Why We Hate the USWNT

They’re boorish, aren’t they?

Where were you when Brandi Chastain ripped off her jersey?

I was typing away on an online baseball message board, I suddenly noticed that many of the posters on the board, a generation older than I, were busy talking about the 1999 United States’ Women’s World Cup victory against China.

That’s when American women’s soccer arrived.

Brandi Chastain pulled the pose off a helluva lot better than Y.A. Tittle did.

Overnight, Chastain was as big of a name in the sports world as anyone. And a few years later Mia Hamm married Nomar Garciaparra.

Then Heather Mitts, though not on the 1999 Women’s World Cup champions, was getting enough attention as a defender playing women’s professional soccer that FHM and Maxim photographed her for layouts.

Whatever happened to lad mags, anyway?

Mitts thus became a sex symbol to everyone except perhaps her own husband, pro football quarterback A.J. Feeley, who while courting her hung a personally autographed picture of Jennifer Lopez in his locker while playing for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Maybe it was a cunning ploy by Feeley to keep Mitts jealous. If so, props to A.J. Feeley. A.J. and Heather are still together.