As the Caitlin Clark hype train rolls toward the WNBA, everybody wants a piece.

Clark signed endorsement deals with the likes of Buick, Gatorade, Goldman Sachs, Hy-Vee, Nike, State Farm and Topps, while breaking basketball records at the University of Iowa — and her skyrocketing brand is showing zero signs of slowing down.

She even stole the show on "Saturday Night Live" for crying out loud.

Clark’s next chapter is professional basketball, where she’ll join an Indiana Fever squad that finished 13-27 a season ago. She’ll pair with fellow No. 1 overall pick Aliyah Boston (2023) with sights set on laying the foundation for the W’s next powerhouse.

Like all good things, though, it’ll take time.

Legendary Las Vegas bookmaker Robert Walker is probably the biggest women’s basketball fan who works in the betting racket. He cut his teeth at the Stardust and MGM back in the day, and currently directs the sportsbook operation at BetLeroy’s.

"I’m a bookmaker, but I’m a fan first," Walker told FOX Sports. "I remember when Diana Taurasi came into the league. There was certainly a buzz when she got drafted, but this is an entirely different conversation. The appetite to consume Clark is second to none.

"Nobody has grown the women’s game more than Caitlin Clark."

The league is already giving Clark and the Fever the Beatles treatment, as they’ll play 36 of their 40 regular-season games on national television. 

No pressure. 

However, Walker cautions those who believe Clark will come in right away and dominate the sport the way she dominated the Big Ten and the NCAA women’s tournament.

"There will be nights she’ll score 30 and others she’ll score eight," Walker said. "That’s life as a rookie. The competition is significantly stronger and players are bigger and faster across the board. I think Clark is a decent defender, but guarding Jewell Loyd and Kelsey Plum and Arike Ogunbowale is a different story.

"You also have to remember most WNBA rookies deal with the eventual burnout after a 30-game collegiate season, let alone a superstar who carried all that extra pressure to another deep Final Four run. Fatigue tends to kick in for everyone in that first year."

Reminder: the WNBA’s regular season begins on May 14.

I'm tired just thinking about that turnaround.

Walker estimates Clark is already three points better than the average WNBA player, but it’s difficult to price her true value to the betting line without a single game under her belt. 

That said, there’s no ignoring Clark’s ceiling. Everybody knows about her scoring, but Walker gushes about her innate court vision and passing ability. He knows assists can be deceiving, too. How many times did Clark draw double or triple coverage, only to zip a pass to a wide-open Hawkeye teammate who missed a bunny?

"Her skills remind me of a young Steph Curry," Walker said. "The ball handling, the vision, the range out to 30 feet. We’ve never seen a player in the WNBA shoot like she can."

Clark is the current favorite to win Rookie of the Year (-600) and as low as 12/1 for MVP.

As for team goals, Indiana is probably thinking playoffs for the upcoming campaign. But in a league with two super teams — the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty — the rebuilding Fever are understandably a few years away from going toe-to-toe with the league’s best.

Las Vegas is currently even money (+100) to win the WNBA championship at one American sportsbook, followed closely by New York (+230). Then there’s everybody else.

Seattle (+1000), Connecticut (+1200), Dallas (+2400), Phoenix (+2400) all have shorter odds than Indiana (+3300), followed by Atlanta (+4200), Minnesota (+4200), Chicago (+6500), Washington (+8500) and Los Angeles (+10000).

How many wins is fair?

"I would open [Indiana’s total] 20.5," Walker said. "You have to consider how they’ll bet you. The season hasn’t started yet and Indiana’s a fan favorite. The team will be better, though. Boston will improve in Year 2 and NaLyssa Smith missed 10 games last year.

"They’re still a middle-of-the-pack team with deficiencies. Asking Clark to carry Indiana to a WNBA championship is a more daunting task than winning a national title at Iowa. Las Vegas doesn’t have any holes and New York is a juggernaut.

"So yeah, I would open just north of 20. And I’m not moving that number either way until one of my sharp players makes a move. If somebody bets you ‘Over,’ you scoot the number up. The truth is, there are probably others waiting to come ‘Under’ 21.5.

"The money always tells the story." 

Sam Panayotovich is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and NESN. He previously worked for WGN Radio, NBC Sports and VSiN. He'll probably pick against your favorite team. Follow him on Twitter @spshoot. 

Chase Elliott's win at last week's AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway was his first since October 2022, which came at Talladega Superspeedway.

With a 42-race losing streak behind him, is Elliott officially back to elite form?

On the latest edition of "Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour," Kevin Harvick provided his perspective on what the win means for Elliott.

"He was as aggressive as I've ever seen him race, especially over the last couple years. He managed to gain a lot of spots on the restarts, put himself in position [to win]. Chase and Ross Chastain, they were the two guys that I thought were the most aggressive on the restarts, and they were also the two guys that stayed up front the most during the day. Huge win for Chase Elliott, huge win for our sport. Super happy for Chase. We all need Chase Elliott to be successful, and I think sometimes he feels that pressure," Harvick said. "I would assume that it probably weighs on him a little bit. He's had a ton of things that have weighed on him really over the last couple years with his injury, getting suspended, switching to the new car, having to answer all the questions about 'What is it?' And him openly saying, ‘Hey, this car has presented some new challenges to me.' 

