United States Soccer Defeated Italy, Who Knew?

How about those boys in blue?

You know, the guys who traveled to Europe this week and recorded a first ever victory over the Azzuri, and on their own soil to boot. Great to see Mike Lynch lead the local sportscasters that evening in a chorus of applause for Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan and the reest of the team.

And great to see the newspapers devote such expansive coverage, the following morning, to the historic achievement of Jurgen Klinsmann's team.

What? You didn't even know it happened?

Well that's just not possible in a country which boasts wall to wall sports coverage, from the international level right down to the high school hopeful?

Or is it?

Truth be told, the claiming this week of another monumental scalp by the US soccer team, passed by like a leaf in the wind, so irrelevant was it to the mainstream sports media.

It reminded me of the wonderful feat of Michael Johnson in Seville in 1999 and the 'rich' treatment he received from his compatriots.

The lightning-fast Texan two-stepped his way past the competition to smash Butch Reynolds's 400m world record, in a race which will live forever in the minds of those who saw it. The Spanish crowd rose in unison to acclaim the American, and cameras from every continent captured this historic moment in sports.

Johnson drew the biggest applause of his life on a glorious lap of honor, draped in the star-spangled banner. And the following morning newspapers around the world sported front page pictures of the American who brought such honor to his countrymen.

There are few such moments in life as that experienced by  Johnson, on that steamy summer Sunday in Seville. And if you don't remember it.......well just chalk another one up to our well versed sports editors at the networks.

While Johnson was wowing the whole world in Seville, we back home in Boston, were served on our TV screens, wait for it..............the thrill a minute excitement of seniors golf.

Johnson was robbed that day of a home audience, which would have made him a national hero. He could have been spoken of in the same breath as Carl Lewis. But the moment was lost through some senseless and misguided commitment to television protocol.

The boys of the US soccer team were also "robbed" by their unpatriotic TV networks this week.

In years to come it will be Michael 'who' and 'US—Italy'.......'no, sorry, don't recall that one.'

And please spare me the argument that soccer is not a mainstream sport. If it isn't (and the numbers of participants in the sport disprove that notion all day long) it is all thanks to our friends who decide the content of the sportscasts on your screens.

To not offer extensive coverage to the aforementioned national sporting heroes is to, in effect, censor them. 

Lynchey (Mike Lynch), I love him. But it was as embarrassing as it was baffling to see the Channel 5 icon report on a high school basketball story on Wednesday evening at the expense of the US national soccer team.

What gives?