For decades, even last year for the men, many American World Cup preview articles reminded fans that...

1. Women's World Cup: the US team have saved America from
a sour year of sports | Football
For decades, even last year for the men,
many American World Cup preview
articles reminded fans that players can't
use their hands and we were told what
"offside" is and what yellow and red
cards are for and what stoppage time is.
I wish this was a joke, but it happened.
Every four years. The
educating/condescending era is finally
over. America knows soccer now or, at
least, American sports media has
stopped catering to the remaining
stragglers.
And they've inspired a new generation
of young players:
http://www.sportsworldnews.com/
If you look for sports to provide you with
an escape from the troubles of the
world, the last year has been a failure of
Goodellian proportions. Watching
SportsCenter now feels like watching
the regular news, the only differences
being that the people doing horrible
things are in great shape and have
expensive sneaker deals.
Related: Women's World Cup final: what's the mood where you are?
The person you're screaming with and hugging at a sports bar after a Carli Lloyd goal may very well
be the same person you'd want to scream at and hit if you heard his opinion on anything else in
America. But for this one month, we've at least been able to put on some soccer and - for two blessed
hours at a time - get away from everything else bad in the world. Including almost everything else in
the sports world.
And yet while America knows soccer better than ever before, the lack of mainstream national
coverage for the women's team makes this group all the more easy to root for. Morgan, Wambach,
Rapinoe, Lloyd - they're all names we know, but they're each about 50m Google search results short
of reaching the over-exposure levels of top-tier American sports stars like LeBron James and Tom
Brady and Derek Jeter. No one is sick of hearing about them. When they're out there on the field,
they're all the fresh-faced, athletic girl next door, giving their all, sweating and bleeding, for the US
of A. The women's team is mostly a blank canvas that we're all more than happy to cover with red,

2. white and blue paint.
The American sports fan is also much more equipped to appreciate what we're watching than we
were in 1999. This World Cup might be the first World Cup I can remember that much of the
coverage isn't dumbed down to cater to an uninformed audience.
Unfortunately, the World Cup is about to end and everything may soon go right back to the way it
was. After all, football season is fast approaching and, if it's anything like last year's, you'll want to
lock your doors and keep your children away from the TV lest they be forever scarred and corrupted.
But the women's national team has provided us all with a nice reminder of why we loved sports from
the beginning, and still love them today: they're fun and exciting and nerve-wracking and terrifying
and sometimes give you a perfectly legitimate reason to scream and yell in public and hug complete
strangers you may have nothing in common with other than a favorite team. Even if they don't bring
the World Cup home on Sunday, the US women have accomplished that. After the past year,
reminding America what's great about sports is far more impressive than some trophy anyway.
And this:
It's enough to make even those soured by Hope Solo - a name decidedly on the first list - crack a few
smiles.
The US women have given us this:
A summer ago we all rooted for the US men's team in the World Cup - well, all of us except maybe
Landon Donovan - but that was different because everyone knew the US team wasn't going to win
the tournament. We cheered because it was the World Cup and that's what you do and it was
fascinating to see how far Tim Howard could carry the team before being unable to save a 100th
consecutive uncontested shot. This is different. The US women are legitimate contenders for a title -
Breaking News: they're in the final! - which would be their first since 1999.
Donald Sterling, Ray Rice, Roger Goodell, Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy, Floyd Mayweather, Aaron
Hernandez, Mark Emmert, DeflateGate, NBA stars getting injured, the Cardinals being investigated
by the FBI, the Fifa official who chose to associate himself with Donald Trump by living in his
building. When it comes to enjoying sports, it's been a tough year for American sports fans.
Off-the-field crimes and scandals and outrages and general awfulness seem to now dominate sports
news more than the actual sports themselves. The list above is just a brief sampling, of course. A
comprehensive list of everything terrible in sports over the past 12-18 months would fill this whole
column and several more - and researching it would have driven me into a long and expensive
relationship with a therapist.
But for the past four weeks, we've had a new list. Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, Megan Rapinoe, Carli
Lloyd, Lauren Holiday, Morgan Brian, Ali Krieger, Becky Sauerbrunn, Julie Johnston, Meghan
Klingenberg, Abby Wambach.
The generation of Americans that think soccer is foreign are dying off and they're being replaced by
people who grew up playing the sport and get the rhythm and language of the game. The people
watching the 2015 Women's World Cup understand what they are watching and know that this
American team is something special. There's a connection to the team through national pride but
also through an appreciation of the skill on the field - an appreciation that maybe never was there
before. Newsroom Graphics computer software pertaining to integration using Avid iNews for its

3. daily, eighteen hour sport information channel.People loved that 1999 team, but more (Bill) Clinton-
era Americans than we'd care to admit were probably miffed why Mia Hamm didn't just scoop the
ball up and run the goalie over on her way to the touchdown net. (Woo! Six points for Team
America!)
search engines
http://www.purevolume.com/listeners/abandonedguideb47/posts/2743723/Do+you+take+your+shirt
+out+your+pants+by+midday%3F