http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2002/year/ups_and_downs/soccer/ Damn that Mia Hamm! -----------------------
I am so tired of the anti Mia Hamm posts. I am not a "Mia Hamm fan", but give credit where it is due. she did score alot of goals for the time she did play and most of them were pretty awesome. Granted she probably did not deserve the FIFA player of the year award over some others, but without her popularity, we would not even be debating this. There would not be any WUSA that is for sure. I am sure she would have rather someone else have received the award and she so much as said so last year. We would all like the world to be a little more aware of womens sports and recognize more than Mia Hamm, but that is just the state of it right now. At least they are recoginizing it at all.
Fear, your quote about "Storyline to Follow in 2003 Soccer's success Will the U.S. women's soccer team capture the attention and imagination of its home nation when it defends its World Cup title thousands of miles and umpteen time zones away?" is the key question for women's soccer. At present I don't see a huge reason to answer the question other than "not likely." And remember, I say this as a fan, someone who was willing to write and publish a book proclaiming the '99 WWC final the greatest game in any of the five major team sports since WWII. Add to the logistical hurdles the fact that the games are going to be played in the middle of the night, and the concern grows. Remember, the WWC '99 final outdrew the men's 7 a.m. game against Germany in the '02 Cup. By a wide margin. That does not offer a high hope for great ratings for women's games in China. Add to that FIFA's brilliance in scheduling the WWC to conflict with and compete with the baseball playoffs for viewers, and the prognosis for a bang-up ratings showing and widespread following is far dimmer than it was in '99. There are ways to address this and to counter this. I hope to suggest some of them over the next few weeks. But it will be a struggle.