"But the thing that I love about this particular situation is the fact that there was no crew chief change; there was no team change. It was just ‘Hey, we're going to work through this, and we're going to figure out what it takes to get you through this,' and I think everybody knows that Chase Elliott has the ability to drive a race car fast."

Elliott led 39 laps and won the race by .558 seconds. The win put Elliott fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series in total points (303), while giving him his fourth top-10 finish and third top-five finish this season. Elliott, 28, has 19 career wins and was the 2020 Cup Series champion.

Last season, Elliott suffered a broken leg one month into the season, which forced him to miss six races. Shortly after returning to the track, Elliott was suspended by NASCAR for intentionally wrecking Denny Hamlin. Elliott went on to miss the Cup Series postseason and finish 17th.

With a chaotic 2023 campaign — and now a prolonged victory-lane drought — in the rearview mirror, Harvick thinks it's full speed ahead for Elliott.

"There's a mental side to this sport that is something that not everybody understands and looks at. There's a circle of life that goes through being successful in this sport," Harvick said. "If you want to be successful in anything that you do to the ultimate level, you have to have your stuff together with your team, your stuff together with your personal life, your stuff together with your finances, whatever that is, you have to have all that in line … I think everything has been unbalanced for Chase over the last couple years because of all the other things outside of racing that he's had to deal with. Hopefully, this kind of sets that path forward for those guys."

Elliott will shoot for back-to-back wins this coming Sunday in the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway (3 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app).

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CHICAGO (AP) — Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal kicked off a United States visit Tuesday with multiple stops in Chicago aimed at drumming up investment and business in the war-torn country.

He spoke to Chicago-area business leaders before a joint news conference with Penny Pritzker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, and her brother, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

UKRAINE PRIME MINISTER URGES US AID APPROVAL FOR AMMUNITION TO END RUSSIA’S INVASION

Shmyhal's trip comes comes as Congress is considering an aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other allies.

"We would warmly welcome the participation of Illinois companies in projects related to the recovery of Ukraine," he told reporters, calling it the country's "most difficult time" in recent history.

He cited World Bank estimates of $486 billion needed for recovery over the next decade. For example, more than 250,000 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed since Russia invaded in 2022, he said.

Shmyhal also thanked Illinois for sending hundreds of ambulances.

Penny Pritzker, former U.S. Commerce secretary, said the U.S. aid package is critical to save Ukraine's economy and win the war.

She said the mission was also personal with her family's Ukrainian roots. The Pritzkers are heirs to their family’s Hyatt hotel fortune. Their great-grandfather fled Kyiv, Ukraine, more than 140 years ago, Penny Pritzker said.

NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher has gone viral over her old tweets, which show her support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, after she attempted to address a senior NPR editor's concerns about the outlet's left-leaning bias. 

Maher, who took over as NPR's CEO and president last month, wrote a letter to NPR staffers on Friday after senior editor Uri Berliner called out his own outlet's biased reporting on major news stories, such as Russiagate, Hunter Biden's laptop and the COVID-19 lab leak theory. 

Maher said questioning the integrity of NPR's journalists was "hurtful" and "demeaning." 

"Asking a question about whether we're living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning," Maher wrote in the letter to staff, Fox News Digital reported.

NPR EDITOR'S BOMBSHELL ESSAY CAUSING 'TURMOIL' AT LIBERAL OUTLET: REPORT

Maher's own posts suggest her impartiality can be questioned, however.

Maher, who served as the CEO for Web Summit and Wikimedia Foundation prior to taking over NPR, wrote on X in May 2020 that while "looting is counterproductive," it was "hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people's ancestors as private property."

In another post on the thread, Maher said that property damage was "not the thing" Americans should be upset over. 

"Also to be clear, I am not conflating provocateurs with protestors. Instead, saying this should not be the thing anyone sheds tears over. Cheesecakes are insured; the right to be black and breathe is without measure," she wrote.

The New York Times published an op-ed in 2020 by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ar., in June 2020 titled: "Send in the Troops," which made an argument in favor of the president deploying the military to quell the George Floyd riots that sparked havoc in cities across the country. 

The op-ed was met with widespread backlash from reporters at the newspaper. The op-ed was updated with a lengthy editors note and two members of the Times Opinion staff, James Bennet and Adam Rubenstein, were pushed out at the Times as a result. Another staffer, James Dao, was reassigned to a different department. 

Maher took issue with the Cotton op-ed in 2020 as well, and said it was "full of racist dog whistles." She argued it was based on the "false premise that the country is in a state of ‘disorder.'"

"It's more correctly in a state of protest (disorder itself being racially coded for anytime white supremacy is challenged)," she added.

Maher said it "shamed the NYT to publish an op-ed that sh/would never have passed journalistic editorial review.

In another 2020 post, Maher is seen donning a Biden for President hat and said it was the "best part" of her "get out the vote" efforts. 

Several of her old posts that have resurfaced reference concern over White privilege, and concern over "White silence."

