ESPN Gets Slammed For Leaving Caitlin Clark Off Their “Top 5 Women’s College Basketball Players Of All Time” List

If you ask me, any list highlighting female success that leaves Caitlin Clark out might as well be considered satire.

To put things simply, Caitlin Clark is women’s basketball. She completely and single-handedly elevated the game, and brought more eyes to women’s sports than any other female athlete… ever. Clark now plays for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, and she continues to be a star at the pro level, but many will always remember her as an Iowa Hawkeye.

Except for ESPN… they seemingly don’t care about any of Clark’s accomplishments.

Ahead of the Women’s March Madness tournament, ESPN posted a 10 minute video that ranked the Top 5 women’s college basketball players of all time. If I was a betting man (and sometimes I am), I would have comfortably put some money on Caitlin Clark appearing on the list. How could you leave out the players who is arguably the game’s most important and influential figure?

Guess we’ll have to ask ESPN that, because here’s how their list played out:

1. Breanna Stewart

2. Candace Parker

3. Diana Taurasi

4. Maya Moore

5. Cheryl Miller

espn puts out a 10 min video ranking all time college players. they say caitlin can’t be ranked in the top 5. yet the title is “Is Caitlin Clark The Greatest Of All Time In College Basketball?” to farm engagement and hate lmfaooo pic.twitter.com/X26K6wm6pX

— correlation (@nosyone4) March 16, 2025

To get this part out of the way, all of those women are legendary basketball players. Let’s make that clear.

However… it makes ZERO sense to leave Caitlin Clark off the list, and it’s seeming like ESPN may have omitted her just to get people riled up (and I guess it’s working). The “Worldwide Leader In Sports” argued that their list was heavily dependent on women that won championships in college. And that’s fine and dandy, but this isn’t a “Top 5 All Time WBB Teams” power ranking. This is a “Top 5 WBB Players List.”

Though Clark never won a national championship with the Hawkeyes, her college resume does boast some other notable statistics:

-She’s the all-time leading scorer in NCAA women’s basketball history (3,951 points)

-She led the Iowa Hawkeyes to two straight national championship games in her last two collegiate seasons

-Games that she played in saw a 150% increase in attendance

How in the world do you not put the woman that has scored more than any other person in women’s college basketball on a top 5 list?

Because of the absurd disrespect that ESPN showed to Caitlin Clark, people online are losing their mind about this, and understandably turning on ESPN:

Like it’s ESPN are at all surprised?

— Nick_Kat (@NicholasKatsik2) March 16, 2025

There has not been a better college basketball player, on the women’s side of things, than Caitlin Clark. All you had to do was just watch one game and you could figure it out.

— J1SY (@J1SYx) March 17, 2025

ESPN is unwatchable, Caitlin Clark will have another MVP season, and they will hate her more.

— Irwin M Fletcher, Esq. (@woodifitweretru) March 17, 2025

I used to watch espn all day everyday. As of 2-3 years ago, I go out of my way to avoid it.

— bigZ (@bigZ_theone) March 17, 2025

This is stupid. It is a team sport. Caitlin Clark got Iowa to the final game twice. LSU and SC paid for a lot deeper talent on the rosters. CC was a generational talent that clearly raised the sport to highest levels ever.

— Richard Anderson (@hawkeyessoar) March 16, 2025

Top 5 players, but we’re going to use team accolades as the number 1 factor to determine the results.

— Steel Lee (@_Steel_Lee) March 17, 2025

So using the logic that you have to win a championship to be great, CC would not be in the top 1000 greatest? Guess what other all-time great college players never won a ship? Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, for a start.

— RedPillBluePill (@Chrestman33) March 16, 2025