SOMETIMES A GAME IS JUST A GAME
BARNES, FRED
SOMETIMES A GAME IS JUST A GAME By Fred Barnes It was a heist, and Katie Couric was one of the thieves. Two days after the U.S. women's soccer team defeated China and won the World Cup, Couric...
...The incessant rap about Title IX was only one example of the mixture of ignorance and make-believe that dominated the coverage of the World Cup...
...They "showed us leadership and teamwork—and they kicked butt...
...If this was analyzed, I missed it...
...And no amount of media pretending can change that, even in the case of as wonderful a group of athletes as the American women's soccer team...
...This was at least a fresh angle, basically a claim that not only was the women's team rising to new heights, but that millions of fans were having a life-changing experience...
...After the victory over China, Aaron Brown asserted on ABC's World News Tonight, "This is Title IX come of age...
...Only the game...
...In a way, the media dissed the American players...
...Yet, somehow, the media came to the conclusion the victory in 1999 constituted a sudden, meaningful breakthrough for women's sports and women in general...
...Chastain chuckled, but Couric didn't lighten up...
...More important to the media, she met the androgynous ideal of women as men who can have babies: muscular, irreverent, aggressive...
...One of the favorite tropes of the media was that "little girls" were galvanized by the American team's triumphant run in 1999...
...She had done exactly what men do...
...In an era when the egos of male athletes are dwarfed only by their paychecks, the World Cup women, minimum wagers by pro-sports standards, reminded the country that sports superstars can be gracious and grateful...
...Then they went on to play on select teams that competed around the Washington, D.C., area...
...Chastain's teammate Julie Foudy, Couric noted, had worn a bikini for a photo in Sports Illustrated of her running along the beach with her husband...
...No one uttered that blasphemous fact...
...Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said the team represents "a new comfortable place for the women's movement...
...The truth is, Title IX did not create the soccer mania that has gripped American girls...
...They "taught the rest of us lessons," according to Newsweek...
...So what was stolen here...
...Time noted this, but still got it only half right...
...The next evening on ABC, Judy Muller claimed the U.S...
...Akers got attention for having bravely overcome a dozen knee operations, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other ailments, but other players got far less...
...That's sad, because American women play soccer with amazing dexterity and panache...
...Even the 1973 tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, the famous gender grudge duel, was less politicized than the U.S...
...They're much more exciting to watch than men, if only because their game is more wide-open and offense-oriented...
...The winners, according to the pundits, were feminists, the feminist agenda, Title IX, the women's movement, women with corporate ambitions, androgynous women, and little girls who will now be emboldened to give up their Barbies and play soccer...
...The preferred tack was captured by the oft-aired Nike ad with Hamm competing with Michael Jordan to the song (from Annie Get Your Gun) "Anything You Can Do...
...What's going on here?'" Foudy responded that the picture merely showed you could be both a woman and a strong athlete...
...The only games they saw on TV were tapes I acquired, with considerable difficulty, of the 1991 women's team's drive to the World Cup...
...They're just not as big and strong and fast and aggressive as men, and thus do not play with as much power...
...She said penalty kicks in women's soccer are all about placement because the women goalkeepers aren't athletic enough to stop a well-placed ball...
...Frankly, I'd never heard of this conventional wisdom before...
...Couric wanted to know why Brandi Chastain, the player who kicked the winning goal and then tore off her shirt, had posed nude for Gear magazine...
...More than 7 million women play soccer in America, most of them under 18...
...The enthusiasm for the 1999 women's team is the crest of a wave that has been building for many years...
...Certainly not hanging around playgrounds all over the country, where the breakthrough in girls' sports, especially soccer, occurred a long time ago...
...On Nightline, Kevin Newman of ABC News insisted much more was involved than "simply soccer...
...The losers were men...
...They're comparable to tennis stars Steffi Graf and Lindsay Davenport, who are marvelously talented players and fun to watch, but who wouldn't stand a chance against Pete Sampras or any male on the pro tennis circuit...
...That team, ignored by the media, and even more obviously not the offspring of Title IX, was more dominant than this year's squad...
...The players were expected to be just like men, whether they liked it or not...
...She had other things on her mind besides soccer and the stirring victory over the Chinese...
...At most, it has given them a few more college soccer teams to play for...
...No one could...
...One of my daughters began playing soccer in 1983 at age 8, another in 1988 at age 6. They joined teams set up by the local soccer association in Arlington, Virginia, a private group not subject to Title IX...
