Will SI make it a cover story?
Will SI make it a cover story?
I was around for the 1980 Olympics and personally saw Mike Eruzione's homecoming parade in Winthrop, MA as a scrawny 17-year-old. It was a big deal.
How ironic that liberal media is always hyping up "women's issues" but are nearly totally ignoring women winning a gold medal in hockey. The men of the curling team will probably get a lot more post-Olympic attention. And they should. But the women of hockey should get some attention as well.
I didn't see any of the hockey on the Olympics but I did check out the shootout on YouTube. Those women on ice skates were having the time of their lives! Way better than watching figure skating.
In 1980 it was a bunch of TRUE amateur college players from the USA playing against PROFESSIONAL layers from the USSR.
There is no such disparity today.
“Will SI make it a cover story?”
Oh, I suppose it’s possible the U.S. Women’s Hockey team might get a cover - if SI doesn’t give it to the gay skater (Rippon?) for his “brave” resistance to the evil Mike Pence and his brutal Christianity.
For several years after 1980 I could recite the names of all of the players from that U.S. team: Jim Craig, Mike Eruzione, Dave Christian, and Mark Pavelich, Buzz Schneider, Phil Verchota and Rob McClanahan - heck, I even knew how to spell Steve Janaszak’s name (and he never played a single minute if I recall correctly). There is zero chance - except perhaps for a very small number of hockey playing young girls - that kids today are taking the time to learn the names of the Gold Medal winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team. That’s for several reasons:
- Times have changed.
- Their win over Canada was not a decisive victory in regular time (a shoot out?!).
- The Canadian women are not nearly as dominant as the Soviets were back then. The Soviets had not lost a single game in 12 years (1968-1980!).
- Almost no one is watching this Olympics. Many people have NBC’s coverage and now so many people have 150 channels to choose from.
- This wasn’t as unexpected as the 1980 win.
- It didn’t happen on U.S. soil where people could watch it all unfold in real time.
“On a similar note, do you think the women’s hockey team winning the gold medal will garner equal coverage as the men’s did in 1980?”
It can’t.
The 1980 Lake Placid Olympics came at the depths of the Carter Despair when absolutely everything was going wrong for the United States.
Gas lines, inflation, Watergate, the collapse of Vietnam, Soviet Adventurism unopposed all over the globe and Iran hostages.
And then suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of college kids beat the invincible Soviet Union hockey team.
Even the Soviet players stood in shocked admiration, you can see it in the film clips. Winning the Gold two days later by beating Finland was almost an anticlimax.
I’ve always had the sneaking feeling that this played a role in Reagan winning the Presidency eight months later.
“On a similar note, do you think the women’s hockey team winning the gold medal will garner equal coverage as the men’s did in 1980?”
It can’t.
The 1980 Lake Placid Olympics came at the depths of the Carter Despair when absolutely everything was going wrong for the United States.
Gas lines, inflation, Watergate, the collapse of Vietnam, Soviet Adventurism unopposed all over the globe and Iran hostages.
And then suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of college kids beat the invincible Soviet Union hockey team.
Even the Soviet players stood in shocked admiration, you can see it in the film clips. Winning the Gold two days later by beating Finland was almost an anticlimax.
I’ve always had the sneaking feeling that this played a role in Reagan winning the Presidency eight months later.