Jay Bilas: Pause with me for a moment and appreciate Caitlin Clark

I grew up in an era when women’s sports were lower than second class.

Billie Jean King was fighting not just for equality, but for the most basic recognition in a largely misogynistic society. When I was a kid, the now cartoonish-seeming tennis match against the aging Bobby Riggs in the Houston Astrodome carried significant consequences for the advancement of women’s sports should King have dropped the match.

Thankfully, she didn’t.

When I first started playing organized basketball in 1974, girls didn’t have similar opportunities. As I reached seventh grade, the only woman I was aware of playing basketball was Ann Meyers at UCLA (in part because she was David Meyers’ sister), and I recall the largely negative reaction when Meyers went to training camp with the Indiana Pacers.

The girl I actually played against was Cheryl Miller, around 1977. She was playing for a boys team and it was unheard of for a girl to play basketball against boys at that time. Miller went on to be arguably the greatest women’s basketball player of all time. Yet, when Miller finished her career at USC as the best women’s player in the world, there was nowhere in the United States for her to play. There was no WNBA and no place but overseas to chase a professional dream.

Through Title IX and the courageous efforts of so many, women’s sports have not only grown, but thrived. Whether it’s Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Chamique Holdsclaw, Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore, Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart, Kelsey Plum and countless others, women’s basketball is now mainstream and at its apex of popularity.

Yet, with all of those great players of the past, we have never seen anything quite like the phenomenon that is Iowa‘s Caitlin Clark.

Clark is now the all-time scoring champion of NCAA women’s basketball. She is the most exciting and recognizable college basketball player in the country. Period. Men or women. Her games sell out, at home and on the road. Every sports fan knows her. Every. Single. One. Yet, the responsibility of carrying the women’s game doesn’t seem to faze her one bit.

She is not the Pete Maravich or Steph Curry of women’s basketball, she is a singular star in American culture, having cut her own trailblazing path along with the likes of Ann Meyers, Nancy Lieberman, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke and others.

Clark just made history by passing Plum — with a career-high 49 points at home on Thursday against Michigan — as the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I women’s basketball. But this historic milestone is more significant than just scoring more points than anyone else. Clark has changed and elevated the game to heights not imaginable to the women of the 1970s, 1980s, or even the early 2000s. Someday, her record might be broken by USC‘s JuJu Watkins or some young girl now dribbling a ball with a dream inspired by Clark.

But Clark’s record-breaking career won’t be forgotten, and we are all lucky to be able to watch and appreciate it. Appreciate her. Enjoy Caitlin Clark. Another might score more points in the future, but we will never see the likes of her again. Ever. She is — and has been — that significant to the game of basketball.