The Girls of Fall

Eight Years After the US Women's National Team's Finest Hour, "The Girls of Summer" Have Lost Their Glow

By Tim Bresnahan

The Nike ads should have tipped us all off.

If you watched any of the Women's World Cup, you know the commercials. A cartoonish, oblivious PR guy named Jim Mike (Rainn Wilson from NBC's "The Office") saunters onto the training ground to help the U.S. team increase their exposure. With a poor riff on the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" theme jangling in the background, Jim Mike expounds on the virtues of stripping to one's sports bra after a goal, urges the players to go for "three points" by putting the ball in the "net box," and parachutes onto the field during a goal celebration to get ideal product placement for "soccer shampoo."

The women are not amused. They are hard-core athletes. They're not here to preen or show some skin. They're here to play, here to win. They are the Greatest Team You've Never Heard Of.

As it turned out, they weren't. Ninety minutes of humiliation served as proof that the U.S. women have lost their golden glow (if not their gold jerseys, although those should follow suit). A team that spent months together in residency took on a Brazil squad that went on hiatus for over two years, and the Brazilians crushed them like bugs.

If the sentimental, serendipitous 2004 Olympic championship gave the dwindling U.S. fan base hope that the good old days hadn't ended, Thursday's debacle dashed it forever.

Then again, Nike seemed to be sending that message (subconsciously or otherwise) from the start of this tournament. The lame Jim Mike spots made it abundantly clear that the company had no clue how to market a U.S. team whose 15 minutes of fame had expired during the Clinton administration - and whose on-field domination in the last three years had far more to do with weak competition than their own greatness.

So what did the Nike people do? They mocked what worked eight years ago.

The mainstream media didn’t pay much attention to the U.S. team in the mid- to late-90s; NBC didn’t even bother showing the 1996 Olympic final in Atlanta, and a month before the 1999 World Cup started, most metropolitan sports editors weren’t giving the tournament much thought, if any. It was, after all, a toxic mix for American sports audiences: soccer and women.

But, as Jere Longman wrote in his book “The Girls of Summer,” corporate America and the team itself picked up the banner:

“Although the American women were largely missing from the sports pages as the World Cup approached, they circumvented this disinterest and reached their audience by appearing in such disparate publications as Seventeen and Cosmopolitan, Teen People, Sports Illustrated for Kids, a men’s magazine called Gear, by appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman and in clever, powerful commercials sponsored by Adidas, Bud Lite [sic], Gatorade and Nike, which … launched a $5 million television ad campaign in May and June of 1999.”

The "Girls of Summer" were the the focus of a remarkable PR blitz throughout June and July of 1999

As a result, millions of Americans who had never seen the U.S. women play still knew who Mia Hamm was from her Nike ads or her shampoo commercial. Some knew Julie Foudy from her Reebok ad or her “booters with hooters” line from ’96 (which, to be fair, had been taken out of context). Some knew Brandi Chastain from the Gear photo shoot in which she posed covered only by strategically placed soccer balls, or the Letterman appearance right before the Cup started. (Dave famously called the team “Babe City.”)

Sex appeal was only part – albeit an important part – of a most remarkable PR blitz that introduced the team to America. Personal appearances, in conjunction with the embrace-all-media approach and a superb grassroots campaign to sell tickets, helped create a buzz about this team. Wholesome, friendly, down-to-earth, talented pioneers – and not bad-looking either, eh?

In a sports year blighted by the NBA lockout, and in the wake of the Title IX appreciations that arose after U.S. women stole the show at the Atlanta Olympics, the national team was about to capture lightning in a bottle.

And at the climax of Women’s World Cup mania, there was team press officer Aaron Heifetz, a man in a garish gold tuxedo vest, sprinting among a pack of female athletes who had just won the championship on penalties and were about to mob Chastain, her black Nike sports bra already iconic. Heifetz’ exuberance was excessive (one wouldn’t expect Stacey James to rush the field to hug Adam Vinatieri after Super Bowl XXXVI), but you could argue that he’d earned the right to celebrate. After all, he had helped to orchestrate a masterful charm offensive before and during the World Cup. Players were exceedingly accessible, loquacious and gracious. By the tourney’s end, the U.S. women were stars, heroines, role models. You could read it in the papers.

Lightning and bottles tend to have short, torrid affairs. The magical convergence of events that made 1999 possible inevitably dissipated. The corporate sponsors can pique the country’s interest for a few weeks (the Olympics are the primary example), but they know they can’t create persistent buzz for track and field, swimming or, say, women’s soccer. Only a tiny fraction of the fans who packed NFL stadiums for the World Cup latched on to the WUSA; the league had a loyal, respectable following in several cities, but not nearly large enough to justify the exorbitant operating costs. And unless Mia showed up, the “mainstream sports fans” didn’t either.

