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Title IX never required us to actually watch women’s sports.

Just curious: does your contempt for women's sports extend to U.S. women swimmers, skiers, gymnasts, track and field competitors, ice skaters, hockey players, etc. in the Olympics? Or is it only soccer you disrespect?

I find the animus against U.S. women's soccer curious. I suspect most of those who express it are conventional, flag-waving, Go USA fans of U.S. women in other international competitions. So why is soccer different?

There is, of course, the traditional football-basketball-baseball bias of so many U.S. fans, who look down on soccer as alien. I used to share that view before I watched enough soccer to begin to understand it (because I had soccer playing daughters, which led to watching a lot of games). But in addition, the major U.S. sports have now turned me off. Football and basketball have embraced thug culture. And television has poisoned everything. Even college basketball, once the greatest game on earth, is now unwatchable thanks to the shot clock, the three pointer, and one-and-out. Even baseball has compromised itself with the DH, playoffs and interleague play. Soccer hasn't sold out to television.

But that aside, I think a lot of the resentment of the U.S. Women's National Team arises from the fact that soccer is uniquely the only major sport in which the U.S. women are dramatically better than the U.S. men in international competitions. The U.S. women are an elite program and compete for championships; they won't win them all, but they are a threat in any tournament they enter. The men struggle to be a respectable second tier team, and this time around, didn't even qualify for the men's World Cup tournament.

Are the U.S. women really better than the U.S. men? This requires a quick timeout for precise definitions. Yes, they are, in terms of class competition, which is how the games are played. No they aren't, in an absolute sense, just as no female swimmer, gymnast, golfer, tennis player or track and field athlete could succeed in a men's competition. But this doesn't mean women shouldn't play sports. It means we have to accept the nature of class competitions and celebrate best in class.

Why some men seem to be so threatened by a U.S. women's team that does so much better than its men's counterpart is beyond me. I suppose some of it has to do with overheated nonsense expressed by some zealous feminist types who obviously don't know anything about athletics. One even encounters the occasional assertion that the U.S. women's soccer team would beat the U.S. men's team. This usually pops up somewhere in the comments section, expressed by some perfect idiot, but sometimes the perfect idiot is the author of the story. And that's just stupid. Men are bigger, faster and stronger, and the women would be run off the field in a head to head match. Just as Katie Ledecky would lose to Michael Phelps. So what? Men and women are different. That's why the competitions are separate. And it's why the trans thing will destroy women's sports if it becomes common.