World Cup Fever is real. Team USA is set to face off against Japan this Sunday, and all signs point to record-breaking viewership. Even though some of the matches have been tough to find on TV, almost every game played by the U.S. Women’s National Team in this tournament has drawn millions more viewers that the last. The team’s most recent win in the semifinal against Germany had 8.4 million viewers, the third-largest for women's soccer in this country after the 1999 final against China and the 2011 final against Japan.
And all this makes us able to laugh instead of hate on Sport's Illustrated writer Andy Benoit's sexist Twitter word vomit from last week, that "women's sports in general [are] not worth watching." Ha-ha! Guess that means he missed the beautiful way Kelley O'Hara sliced that ball past Germany's defenders on Tuesday night. Even on those awful turf fields, Team USA and the rest of their opponents have been delivering matches every bit as entertaining as last year's men's World Cup — just without the random biting. The women's games involve more fancy footwork instead of huge passes, and there are fewer melodramatic efforts to get the ref to call a penalty.
Good thing Benoit deleted his tweet; otherwise, we can imagine 8.4 million newly minted Carli Lloyd fans showing him what really is worth watching.