OK, full disclosure: I really don't like soccer, or 'football' as I'm in the habit of calling it. I find it an incredibly tedious game with (at least in England) magnificently uncivil supporters. It is a sport which is spreading like an epidemic: I remember the J-League starting in Japan, and for a while, it seemed to be making headway over here.

So it's not surprising that I started out unsympathetic when I read Lissa Muscatine's Sports Heroes, Corporate Orphans (washingtonpost.com), an op-ed piece today slating Nike and other corporations for having allowed the Women's United Soccer Association to die an (at least by me) unlamented death. But Muscatine is a White House speechwriter, so I figured I'd give her a shot. [1]

Bring back Peggy Noonan. At least she knew words had some meaning. For instance:

As a group, the women soccer players were hardworking, civic-minded and so devoted to their league that they took a pay cut to help it survive. In short, they were great role models. But they weren't the sports heroes in whom most corporations were willing to invest.

Every Saturday my daughter and her teammates will don their Nike uniforms ($70) and carry their Nike bags ($35) to their weekly soccer game. And I'll watch from the sidelines, wondering why so many hugely profitable companies haven't done more to help millions of girls hold on to their dreams of playing soccer in the pros.

Noonan never made the mistake of answering the question in paragraph two in her own paragraph one. Why not do more? Check that word: invest.

The WUSA didn't make money. Neither did the (also late and unlamented) XFL. Nike's 'investment' in was likely never to be recouped, and so it didn't make one. [2] Nike's $90 million deal with LeBron James, also mentioned in the article, will strengthen the sports-shoe company brand by much more than the asking price, while it could have sponsored the whole WUSA for the next decade and barely been noticed.

Nike didn't become the behemoth it is by acting as a charitable sponsor for sports. When it gives money, it invests. Of course, 'investment' as a term used by Hillary Clinton or her speechwriters always did have an odd tinge, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Nor should Muscatine have been surprised at the death of the WUSA, if this is the best she can muster in its defense:

More than 200,000 kids play soccer in the Washington region, and millions of girls play nationwide. Parents who watch their kids' games increasingly embrace soccer's elegance and fluidity, not to mention its lack of violence. Soccer moms are even part of our national political lexicon.

Ignore the fact that the USA and Japan are perhaps the only two countries in the world where soccer is known for a 'lack of violence,' albeit not on the field. Note that in wondering whether Nike would be better off putting its money in a single male basketball player or in an entire women's league, she gives solid numbers as to what would be required in money, but makes no attempt to quantify the returns: there are 'millions' of girls who play soccer nationwide, but how many, and how many in comparison to players (or spectators) of basketball?

And yes, 'soccer moms' have entered our political lexicon: as the kind of wishy-washy swing voters who are unattached to ideology and worried mostly with outcomes. These are hardly the kind of people to whom one ascribes the passionate, irrational commitments familiar to Cheeseheads, Wolverines, or other intense (and, in brand-building terms, valuable) sports fans. "Soccer mom" is at best a neutral moniker, and in some cases a pejorative term.

Ms. Muscatine should learn to live like the rest of us fringe-sport fans. I like sumo wrestling, and I'd love to see it get more attention in the United States. I'd love to be able to watch it (with the proper Japanese commentary) without having to pay the exorbitant cable charges it would take to get the right package. But unlike Ms. Muscatine, I'm resigned to the fact that Nike will probably never fulfill my dream, because it is a practical company with a concern for its brand. Even assuming I gathered together 'millions' of passionate fans, a sumo wrestler's outfit provides few places for Nike to add a sponsorship logo.

---

[1] At this point, I'd not realized she was a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton. [2] Actually, it did: it outfitted a few of the teams. But it didn't provide funds on the level Ms. Muscatine found desirable.