This piece represents the views of the author only and is not the official view of Prost Amerika.
In 2015 women’s soccer dominated their opponents and the airwaves earning a ticker tape parade through the famed Canyon of Champions.
One year later, things are very different.
The year started with a lawsuit by US Soccer Federation against the USWNT. In the discovery process, documents were released to the public with personal information such as their home addresses. A game was moved to a baseball field to accommodate a TLC concert. What was not accommodated for was that the field was just over half as wide as the minimum dimensions that the field should be.
Finally, we have Tuesday’s revocation of Hope Solo following her remarks from the Rio Olympics. A disbelieving Solo could only say, “Six-month suspension. No pay. Terminated contract. Effective immediately,” Solo said in a hotel conference room “Terminated contract! Not just a suspension!”
US Soccer went out of their way to say that that Solo’s comments in which she called Sweden “cowards” was the latest in a string of bad decisions. In other words, they were the straw that broke the camels back.
The players union is investigating whether this move is legally valid. From a moral point of view, it stinks.
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What Solo said was jaded, unwise, but ultimately honest. It’s not the answer you would like your star player to give but in the same country that finds most soccer players too milquetoast, Solo is the rare athlete that will speak her mind.
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On that note, remember how the WNBA was cracking down on players supporting Black Lives Matter? NBA players who supported Black Lives Matter noted the hypocrisy of how they can be lauded as champions for speaking out whereas women, like the Dixie Chicks back in 2003, ought to just play the game.
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It took two weeks to come to this decision? That’s less of “trying to get it right” more of “wanting to get the temperature of the room.” If the viral backlash against Solo wasn’t so rampant there’s a good chance we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Seeing as how nature abhors a vacuum, here we are.
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It was a dumb thing to say but it’s not the dumbest thing that has been said in sports history. The Portland Trail Blazers forward Bonzi Wells once produced this gem:
“We’re not really going to worry about what the hell (the fans) think about us. They really don’t matter to us. They can boo us everyday, but they’re still going to ask for our autographs if they see us on the street. That’s why they’re fans, and we’re NBA players.”
Bonzi Wells was traded from Portland but still managed to cobble together a decent living bouncing around a few teams. Wells was just one of the names bandied about in Jeff Benedict’s 2004 book “Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA’s Culture of Rape, Violence & Crime” in which he found “40 percent of the American players in the NBA during the 2001-02 season had police records involving a serious crime.“
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The punishment is so vague. It’s a suspension and a termination? In the word’s of Solo’s husband Jerramy Stevens asks: “How can they do both?” It seems so ill-conceived they can’t even decide what the punishment is.
Again, Hope Solo was asked a question and answered it honestly. As a journalist, an interesting tidbit beyond “both teams played hard” is the best you can hope for.
It certainly wasn’t as unfortunate as the time Dwyane Wade compared the reaction after each Miami Heat loss as “like the World Trade Center just came down again.”
But as we’ve seen time and time again, the women’s team is being held to a completely different standard. Ironically, we are mere months from potentially electing the first woman President of the United States and we still can’t tell my daughter that the glass ceiling no longer exists.
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