Coach's Corner

What an absolutely perfect ending for the last days of the century. It incorporated many -- if not all -- of the learned marketing gimmicks of the 100 years past; ruses which can turn a local murder case, or the parentage of a teenage tennis player, or a private sexual indiscretion, into a worldwide circus. All the elements were there -- or if not, they were invented by the always-innocent (but omnipresent) media. It proved (not that it needed proving any more) the Orwellian concept, promulgated 50 years ago, that the public will believe, if you tell them often enough, whatever you want them to believe. They'll buy things they don't need. They'll eat foods they don't like. They'll see things they didn't really see.

Though it's terribly un-PC, someone needs to say this. I can't be the only one who saw it this way. The Woman's World Cup final was the most boring, supposedly "big time" athletic event I've ever watched ... and I watched every minute. It stunk. If you want to showcase the reason why Americans will not -- ever -- take to this game in any meaningful way, you need only show what I'm now told was a scintillating 120 minutes of nothing happening. But the girls (and Nike, ABC, and ESPN) won, so that's PC cool. And America (We!) won too. So hooray and wave the flag. It's double cool. One-hundred twenty minutes produced exactly eight shots on goal -- total, seven of them soft as banana pudding. Still, every headline in the country mimicked our local paper's front-page headline. It was, they said, a "HEART STOPPING VICTORY." I guess I didn't see what I thought I saw. So give me a yellow card. What do I know?

Okay, so the game sucked. I watch bad games all the time. What I really resent is how Nike, ESPN, and ABC, cynically enlisting the aid of the national media, turned a middle-minor sporting event into front-page news, not only in the sports section, but on page one in every major newspaper in the country for a week. They pushed every button: patriotism, I Am Woman, sex (lots and lots of sex), collective male guilt, many personal agendas, a rare positive story about clean-cut suburban white girls, and the all-powerful Political Correctness. All threaded together and put, repeatedly, in a nice tidy package by the people who were supposed to be covering the event, not promoting it.

The national media was completely and inappropriately -- borrowing a term from the PC dictionary -- out of control for an entire week. Since when is it the media's job to be out in front, waving the flag, ohhhing and ahhing over the "attractive" (how many times did that adjective turn up?) and winsome players? USA Today's Friday issue featured a WWIII headline on the front page, with a massive color picture of the "booters with hooters" team (easy now, that's a player quote, not mine) along with 11 separate stories and columns.

The media frenzy went beyond -- something I'd thought impossible -- the overkill of the Super Bowl. Super Bowl pre-game stories at least stay in the sports section, where they belong. But the ingenious marketing of this event (Nike's spots were brilliant) by those with a financial stake in its success did the unheard of: The media came aboard as partners in this thing's success.

Christine Brennan, a regular sports columnist in USA Today, is a perfect example of the media-as-event-spokesperson. Interviewed on ESPN the day before the title game, she went out of her way early in the interview to say she's not in this for the "I'm woman thing." She wasn't getting into "the hyperbole thing" either, she said, before gushing to a national audience about the "empowering"qualities of this team to all women. No agenda there. She went on, with the ga-ga adoration of the new true believer. No hyperbole there. This is a journalist, for God'ssake. The game telecast was awful stuff. No interesting analysis. No insightful graphics to punch up a dull game. Only jingoistic cheerleading. FIFA didn't need to do any promoting. The media did it for them. But I guess I'm not sensitive to all the various needs at play in this happy drama. I'm only a simple, single-celled sportsfan.

And so there it was. A heart-stopping victory that was, in fact, a shitty game. A story bigger than O.J., bigger than Monica. The culmination of 100 years of manipulating the public consciousness -- a precursor of the century to come. A disturbing example of what marketing and media can create when they buddy up to do each other's bidding. I'm sick of stuff being rammed down my throat. I'm sick of being electronically manipulated. I'm disheartened that this view is so invisible because it's soooo un-PC.

Does this paint me in an ugly corner? Maybe. Am I a sexist pig? A little. A guy with his own personal agenda? Sure. An insensitive lout indifferent to changing times? Somedays. Perhaps an atavistic coot that wishes there were no DH, that tennis rackets were still made of wood, and that he'd never heard ofa Nickel Package or television time outs. You bet. So what? I'm not a social psychologist. It's not my job to make the world fair and pure. I'm just a sportsfan. Go ahead, hand me the second yellow card and toss me out of the game.

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