VIANO COLUMN: Biggest secret in sports

Sports have a secret they like to hide from us.

Obscured by the running, jumping, throwing, catching, diving, hitting, kicking, twirling, skating, skiing and swinging are powers nearly unmatched.

We focus our energy on wins and losses, our fantasy teams, the coach’s latest crazy decision and that referee who’s out to get us, all of which are part of a most deft sleight of hand. While our attention is diverted by friendly — or not so friendly — competition, sports impact our lives in ways we rarely expect.

Sports have tackled the civil rights movement (see Jackie Robinson or Muhammad Ali), women’s equality (see Billie Jean King or Babe Didrikson), the AIDS epidemic (see Arthur Ashe or Magic Johnson), LGBT rights (see Michael Sam or Jason Collins) and countless others with dignity and grace.

One of sports’ secret powers is their knack for softening the edges. For making difficult subjects approachable when viewed through a more familiar prism.

So when a handful of bona fide American celebrities, stars of the reigning World Cup champion United States Women’s Soccer Team, alleged wage discrimination by the U.S. Soccer Federation on Thursday, sports yet again made a thorny issue feel human and relatable.

The gist of the complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is that the women who wear the red, white and blue are compensated significantly less — sometimes four to five times less — than their male counterparts despite no real financial basis for the salary disparity other than their gender.

The five women — Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo — are not advocating for more money simply because it’s fundamentally unfair that they earn less than men (though they wouldn’t be out of line for saying so). They have a rock-solid, extremely compelling case.

Morgan and Solo are household names, public figures and product endorsers, Solo’s recent legal issues notwithstanding. Lloyd, though not as well known, might just be the best soccer player in the world, a case she drove home with three goals in the first 16 minutes of the United States’ World Cup final victory over Japan in July. And the team success the women have enjoyed is in another stratosphere from the men.

Their individual and on-field success, of course, does not necessarily measure their economic value, but there’s also real evidence that the women drive just as much money to the U.S. Soccer Federation, if not more, than the men. The Women’s World Cup final last year was, according to the federation, the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history with nearly 25 million domestic viewers.

The case of these five women, though, isn’t really about them. They should, and likely will, prevail in making changes to the way they are compensated. The public response has been overwhelmingly positive, with support even coming from U.S. men’s star keeper Tim Howard.

And the story isn’t about how much these women are worth, either. It’s the face, names and publicity they’ve given to a longstanding issue that’s had a hard time gaining traction in this country. Numbers have a hard time evoking an emotional response, so when the Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that women earn 79 cents on the dollar compared to men in similar jobs in the American workforce, the populace shrugs. But when sports heroes — people we piled into bars to watch last summer, people who graced magazine covers, did the full talk show circuit and were given a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan — show us they, too, are impacted, we take it personally.

It shouldn’t have taken sports to ignite a long overdue national conversation, just like it shouldn’t have taken sports to spark other social change, but the fact of the matter is sometimes it does. No matter why we’re having this conversation, the reality is we are finally having it out in the open.

The real secret power sports like to hide is that they’re incredible at creating our most powerful shared experiences. Whether in the same huddle, on the same field or in the same stadium, screaming at the tops of our lungs, hugging total strangers and dancing in the streets, sports creates real, raw human connections. And the best part is, most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happening.

So many of us, just eight months ago, shared in the joy of a soccer team’s dramatic championship run, and when we did we bestowed sports’ power upon a group of American women who were better at kicking a ball around a field than anyone else.

Thursday, they skillfully wielded that power in a courageous, consequential way.

That’s no secret.

________________________

Andy Viano is a sports reporter and columnist. He can be reached at 758-4446 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com.