Are you not entertained?

These thoughts were written by Sophie, one of our 2020 summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

Besides COVID-19 and racism, the next big topic on the agenda is sports. Everyone wants to know when baseball, hockey, and basketball are coming back. Sports writers, desperate for content, report on potential plans, potential start dates, potential meet up between teams. The Bleacher Report even tweeted their excitement about July, the month when team sports would finally return.

The only problem? Women’s professional soccer (NWSL) returned the last week of June, two weeks before Major League Soccer (MLS) and a full month before any other major sports team returns to action.

That’s right: professional team sports have been back for two weeks. Longer if you want to count international soccer leagues such as the Premier League (airing on NBCSN), Bundesliga, and La Liga.

Have you noticed? Or have you been reading the sports pages like I have and instead been inundated with reports of NHL and MLB players testing positive for COVID, hypotheticals and speculations on potential seasons, and best of the decade for the metro area high school sports roundups?

Because, if you still read the St. Louis Post Dispatches sports page, you will find all of the above stories EXCEPT the NWSL. You will find a listing of Premier League games, but no coverage of any of the results. (Which is fair, they are English and we should be paying attention to American soccer.) You will not find a schedule for the NWSL challenge cup, nor will you find a single mention of the tournament.

You will find the MLS opening game, probably because it airs on ESPN and thus counts as “on-air” versus the NWSL airing on CBS All Access. The first game of the Challenge Cup was aired live on CBS and the last game will be too, but there is plenty of high-quality soccer in-between that no one is talking about.

I hear an objection: St. Louis does not have an MLS team (yet!) much less an NWSL team. Therefore, it makes sense that the tournament would be absent from our sports pages. The Blues and the Cardinals and Patrick Mahomes’ 10 year, 503-million-dollar contract are much more relevant than women’s professional soccer.

Well, I have two rebuttals, maybe three. I’m going to make the numbers argument first, then we’ll open a whole other can of worms.

The NWSL’s opening day match between the Portland Thorns and the North Carolina Courage drew 572,000 viewers, shattering league records and beating out a Premier League game playing at a similar time slot (Chelsea vs. Manchester City). The average viewership for the Cardinals is 77,000.

Okay, okay, I hear you, it’s not fair to compare a regional team to an NWSL home opener that the entire United States could tune in for. But what if I told you that St. Louis was the number two market behind Portland, which had a team playing? Maybe the viewership can be attributed to St. Louis native Becky Sauerbrunn wearing the Thrones kit, but I think it’s just another indication that St. Louis loves soccer, no matter the team. Something deep in this city recognizes its soccer legacy and the result is a fanbase that owes its allegiance to no team (yet!) but instead the sport as a whole. Numbers wise, we’re paying attention to the NWSL Challenge Cup. It just isn’t reported in the paper.

Enough numbers. Let’s open a can of worms.

Think about a United States National Team. One that’s always a top contender to win—both in the Olympics and for the top tournament in their sport. Think about a team that captures the national imagination and has several easily recognizable players. Think of a national team that captures international attention—that is the team to beat.

Chances are the team you’re thinking about is the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT). To prove using a negative, you aren’t thinking about a baseball, basketball, or hockey team and you can’t be thinking about a football team. The Women’s National Soccer Team is the national team. And that’s just in terms of their athletic abilities. 

Now, I want you to think about a team that has been relentless about closing the wage gap and demanding equal pay and equal working conditions. Picture a team that handles LGBT+ inclusion so well that one’s sexuality isn’t even a factor in how people talk about the game. Players are out and proud, players kiss their wives, girlfriends, or husbands in the stands, players play the game and love who they love and there isn’t a problem. Imagine a team that wears the American flag with pride and universally, to a player, speaks up against Donald Trump and refuses to visit the White House after winning on the world’s biggest stage.

You can literally only be thinking about the USWNT.

The women on the USWNT created the legal pathways, CBAs, and media tactics that are now being used by other professional women’s teams around the world. (The national team’s first lawyer eventually went on to work to establish equal working conditions in the National Women’s Hockey League). Although the equal pay part of the team’s lawsuit was dismissed, the equal conditions complaint continues to be under review.

