaquille O'Neal is telling Charles Barkley that he's got X dollars on the game and is he taking the under or the over.

Louisa Thomas: Every moment in the game is potential time to get a hit of money, I guess.

David Remnick: All right. Let's try to help our gambling listeners. I know you're loath to make picks, but there are listeners out there struggling to fill out their brackets. Are there any potential March madness upsets or Cinderellas you want to predict at this early juncture?

Louisa Thomas: It's so indecisive.

David Remnick: Who looks like a good shot at winning the N.C.A.A. title? Who's in the mix?

Louisa Thomas: On the women's side, I cannot go against South Carolina. They are just such a phenomenally good basketball team. On the men's side, I'm going to go with UConn to repeat.

David Remnick: Really?

Louisa Thomas: Yes, why not?

David Remnick: Really? Okay.

Louisa Thomas: They're like a scrappy college basketball league kind of thing.

David Remnick: Will you be putting cash money on this?

Louisa Thomas: Absolutely not. [laughter] I'm not insane.

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David Remnick: I think that'd be a conflict for a sportswriter, right?

Louisa Thomas: Yes, well, no.

David Remnick: Of some kind.

Louisa Thomas: Are you kidding?

David Remnick: It's legal. [laughs] All right. I'm saving my money, not betting it on a college sport, waiting for the injuries to come clear on the Knicks, and then I'm all in on that.

Louisa Thomas: All in on the Knicks.

David Remnick: Louisa Thomas, thank you so much.

Louisa Thomas: Bless you.

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David Remnick: You can find Louisa Thomas's writing at newyorker.com on virtually every sport. If you're hungry for more basketball knowledge, you'll want to check out Louisa's terrific profile of Nikola Jokić, probably the best player in the game right now. It's at newyorker.com.

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