Although it was able to build a loyal following in places like Boston, the WUSA folded in the fall of 2003

The league folded in September 2003. A few weeks later, Germany beat the United States, 3-0, in Portland, Ore., in the semifinal of a World Cup moved on short notice to these shores due to the SARS crisis. The tournament was inevitably lost amid the start of football season and the baseball pennant races, and when the Americans bowed out, irrelevancy engulfed the whole thing.

The women’s soccer phenomenon had fizzled. Yes, the 2004 Olympic title run would rekindle some sparks, but that tournament was more of a last hurrah for the likes of Hamm, Foudy and Fawcett than a statement about bright days ahead. The United States had virtually willed itself to victory against superior opponents, but it was clear that new powers had emerged.

After most of the old guard retired, the American team needed an identity and, more important, star quality. But you couldn’t ask Kristine Lilly to become the face of the team after so many years toiling in the shadows; a Ray Bourque doesn’t become a Jeremy Roenick overnight. The cameras love Heather Mitts (likely the only U.S. player you saw in commercials – for Under Armour – before the Nike campaign began), but she’s a defender. If you’re not scoring like Mia (or striking out the side like Jennie Finch), it’s tough to prove to the masses that you’re more than just a pretty face. In any case, Mitts missed the tourney due to injury.

Abby Wambach was Mia 2.0 – bigger, stronger, tougher. But bigger, stronger, tougher women rarely get endorsement deals or invites to Cosmo photo shoots. Watching her play as a rookie with the Washington Freedom five years ago, I deemed Wambach “a total bad-ass.” To me, it was a term of admiration and respect for her style of play. But to the marketing people, that style and that image cross an invisible line – and sadly, that line tends to determine which female athletes reap the rewards of stardom and which ones don’t.

But even if you forget the PR aspect, ask yourself: Who besides Wambach are the great, emerging players on this team? Did anyone else stand out at this tournament? The answer was evident in the Brazil match (not to mention those fateful 10 minutes against North Korea). With Wambach neutralized, the Americans were utterly impotent.

The Nike people were in a bit of a bind. Eight years ago, they had a new, hot product to unveil to a nation craving something different; now the novelty was long gone – and the product’s quality had diminished. How do you promote a team without the star power of a Hamm, without the hype of a PR blitz in the middle of a lazy summer? Well, you turn the very notions of star power and hype on their heads – a brazen move coming from a company who’d have you believe it’s selling you a way of life rather than a pair of shoes. Sports bra celebrations? How juvenile! Publicity stunts on ponies? Please. Shampoo ads? Uh, we’re busy playing here. At least Nike mustered enough subtlety not to have Jim Mike wearing a gold tuxedo vest when he parachuted into the stadium.

This squad, the commercials made it clear, was strictly about soccer. They no longer needed a contrived hook to lure you in. Their quality would be sufficient to win your heart.

Alas, the Greatest Team You Never Heard Of wasn’t nearly that good. But let’s be honest: They wouldn’t have won that many hearts even if they’d stormed past Brazil and Germany and claimed the crown. In America, if you’re not a 14-year-old pro, a worldwide metrosexual icon moonlighting as a free kick maestro, or Madison Avenue’s ponytailed ideal of what a female athlete should be, you’re probably not going to break into the mainstream consciousness as a soccer player.

And, as harsh as it may sound, the fact that the U.S. women once broke through and created an extraordinary, yet totally fleeting phenomenon doesn’t mean anything now. One can argue that the 1980 Miracle on Ice and the 1999 Women’s World Cup final were the two most celebrated triumphs by an American national team in any sport. Ask Gary Bettman what Lake Placid’s done for him lately.

Yet, while they were by no means the Greatest Team, you did hear of the U.S. women on Thursday. Embarrassed by a superior opponent and embroiled in an entirely avoidable goalkeeper controversy, the team returned to the mainstream for one rare spin in the 24-hour news cycle.

And in an absurd scene at the postgame media availability session, CBC journalist Erin Paul asked Hope Solo if she wanted to comment on the keeper switch that was fast becoming a legitimate story in the States – only to have Aaron Heifetz admonish Paul: "She didn't play, you only want to talk to people who played the game.”

But Solo defied Heifetz, gave some brutally candid quotes, then snapped at him, “Don't you ever tell me what interviews I can do.”

Eight years removed from their greatest glory, the Girls of Summer – defeated, fractured and completely off message – had completed one hell of a fall.

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