The women who play for the USWNT unequivocally represent the best of America—both on and off the pitch. They also play in the NWSL. So, is it any surprise that just as the league sets an example for return to play, they also have set an example for how to acknowledge the racism that currently occupies every corner of our society? If you’ve been paying attention to this national team, then no, it isn’t.

On opening match day for each of the eight teams competing in the tournament, there was 46 seconds of silence before the opening whistle meant to evoke the memory of Mr. George Floyd who was murdered when a police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Players also have the option to kneel, stay in the locker room, or stand for the national anthem, with the majority of players choosing to kneel. Individuals also have the opportunity to wear Black Lives Matter armbands for all matches. Warm-ups are conducted in Black Lives Matter t-shirts.

Players and teams have gone beyond that, especially OL Reign. Forward Jasmyne Spencer wears a headband emblazoned with the names of those murdered due to police brutality. Sofia Huerta raised over 16,000 dollars for the Loveland Foundation, dedicated to “providing healing for Black women and girls.” As a team, OL Reign filmed and participated in a privilege walk, demonstrating the gaps in opportunities depending on one’s background. The video aired before their first match and continues to be shown during commercial breaks.

It’s a start. It’s player led. It’s setting the tone for future return to play kickoffs.

The NWSL and Women’s Professional Soccer in general serve as a microcosm of American society. The team, perhaps more than anyone else, represents the American dream and a distinctly American mentality. Never say die meets American exceptionalism meets inequality meets diversity meets that perpetual underdog mentality.

These women have to fight daily for the respect their male counterparts have never worked for. Professional women’s soccer has had three iterations because corporate America, for the most part, refuses to invest in women. It all goes back to that tweet: live sports are back in July! Which leaves NWSL…where? One of the players, Shea Groom of the Houston Dash, responded, sarcastically claiming she couldn’t wait to “play pick-up.”

Why, oh why, do we never give women the credit they deserve? What is so inherently fascinating about watching return to play plans go up in smoke and bemoaning no sports while there are live, professional, high quality sports already playing? In an era dominated by social justice, why are we so focused on primarily white, elitist sports? Why is paying six dollars for a cup of coffee acceptable but paying six dollars to watch women do incredibly athletic feats too much money?

The lack of respect and the lack of coverage for the NWSL Challenge Cup is partly because the return to play plan worked without any major, uncontained COVID outbreaks. (The Orlando Pride is not participating due to an outbreak of COVID before the team was set to travel.) It is partly because CBS anticipated lower numbers and thus didn’t spend much money on advertising for the tournament, meaning that people don’t know the tournament is going on. And part of it, of course, is because of that W in NWSL.

But these women are not afterthoughts, they are not a poor man’s substitute for live sports, something you watch because nothing else is on. The NWSL contains the best athletes in the world, from around the world, managing to successfully put together a season on three weeks of training. It is remarkable. It is admirable. It is worth forgoing a coffee to watch the rest of the season.

Which brings me to my third reason for supporting the NWSL…Have you ever seen a run down the wing lead to a cross that is flicked on by a back-heel pass, that a player runs onto and buries in the back of the net? What about a perfectly placed free kick headed in by a player playing in their first professional game within the first minute of her stepping foot on the field? Or even just a long ball that perfectly splits the defense leading to a one on one battle with the goalkeeper?

What I’m trying to demonstrate is the magic of game, something that words are only a poor substitute for actually seeing the game live. Of course, I’m biased—my dad was a soccer coach and most of my earliest memories involve watching or playing soccer. But still, the game is pure magic and I would challenge people who say that soccer isn’t their cup of tea to consider if they’ve ever seen professional soccer or if it just doesn’t have the popularity of other sports leagues.

Give the NWSL a chance. Their next match day is Sunday, July 12, another double header with games at 11:30 am and 9:00 pm CST. I promise you will be entertained. You might even forget to gripe about hockey players and baseball pitchers testing positive.