Balanced scales at last

Grasping such a simple concept shouldn't have taken this long, you figure. But as women everywhere will tell you, we are talking about men here.

Men don't need directions. Men can fix that hyperdrive thingy with a socket wrench and a little WD-40. And what do you mean women soccer players should be paid the same as the men?

The hell year do you think this is, 2022?

But God bless 'em, the men finally came around, and yesterday both the men's and women's national team unions ratified an historic new collective bargaining agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation. And by "historic," we mean both national teams will get an even cut of any World Cup bonus money, and will receive identical per-game bonuses as well.

This has only seemed fair since, I don't know, 1850 or something, which is approximately the time the American women became world beaters while the men trudged along in their traditional role as world-beaten. The women have been one of the top two or three sides on the planet for the last 25 years; the men have, well, not. 

But the men always got more dough, because, you know, they were men. That this was inherently unfair is the simple concept referred to above -- and it was made even simpler by the disparate expectations on either side of the gender line. 

The men were paid more even though it was considered a Great Stride Forward if they reached the knockout round of the World Cup. The women were paid less even though it was considered a down year if they didn't WIN the World Cup.

See? Unfair. An amoeba could see it.

Amoebas, however, are not the USSF, which has spent years denying it was doing the women dirty by using cooked books to "prove" they weren't. No one with an ounce of third-grade math bought it, of course; the USSF's case was that glaringly bogus. And to compound this bumbling, the USSF chose to present it right after the U.S. women had won another World Cup.

Even amoebas would have been smarter.

Because the upshot was that the Federation came off looking small, petty and, oh, yeah,  profoundly ungrateful for the prestige its crown jewel had brought it. And it got properly roasted for it.

But you know what?

Three years later, the Federation finally came around. And you have to wonder if  the public ridicule it got for the way it reacted to the USWNT's World Cup win wasn't the first step down that road.

Sometimes nothing motivates a change of heart like being laughed at. Says here, anyway.