NPR RELIED ON ‘EVER-PRESENT MUSE' ADAM SCHIFF DURING RUSSIAGATE TO ‘DAMAGE’ TRUMP, EDITOR SAYS

In June 2020, Maher declared "White silence is complicity." 

"If you are White, today is the day to start a conversation in your community," she continued. 

The NPR president wrote in July 2020 that there were "lots of jokes about leaving the U.S."

"I get it. But as someone with cis white mobility privilege, I'm thinking I'm staying and investing in ridding ourselves of this specter of tyranny," she added. 

And some social media posts that date back to 2016 have resurfaced as well. Maher identified herself as an "unalloyed progressive" supporting Clinton in the 2016 election. 

She also had some criticism for Clinton at the time, and said she wished the former Democratic presidential nominee "wouldn't use the language of ‘boy and girl,'" because it was "erasing language for non-binary people."

Critics, such as Donald Trump and other members of the GOP, have called to "defund NPR," in response to the resurfaced social media posts, and Berliner's concerns about the outlet's reporting. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit body which distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS, was granted $525 million in advanced funding for 2024. It was created out of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act to disburse federal grants to public broadcasters around the country. NPR has insisted it receives "less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget" from the federally funded CPB, but a deep dive into the data shows CPB funds smaller stations that funnel cash to NPR. 

Berliner wrote in an essay for the Free Press that NPR's coverage veered off the deep end when Trump was elected in 2016. He cited its coverage of Russiagate first and said NPR "hitched our wagon" to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who peddled Trump-Russia collusion claims for years.

In his essay for The Free Press, Berliner noted Maher joining the company and advised her not to "tell people how to think."

"A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think," he wrote.

NPR didn't respond to a request for comment.

Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Brian Flood contributed to this report.

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Liberal actress Jane Fonda appeared at multiple high-profile events this week to promote her climate activism.

The 86-year-old Fonda, who has been arrested while participating in past climate protests, tried to rev up famous faces at a Beverly Hills fundraiser against big oil in California, and later in the week, educate college students at USC Annenberg that the climate crisis is a "manifestation of racism, misogyny and patriarchy."

She also apologized to young people, saying, "I’m sorry that we’ve created this issue for you." 

Fonda’s first event was a star-studded fundraiser she hosted to raise money to keep California from overturning SB 1137, a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., signed in 2022 that bars new oil and gas wells from being built within 3,200 feet of homes, hospitals, nursing homes and schools. 

DREW BARRYMORE, JENNIFER ANISTON AND MORE HOLLYWOOD WOMEN WHO ARE VOCAL ABOUT THEIR SINGLE STATUS

Opponents of the bill amassed more than 620,000 signatures so that the new law’s status would be subject to a ballot measure in November, meaning that state voters will decide whether it goes into effect or not.

Fonda’s "Art for a Safe and Healthy California" Beverly Hills fundraiser on April 9 sought to sell donated artwork for the sake of raising money for initiatives to keep SB 1137 in place, 

The event featured famous guests like Chelsea Handler, Maria Shriver, and Judd Apatow, as well as also celebrity performer John Legend, who co-hosted the event with Fonda along with his wife, Chrissy Teigen.

Eric and Wendy Schmidt were also co-hosts of the event, as was Larry Gagosian, the owner of the famed Gagosian gallery, where the event was held.

Fonda spoke during the event, focusing her message on calling out the big oil companies working to overturn SB 1137. "I feel very pissed off about it. People have fought for [this] for almost a century," she said, adding, "There are almost 3 million people in California that live next to a well, and about 700 organizations have been focused on this. And they fought like hell."

Fonda continued, praising the governor for being the first governor to push back against big oil in the state. "Oil, for centuries, has ruled California, and no governor had been willing to touch it until Governor Newsom. And so when he signed the bill, we were so happy. And then to have the oil companies trying to overturn it is unconscionable. They have to be stopped."

She encouraged attendees, "Talk about it. Let everybody you know, know. Donate [if you can], but also if we have awareness, we win. Because truth is on our side, so we just have to get the word out."

JANE FONDA SUGGESTS ‘MURDER’ TO FIGHT ABORTION LAWS IN WILD APPEARANCE ON ‘THE VIEW’

Later in the week, Fonda spoke at several events at USC Annenberg, most notably at a panel on environmental issues.

During the event, Fonda shared with the crowd how she got her start in climate activism, talked a bit about her Fire Drill Fridays rallies that she started in 2019 to protest inaction on climate change, and spoke about the time she spent in jail after being arrested during a protest.

"I turned 82 in jail. What was so great is that most of the people that came had never been to a rally before and never gotten arrested before," she said.

The actress also apologized to the young audience as they must bear the damage caused by climate change. "I’m sorry that we’ve created this issue for you," she said. "But we can overcome it if we work fast and create awareness."

Fonda stressed the stakes of the moment, declaring, "We have to change people. The climate crisis is a manifestation of racism, misogyny and patriarchy. It’s a mindset. When we confront the fossil fuel industry, we have to work on our mindsets."

She also touted the importance of how activists need to deliver their messages, stating, "It’s how you make them feel. Stories are the best way to make people feel furious, sad, angry, whatever."

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