...women's soccer team defeated China and won the World Cup, Couric interviewed several players on the Today show...
...ABC's Judy Muller proclaimed: "This team on this day in this place forever changed the way we think about women in sports...
...Do you feel completely comfortable with that, or should you tell me to lighten up...
...The inescapable (and happy) fact is that women are just not men...
...The photo was so tame, with a soccer ball hiding Chastain's vital parts, that NBC flashed it on the screen...
...Women play the game at a remarkable level of proficiency...
...The next question didn't have anything to do with soccer or the game with China either...
...men's soccer team didn't in the 1998 World Cup...
...In fact, the impression was left that women soccer players are better than men, at least as team players and perhaps morally as well...
...The players were also diminished by the proselytizing for Title IX, the law requiring equal opportunity for women at schools that take federal funds...
...Time labeled the players "daughters of Title IX...
...Former congress-woman Patricia Schroeder, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said the women's soccer team had exploded the conventional wisdom that women can play individual sports (tennis, golf) but not team sports...
...Well, maybe it changed the way she thinks...
...But I'm sure some hard-core feminists are gonna say, 'Wait a second...
...My guess is the reporters and talking heads knew little about soccer and weren't much interested in learning...
...What thrilled the press was Chastain's act of tearing off her jersey once victory was sealed...
...The United States won the first women's World Cup, after all, in 1991...
...The American women's team faced weaker opponents...
...Actually, it's in mastering the skills of soccer that women do match men...
...umph...
...Women's soccer, unlike men's, is largely underdeveloped around the world...
...The rise of women's soccer isn't new, it simply happened outside the media's field of vision...
...I've seen soccer mania at my own house...
...Cynthia McFadden, also of ABC News, called them "the heiresses of the women's movement...
...American women have been great at soccer for decades now, emerging as world-class players during the 1970s and 1980s, when those who now credit Title IX for producing the 1999 champs were complaining that Title IX was not being enforced at all...
...Finally, they played on high school varsity teams...
...They never heard of Title IX...
...Her lapse in posing for a men's magazine was overlooked...
...So it was Chastain and not Mia Hamm, who is married to a Marine, or Michelle Akers, a born-again Christian, who became the icon of the World Cup...
...women's soccer triFred Barnes executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The writers and commentators and chatterers were agreed: This was more than just a soccer game...
...I'm wondering about some of the mixed signals that little girls may be getting," Couric said...
...Newsweek predicted "a Mary Lou Retton Effect" after the gymnast who won gold medals in the 1984 Olympics and prompted many girls to try gymnastics...
...She was even entrepreneurial, having signed a contract with Nike...
...How could anyone know this...
...How had veteran Kristine Lilly, who saved the final game by heading a Chinese shot out of the goal, stayed so good at soccer for so long...
...Inuring the penalty kicks, one ABC-TV announcer stumbled into political incorrectness...
...Which the U.S...
...It was a riveting moment, and it put Chastain, in her black sports bra, on the cover of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated...
...In other words, they can't do what guy goalies sometimes can...
...But Couric and the mainstream media became ideological ax-grinders and treated it as a political event—with political winners and losers...
...The media made it sound as if Title IX, not hard work and good coaching, had created the team and made it successful...
...While professional women soccer players are no match for the men in skill levels," the magazine said, "their game is great entertainment...
...Displaying femininity, as Chastain and Foudy had, was frowned upon...
...But what we have in soccer is a reverse Ret-ton effect...
...It was a heart-pounding drama won by the American women on the very last kick, a magnificent victory by skillful, disciplined athletes...
...And the players weren't just players...
...The comment was followed by stony silence, as if someone had broken wind and everyone wanted to pretend it hadn't happened...
...In any case, my question is, where have these people been...
...I know...
...But, again, an inconvenient fact was not mentioned...
...By minimizing the importance of the U.S.-China game itself, the press missed the best story...
...team had sent a message to those who want to revise Title IX: "Not so fast, buddy...
...Nevertheless, ABC flashed frequently to girls in the stands during the China game, and announcer Robin Roberts kept citing the alleged effect all of this was having on young girls across America...
...Of course, an average male college team could beat the U.S...
...The rush of girls to soccer preceded, and helped prompt, the media's discovery of the sport...
...Yes, the picture was "completely innocent," Couric said...
...By stressing the "lessons" they supposedly taught and freighting them with a feminist agenda, reporters and commentators deemphasized their athletic skills and how they had honed them...
Vol. 4 • July 1999 • No. 42
