Women’s World Cup Is a Hit Here, There and Everywhere

It was Aug. 1, 1996, a date that has lived ever since in television sports infamy.

That night, under a virtual national television blackout, the U.S. women’s soccer team--featuring Mia, Michelle, Shannon and the same cast of characters that has been selling out massive football stadiums across America this summer--won the Olympic gold medal with a dramatic 2-1 victory over China.

That night, while 76,481 delirious fans at Georgia’s Sanford Stadium exulted in Team USA’s historic triumph, Hank Steinbrecher, executive director for U.S. Soccer, angrily denounced NBC for devoting only a few minutes to the women’s soccer final so the network could telecast, among other things, rhythmic gymnastics--figuring more Americans would rather watch little girls twirling pretty ribbons than Tiffeny Milbrett beat Gao Hong far post.

“NBC still doesn’t get it,” Steinbrecher fumed. “They’re trying to hold back the hands of the clock as long as they can. They ought to get in tune with what’s happening in the real world.”

Do you suppose NBC is getting it now?

This Women’s World Cup has rolled a leftover Fourth of July firecracker into the American consciousness, exploding every myth there was about this country and women’s sports, this country and soccer, this country and celebrity athletes who wear dresses and nail polish and aren’t named Rodman.

Let’s see, what were they again?

1. Americans will watch women playing sports, but only if a) they are Olympians, which means having to pay attention to them only once every four years; b) they resemble cute little pixies on ice skates or balance beams; c) they look like Anna Kournikova.

2. Americans aren’t interested in soccer played by men, let alone by women, because there isn’t enough scoring, the players can’t use their hands, blah, blah, blah, blah.

3. Americans will turn out to watch women’s team sports only in modest clusters--please see the WNBA--and will never pack stadiums where the male behemoths of the NFL traditionally roam.

One by one, the Women’s World Cup has picked each of them off, hammering them with the ferocity of a Michelle Akers penalty kick. Team USA has played at Soldier Field, Giants Stadium, Foxboro Stadium, Jack Kent Cooke Stadium--and has not drawn fewer than 50,000 fans, twice getting more than 70,000. And the games not involving the Americans have drawn 14,000-29,000, crowds most MLS franchises would kill for.

Next up: the Rose Bowl, site of Saturday’s championship final between, yes, China and the United States again.

A sellout crowd of 85,000-plus is expected.

Repeat: More than 85,000 spectators are expected for a women’s soccer match.

It can be argued that this World Cup has done more for women’s sports than any event preceding it, from turnstile counts to newspaper coverage to office conversation to word-of-mouth wildfire.

“My sense is that it is incredibly significant,” says Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center in the University of Oregon’s college of business. “My prediction is that this event will be the starburst, the magic mushroom, if you will, that causes Madison Avenue to recognize the power of women in sports.”

Marla Messing, president and CEO of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, has likened the event’s stunning popularity to 1960s Beatlemania, an analogy Burton pushes a step further.

“Not since the Beatles came here in 1964 have we seen anything comparable in terms of its sociological impact with American teen-age girls,” Burton says. “I view it as this critical moment in time when Madison Avenue finally said, ‘Wow, a lot of girls care about this, Americans are good at this, we’re going to have to do something with this.’ ”

The timing is right, the zeitgeist was ready for precisely what the Women’s World Cup is delivering, Burton contends.

“First of all, we are into the second generation after the passage of Title IX,” Burton says. “The first generation was allowed to play sports, but few of them were able to continue past college. But, they have had children and have pushed their children into grass-roots sports like softball and soccer. And those are the fans you see going to the games now.

“Secondly, we now know that women influence 70-80% of the spending in the household. They might not spend it themselves, but they influence how it is spent.

“Lastly, as Americans, we have a tendency not to embrace something unless we can dominate it. We embrace baseball, but not cricket. We embrace North American football, but we haven’t embraced men’s soccer. . . . We didn’t have male dominance in soccer, so we have embraced female dominance in the sport.”

And because so many girls play youth soccer, Burton believes the Women’s World Cup will have a greater lasting impact than previous female teams that have briefly captured the public’s imagination.

“It was attempted modestly with the women’s hockey team after Nagano,” he says. “But hockey isn’t that broad-based a sport. The 1996 Olympics had some great victories for American women in team sports, with gold medals in basketball, softball and soccer, but what emerged from that was basically the WNBA.”

Post-World Cup, Burton predicts that “several U.S. players are going to become major U.S. endorsers. Mia Hamm. Michelle Akers. Julie Foudy. Briana Scurry, the goalkeeper. You have four or five personalities who have scored goals and have broken into the American consciousness.

“Just take the themes you’ve been hearing. ‘You Goal, Girl.’ ‘Sisters Doing It For Themselves.’ That’s been the message for girls and women during the World Cup. And it’s very empowering.”

The greatest moment in the history of women’s sports?

“It’s certainly in the top two or three,” Burton says. “There have been other milestones--Billie Jean beating Bobby Riggs [in a 1973 “Battles of the Sexes” tennis exhibition] has to be put in there. Mary Lou Retton, Peggy Fleming, Picabo Street all have had considerable impact. But they tended to do so as individual athletes. This has to be the greatest moment for women’s team sports.

“But, it’s not really a moment,” he adds. “It’s more like an emerging wave.”

SATURDAY AT ROSE BOWL

Championship: United States vs. China, 1 p.m.

Third place: Brazil vs. Norway, 10 a.m.

COVERAGE

FIRST LOOK: Possession and creativity are the keys for the U.S. in the final against China on Saturday at the Rose Bowl. Page 7