Caitlin Clark sponsor bidding war made Puma look silly

We put the wrong date on our calendar. We overslept. We were attending sensitivity training with Gregg Doyel. These are all excuses that would have shone Puma in a better light than they're currently in after it was reported by The Wall Street Journal that the shoe company showed interest in signing Caitlin Clark but walked away when told that the bidding would begin at $3 million per year.

Clark ended up passing on offers from Under Armour and Adidas to sign an eight-year deal with Nike that could be worth up to $28 million and includes her own signature shoe. By signing on the dotted line, the recent National Player of the Year and No. 1 pick of the Indiana Fever laid to rest any speculation that she was taking a pay cut by leaving college.

The Nike deal dwarfs the roughly $76,000 that Clark will make in the first year of her rookie contract, but many people around women's sports are hopeful that her presence, and the fan excitement she proved she can generate while at Iowa, will lead to explosive growth for a league that is already as talent-rich as it has ever been, leading to bigger and better things when it comes to the pay the best female basketball players in the world can demand.

The $28 million Nike will pay Clark is already looking like a bargain

The WNBA is already seeing the "Clark effect," as multiple teams have already changed the venues for their home games against Clark's Fever to larger arenas to better accommodate increased ticket demand. At least three teams have already sold out of their season ticket allotment, and we're still over a week away from the NCAA's all-time scoring leader's preseason debut.

Puma evidently didn't watch Air, the Ben Affleck-directed movie about Nike's historic deal with Michael Jordan, otherwise they would have come to the table with a strong offer for the player who has helped create unprecedented popularity in the women's game. Think of the number of young girls who have become women's basketball fans in the past few years because of Clark. Think of how many will play the game and go on to play in college or the WNBA because Clark sparked their interest in the first place. Heck, think of the number of people of all ages that have been entranced by the women's game, leading the women's Final Four to better ratings than their male counterparts for the first time in history.

The positive press of riding what seems to be an unstoppable wave of popularity should return enough on the deal for Nike, to say nothing of the number of Clark's shoes the company will surely sell. It's been abundantly clear that Clark's marketability will be profitable for any company that pairs with her, as Fanatics has already reported that the sales of Clark's jersey broke the company's single-day record, which was previously held by Trevor Lawrence of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.

With or without Clark, women's basketball is in the best place it's ever been. Stars such as A'ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, and Breanna Stewart have raised the level of play in the WNBA to new heights, while the rest of the 2024 rookie class, which includes 2024 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Kamilla Cardoso, 2023 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Angel Reese, and Pac-12 Player of the Year Cameron Brink, is one of the most exciting classes in the 29-year history of the league.

The hype around Clark and her electric game is more than just the cherry on top, though. The sharpshooting superstar has been compared to Steph Curry and Pete Maravich because of her limitless range and sweet passing, but she really has a chance to do what Jordan did in the late '80s and early '90s: become the face of a league that was already growing in popularity and drag it to a new frontier. Nike got in on the ground floor of that for just $28 million, while Puma and the rest will be kicking themselves in their non-Clark shoes for years to come.