It couldn’t have been a more fitting conclusion to the women’s World Cup: Hope Solo jumping up and down, flapping her arms about in a fulsome effort to distract Japan’s expressionless Saki Kumagai—who never once looked in Solo’s direction and calmly booted the ball past the flailing U.S. goalkeeper for the winning margin. Time to go home now. It must be confessed, however, that losing is only marginally worse than winning as far as American soccer is concerned. After all, how many people remember that the U.S. women won the very first women’s World Cup in 1991? Or in 1999? They haven’t won the cup since, but unlike Olympic softball, where U.S. women dominate because it isn’t yet an “international” sport—and likely never will be—it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world, more soccer-mad than the U.S., caught up. As I mentioned last week, the U.S. women’s initial advantage was that they had a greater pool of athletes to draw from due to the limitations of professional sports options. The U.S. soccer team will continue to be a potent force on the international scene, but as far as drilling into the American sport’s psyche, that moment has already passed, and despite all the cheerleading on ESPN (naturally, because they needed to boost ratings) and the media in general, winning probably wouldn’t have been much more significant in the long run. We may recall that in the 1970s, men’s soccer was “all the rage,” but even with a mega-superstar like Pele attracted by big dollars to play in the U.S., it turned out to be just a temporary fad.
What we are left with is a lot handwringing and finger-pointing. For example, one late night Fox Sports radio host mentioned that despite the rumors that U.S. women’s sports was heavily represented by those of the alternative sexual orientation, he thought that a couple of the soccer players looked like they might have kids in the future; it was an admittedly silly thing to say, and one that could easily be misconstrued. I suspect that people who otherwise do not listen to sports radio, but were adamant that the “right” things were being said about the women, jumped on the phone lines. The radio host spent the next two hours fielding calls from people who accused him of being small-minded and bigoted for just making the observation. To me, the sexual orientation of the players is only of interest in the context of the fact that there were no racial minorities on the team; it might be a more interesting conversation to discuss the connection between sexual orientation and race on the U.S. team.
However, both national and local commentators concentrated their complaints on the “unsatisfying” way the finals ended, on penalty kicks. This was a bit hypocritical and sour grapes, considering how the media gushed over the U.S.’ “thrilling” triumph over Brazil on penalty kicks. According to them, soccer should institute an overtime period rather than “extra time,” and the “golden goal”—i.e. the first goal in overtime—would be the match winner. Of course, if that was the rule in the U.S.-Brazil match, then people would not be bellyaching about the U.S.’ misfortune, since they wouldn’t be playing in the World Cup title match at all.
Since many people bemoan the fact that women’s sports do not generate the kind of rapt attention that men’s sports do, the media made out the U.S. team as “all the rage” and tried to force feed that impression. The television ratings for the final were “impressive”—7.4, or 13.5 million viewers, which would have propelled it into the top five for the week in the Neilsens. Nevertheless, it was a special, one-off event, and suggests nothing about interest in the sport. It was almost 50 percent off the 1999 women’s World Cup final, which the U.S. won against China, and 15 percent off the Spain-Netherlands men’s World Cup final last year. But to put this in proper perspective, if soccer in this country was as popular as it is in many other countries, we would be seeing Super Bowl XLV-like numbers--a 46 rating and 111 million viewers. Worldwide, there were allegedly 400 million “tweets” made during the match given as evidence of the “rage”; but a “tweet”—like that made by a bird—can be nothing more than a barely literate sound, like “goal!” or “good play” or “bad call.” A person can post hundreds of them all by his or herself.
Still, I have to admit that in spite of the degree of dislike I felt for the U.S. team and its egotistical face, Hope Solo, I found it impossible to root for Japan, since there racism is an ingrained part of the culture. So I didn’t give a damn who won. I did find it interesting that no one in the media talked about the make-up of the U.S. team (save for those wanting to make sexual-orientation an issue). I scoured the web, and it was impossible to find anyone who was at all disturbed by it—which may be more a function of how of little importance the vast majority of Americans apply to the sport.
Did I say impossible? Well, nothing is “impossible.” I found this commentary from a certain “Professor Harold Black”:
“I admit I am not a soccer fan but we have been inundated with US women's soccer and the world cup. This is the whitest, least diverse squad I have ever seen. It makes the BYU sports teams look like the University of Memphis. There is not a single black or Asian player. There is one Hispanic surnamed player who looks like a blond Barbie. This is in contrast to the men's squad that has Hispanics, blacks and Asians. That squad looks like America. Yet I have heard not a single word of outrage among the usual suspects. Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Or even Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi? Yet Germany (Muslims), Canada, the Brits, Brazil all have diverse squads. I have not looked at all the team photos but I would not be surprised by a diverse Swedish, Columbian or Australian squad either. I would be surprised by a diverse North Korean or Nigerian squad (but maybe they have diverse tribal groups). But that the US is not diverse is a travesty. It is hard to imagine that there are no world class minority women soccer players in the US. I would have thought that Title 9 would have increased these numbers dramatically. So please someone: what is going on?”
Well for one thing, professor, it is bad manners to accuse white women of racism; after all, if you ask a feminist like Eleanor Smeal, another thing that this country suffers from is “racism against white women”—which, of course, suggest a strong element of self-centricity. If you ask a white supremacist, he or she will say that the women are simply applying the “natural” order of the world. There are others, of course, who say that this is not an issue at all, and that even mentioning it constitutes racism on the part of the offended party. On the other hand, white men might not be able to jump, but it would be unthinkable not to include at least a couple of them on an Olympic basketball “dream team.” So what gives? As I suggested last week, I really do believe that quite opposed to the myth of inclusion, empathy and universal sisterhood, women are in general more self-centered than men, and when you get a bunch of white women with a combination of massive ego with a touch of white superiority together with a dash of victim mythology, you tend to have such a resulting “team.”
Am I being too hard on women? I don't think so. After all, their "spokespeople" in the media and academia set themselves up for a hard fall with all the "superior than men" rhetoric backed-up by at best highly debatable "evidence." If they mean morally and ethically, it's a matter of relativity, not of fact.
There are those who wonder what’s next for women’s soccer until the next World Cup. There is a women’s professional league in this country, which I’m sure that almost everyone for whom soccer is not life-and-death is completely unaware of. The only thing that would interest me is what that 2015 team will look like. One thing that I hope is that Hope is not a part of it.
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