This will not be the article you expect it to be. Just this morning The New York Times ran the latest “troubling” article on Team USA goalkeeper Hope Solo and how her off-the-field conduct creates some dark shadow over her on-the-field accomplishments as one of the best goalkeepers on planet Earth.
On the field, Hope Solo is brilliant. Off the field, she's a problem for the U.S. team http://t.co/HFEC27EBOn pic.twitter.com/zAUY08ymeq
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 9, 2015
Solo’s domestic incident happened almost a full year ago when she was arrested on two counts of domestic violence in a fight with her older sister and her sister’s 17-year-old son in Seattle, Wash. A couple of days ago ESPN’s Outside the Lines interviewed her sister about the incident, getting her side of the story as well as the police who were called to the scene, some of whom Solo had called lots of bad names on the way to jail.
A few weeks ago, before the Brittney Griner/Glory Johnson soap opera hit full-on Telenovella territory, there was more rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over the two women, both arrested for getting into a physical altercation at the home they shared in Goodyear, Ariz. There were a lot of solemn, shaking heads then too and when the WNBA suspended both players for seven games to begin the season, everybody involved nearly pulled their arms out of their sockets patting themselves on the back.
Brittney Griner tearfully opens up about her fizzled marriage to Glory Johnson: http://t.co/qoeJFemEsM pic.twitter.com/6Y4WIPU0dQ
— Vibe Magazine (@VibeMagazine) June 9, 2015
We’re supposed to look at all this and feel disgusted. We’re supposed to demand that USA Soccer hold Solo accountable for her behavior and suspend her like the NFL eventually did with Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson. We’re supposed to look at Griner and Johnson and see their fight the same way we see Ray Rice punching his fiance Janay in the face in an Atlantic City hotel elevator.
I remember back in 1997 when then St. Louis Rams head coach Dick Vermeil drafted offensive tackle Ryan Tucker out of TCU who dropped to the fourth round after getting into a brawl at a bar that put a man in the hospital. Vermeil, who was the softest and cuddliest coach in NFL history, a man known to openly weep at any time over any thing, said that he wasn’t worried about Tucker after the fight, even adding “He can finish a fight. That’s a positive.”
Tucker played in the NFL for a decade and the fact that he could beat another man up was not held against him.
Griner and Johnson had a fight and just because they were romantically linked and eventually got married, there is no sane reason to compare it to Ray and Janay Rice. If anything, the WNBA should punish them because the law got involved, but that’s it. Yes, it’s a double standard, but that’s the whole point. It’s fine that there are double standards. Double standards are sane and an acknowledgement of the reality in which we live. It doesn’t lessen our view of domestic violence if we admit that two women fighting each other (or two men) is a hell of a lot different issue than a man raising his hand to a woman.
Solo comes off as a complete psycho and probably an alcoholic in her incident and I’m not saying that shouldn’t be an issue for USA Soccer. But her fighting her older sister and 6-foot-8 nephew can’t be equivocated with Greg Hardy piledriving his girlfriend into a mound of M-16s.
Hope Solo — Shocking Details from '14 Arrest … Called Cop a 'B*tch' http://t.co/5hzLYE6QOI
— TMZ (@TMZ) June 9, 2015
When Solo, cuffed and shoved to the ground, told one of the arresting officers that if she could get her hands free, “I would kick your ass,” that’s an amusing anecdote to the story. A 5-foot-9 soccer player is drunk enough to think she can beat up a grown man? A trained police officer that has already physically subdued her? It’s kind of hilarious.
You can’t possibly think treating that “threat” the same way you would Seattle Seahawks rookie defensive end Frank Clark’s promise to “hit you like I hit her” to the female hotel manager who witnessed his alleged assault on his girlfriend. His threat his real. Hers is a joke.
Solo got out of any punishment through some legal maneuvering and she thinks that should be the end of it. She’s right. The New York Times, ESPN and now a cacophony of others think it shouldn’t be. They say she’s a Greg Hardy, a Ray Rice, a Lawrence Phillips.
That’s ridiculous and we all know it. It is a double standard.
So what?
