The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was named the “fastest-growing brand in professional sports in 2024” by Forbes, with much attention centered on Indiana Fever’s number one draft pick, Caitlin Clark. Considering Clark is a white heterosexual woman, she stands in contrast to the WNBA’s historical and current demographic makeup, in which the majority are women of color and LGBTQIA+ (Yanity, 2024). This tension between societal majority and league minority raises important sociological questions about how discourse is being produced about Caitlin Clark. Therefore, this study utilized a Critical Discourse Analysis approach to examine the ways four leading sports media publications – CBS Sports, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and Yahoo! Sports – produced discourse about Caitlin Clark during her rookie season in the WNBA utilizing contemporary theorizations of her identities (Fairclough, 2010). Our findings revealed that Clark was portrayed as a savior, living legend, deserving of grace, and a victim. We argue that sport media’s discourse around Caitlin Clark has been instrumental in perpetuating racial ideologies of White saviorism, privilege, and victimization within the broader contexts of sport and society.
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