Megan Rapinoe may be a putz of a woman but she is undeniably one of the greatest women’s soccer players in U.S. history. But Rapinoe is proving once again that you can have all the natural abilities in the world in sports and still be an ignoramus about everything else.
Rapinoe was a prime mover in the effort to force USA Soccer to pay women equally for their national team appearances as well as giving the U.S. women’s team equal accommodations on the road and equal benefits.
I say more power to them if they can get it. They play a kid’s game, and corporations and USA Soccer make a mint off these women. Why shouldn’t they try for every dime they can get?
But getting equal pay and accommodations does not mean that women’s soccer is equal in value to the men’s team. The same holds true for women’s sports in general.
Sports at every level is now a business. And women’s professional sports lag behind men’s pro teams in every respect. But Megan Rapinoe sees changes coming.
“I think, just in general, women’s sports right now feels like we’re sort of out of just the dogged fight phase. Not that there’s not a lot still to fight for,” Rapinoe told reporters on Tuesday as the USWNT gears up for the training camp.
“It feels like a real opportunity to blow the lid off just in terms of fanfare and media and sponsorships and the sort of larger business around this sport,” Rapinoe said, adding that it “feels almost like a ‘show up and show out’ kind of vibe.
“I think everyone is sort of hip to the game now and understands that this is not somewhere that’s just like, oh, we should cheer for the Women’s World Cup because that’s the right thing to do.”
Ever since the 1999 Women’s World Cup, when women’s soccer exploded into the consciousness of American sports fans, experts have been predicting that women’s sports were about to experience a “paradigm shift” (or some other euphemism to describe a massive increase in interest).
It hasn’t happened yet. And the reason isn’t sexism or discrimination, or misogyny, or any other victimhood explanation the activists can come up with. It’s a question of time and space. Men’s pro sports — football, basketball, hockey, and baseball — take up the overwhelming majority of media oxygen — including TV time.
“It is actually terrible business, if you are not tuning in, you are missing out on a large cultural moment,” said Rapinoe. “I think we know that the bottom line, equality is actually good for business, that is something special that the women’s game has, and this is the premier women’s sporting event in the world, bar none, and this is a paradigm shift globally, not just in the U.S.”
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Businesses sponsor the U.S. women’s national team because little girls dream of playing for them someday. But corporations have steered clear of airing women’s pro soccer, including the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Currently, the network carrying NWSL games is FAST Studios’ Women’s Sports Network. Previous attempts at broadcasting NWSL games on CBS, ESPN, Lifetime Network, and other streaming ventures have all failed spectacularly.
To believe that global interest in the Women’s World Cup will alter the consciousness of misogynists in the third world is idiotic.
“Equality” is only as good for business as the product that is being sold. Rapinoe is delusional if she thinks businesses really care about sports as a social issue. Their only concern is to stay on the right side of their customers’ sensibilities. Whatever Rapinoe is smoking, she needs to put it down and take a reality pill.
