U.S. women win the World Cup, and the subject matter is everything but the game

The World Cup-winning U.S. women’s soccer team has officially arrived. I know this because much of the media coverage during its run to the title had very little to do with the sport it plays. You know, sort of like the daily drama that is the NBA.

The U.S. team seemed to be about everything but the game action itself. Players had to respond to criticism that they scored too much and celebrated too much after goals. They had to explain what some of those planned celebrations meant. They talked about whether they would accept a visit to the White House to meet President Trump. They complained about playing the championship game the same day that two other major men’s international finals were played. They used the big stage to highlight the wage gap between the U.S. women’s team and the U.S. men’s team, as well as the huge gap in prize money between the men’s and women’s World Cups.

It was almost as if the Americans’ 2-0 victory over the Netherlands on Sunday — for their second World Cup title in a row — was something to be gotten through so that everybody could get back to the important issues. The confetti had hardly stopped falling by the time NPR led a discussion Monday morning about whether the victory could be “a game-changer for women’s sports.”

But if you tilt your head a certain way, you’ll notice it isn’t so different from the way we approach men’s sports. Part of what happened here was that the women’s team looked at the World Cup as so much more than a game. They looked at it as a platform, and in that way, they’re not unlike Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the national anthem and started a culture war. If you wish athletes would “stick to sports,” sorry. You lost that battle a long time ago.

The U.S. women clearly felt a responsibility to raise concerns they felt needed to be dragged into the bright light of the World Cup. They only get that chance every four years. So they talked about the lack of equal pay between the men’s national team and the women’s national team. U.S. star Megan Rapinoe complained that the title game should not have been played on the same day as the CONCACAF Gold Cup final in the U.S. and the Copa America final in Brazil.

When FIFA president Gianni Infantino walked on stage after the World Cup final in Lyon, France, the crowd booed him and chanted, “Equal pay! Equal pay!” This is not the kind of thing we hear after a Super Bowl — OK, boos for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, surely, but not chants tied to a social issue. Then again, if Kaepernick ever got the chance to play again, what kind of non-football chants would we hear at NFL stadiums? One thing is certain: You’d hear them, on both sides.

Some members of the U.S. women’s team considered it sexist when they were criticized for running up the score in a 13-0 victory over Thailand in their opening game. Their response was the same when they were ripped for celebrating boisterously after their goals against that terribly overmatched Thai team: A men’s team wouldn’t get treated like this. They’re wrong on that count. If the Cubs beat the Marlins 13-0 and Willson Contreras had pretended he was riding a horse as he circled the bases after a home run for a 10-0 lead, you can bet he and the Cubs would feel the sting of national condemnation. Equal abuse for an equal lack of sportsmanship. If the women want to be treated like the men, they got it.

My earlier comparison of the U.S. team and the NBA was a bit flippant. What the women are discussing is serious, and what the NBA tends to discuss is which superstar hates which superstar teammate. But more broadly, they are similar. In both cases, we spend a lot of time discussing everything except the games themselves.

Why is that?

With the NBA, it has to do with a long season, with January games that don’t matter and a desperate need to find things to discuss. It has to do with the league as a year-round enterprise and an offseason — the draft, trades and free agency — that’s even more compelling than the regular season.

With soccer, I wonder if the focus away from the pitch has to do with U.S. media who don’t know how to cover a sport still foreign to many writers and broadcasters. Or perhaps the coverage is simply tailored to a nation that is soccer-ignorant. Maybe it’s a combination of both.

But make no mistake, the players are the authors of this story. They’re the ones who have pushed the various storylines the last month. They’re the ones who wanted to get their messages across. They did.

Now, did anyone catch who scored for the Americans on Sunday?

I didn’t think so.