Is Caitlin Clark the next Jim Thorpe or Red Grange? I’m not speaking from an athletic sense but from an economic sense. The WNBA is in a similar situation as was professional football in 1915—except they have a sugar daddy. The WNBA operates as a loss and the NBA’s largess keeps them solvent. This subsidy makes possible paying WNBA players salaries comparable to those of their college classmates who graduate with useful degrees.
In 1915 professional football wasn’t even professional. It was semi-pro. If the team turned a profit, it was divided among the players. If there was no profit, they got nothing. Players supported themselves working regular jobs, some of which were very physical. The games were played on Sunday, not because high school games were played on Friday and colleges played on Saturday. They were played on Sunday because that was the only day most players had off from the jobs that supported themselves and their families. The 40-hour work week wasn’t instituted until 1940. Before that, most worked six days a week.
When Jack Cusack, the Canton Bulldogs semi-pro team manager, offered Jim Thorpe $250 a game to play for his team, the other managers thought he would run his team into bankruptcy. Even larger sums had been paid to ringers for single games, but no player had been paid anything to rival this amount for each and every game. The result was that attendance more than doubled at Canton’s games, making both Canton and its opponents more solvent. Keep in mind that Thorpe’s last college game was played in 1912, the same year Big Jim won gold medals in both the decathlon and pentathlon at the Stockholm Olympic games. After that, he played Major League Baseball for the New York Giants and, after the 1915 season, coached the Indiana University backfield.
The next major step in solidifying professional football as a going concern occurred a decade later at the end of the college season when Illinois star Red Grange left college to turn pro for the Chicago Bears. “The Galloping Ghost”, “The Wheaton Iceman,” or “Number 77” had gained mythical status in 1924 when he scored four touchdowns in twelve minutes against mighty Michigan. The NFL had been formed five years earlier with Jim Thorpe as its nominal commissioner. The league was far from solvent up to that time. Teams came and went, including most of the founders. Things changed when Charles C. “Cash and Carry” Pyle signed Grange to a $100,000 contract.
The question now is Will Caithlin Clark elevate the WNBA as Thorpe and Grange raised pro football?
Tags: Caitlin Clark, Jim Thorpe, Red Grange
Tom Benjey's Weblog 
June 12, 2024 at 8:53 am |
Interesting analogy, Tom.