Until you hear otherwise, it’s still Caitlin Clark season here (and everywhere)

Former Iowa star is seemingly making news daily since moving on to the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.

Editha Sison adjusts the shirt on a mannequin featuring Caitlin Clark in the Indiana Fever team store in Indianapolis last week. The Fever selected Iowa’s Clark as the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft. (Michael Conroy/Associated Press)

So, I returned to Iowa from Cleveland and waited a couple weeks for the magic dust to settle.

The Iowa women’s basketball team’s Magic Carpet Ride No. 2 had ended, and things would eventually return to normal. We’d soon spend our time concerned with trivia again, like which quarterback Iowa pulls out of the NCAA transfer portal. As Bernie Lincicome once wrote, the Chicago Bears’ next quarterback is always their best quarterback.

I figured we’d quickly come to terms with the fact nothing Hawkeyes-related will ever come close to grabbing America the way Caitlin Clark and her team did in reaching a second-straight national-championship game. Eventually, Iowans would start focusing on who’s still in the state rather than the superstar who put Iowa on the front porch of the nation’s attention span.

But the dust keeps swirling, more than ever. With Taylor Swift’s new album getting panned in many circles, it almost feels like Clark is the nation’s new No. 1 cultural icon of the moment.

With her first exhibition game with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever on May 3 and the regular season starting 11 days later, the tsunami of attention on Clark has merely moved two states to the east. Had you even heard of the Indiana Fever a year ago?

Now, it’s our turn to watch from afar. Meanwhile, which do you think is the bigger deal in Indy next month, the Indianapolis 500 or the dawn of Clark’s professional career? Hint: It doesn’t involve auto racing.

In various social settings and casual encounters the last two weeks, it’s still Clark that people are talking about here.

In any other April in the last few decades, Ed Podolak retiring as the radio color commentator on Iowa football broadcasts would be the dominant story here. That was before 55,000 people came to Kinnick Stadium on a fall Sunday to watch Clark and the Hawkeyes play an exhibition game.

I’ll get to Podolak another day soon, but there’s two weeks of Clark stuff to unpack and limited space in which to do it. On Tuesday alone, it was reported Clark has agreed to an 8-year contract with Nike worth $28 million, and includes a signature shoe.

That news came a week or so after Clark was drafted No. 1 by Indiana and the WNBA draft drew 2.45 million viewers. That was five times more than the year before.

LSU’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark pose at the WNBA draft in New York on April 15. (Adam Hunger/Associated Press)

Clark wore a $16,875 Prada outfit at the draft, and that was a story, too. Her sunglasses alone went for $575.

Indiana Fever jerseys with Clark’s name and number disappeared from stores as soon as they were put on shelves. Country music star Tim McGraw wore one at a concert in Indianapolis last Thursday, in the same arena where Clark will play her home games.

Sure, it was pandering. When in Indianapolis …

Or anywhere else, for that matter. Dick’s Sporting Goods will sell Clark’s merchandise at all 724 of its store locations.

The defending-champion Las Vegas Aces moved a home game against Indiana from their 12,000-seat venue to 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena.

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark looks to cheering fans as she arrives for the NCAA women’s basketball championship game against South Carolina on April 7 in Cleveland. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

The Washington Mystics moved a scheduled home game against the Fever from its 4,200-seat venue to the 20,000-seat Capital One Arena, and tickets sold out Tuesday in little more than a half-hour.

Monday, U.S. women’s basketball selection committee chair Jennifer Rizzotti said Clark’s early WNBA play will determine if she is offered a spot on this summer’s Olympic team.

Clark even was on the April 13 Saturday Night Live, and her comedic performance was widely acclaimed.

This doesn’t all add up as being part of the zeitgeist. This is the zeitgeist.

We’re supposed to care who is brought in to back up Cade McNamara as Iowa’s quarterback, or even become the team’s QB1?

With the Fever’s first exhibition game a week from Friday? When a former Hawkeye has Las Vegas scrambling to add more seats to see her perform? When that performer, with zero experience in live comedy, sits at SNL’s Weekend Update desk and smoothly cuts down anchor Michael Che before a television audience of 4.7 million?