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The great unknown Akers achieved excellence outside the spotlight
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. A great athlete retired the other day to the sounds of silence. The highlight shows didn't devote segments to glowing retrospectives on her career, and there were no stadiums filled with cheering crowds to bid her farewell. Even in this high-tech age, when we can feed our sports addiction every hour of every day if we choose, when it seems that there is no game in any corner of the globe that goes uncovered, athletic greatness sometimes manages to go almost unnoticed. Michelle Akers is proof of that. Maybe you've heard of Michelle Akers. Maybe you even know all about her, that FIFA, soccer's international governing body, named her Women's Player of the Century, that she was a member of gold medal-winning 1996 U.S. Olympic team and a key player on the United States' World Cup championship teams in 1991 and '99, and that the '99 Cup was her last major competition before chronic fatigue syndrome and shoulder injuries finally forced her to the sidelines for good just prior to the 2000 Olympics at the age of 34. But if you know all that, you're in the distinct minority. Akers had the misfortune of playing a sport that America cared little about and that the U.S. media largely ignored until Brandi Chastain bared her sports bra two years ago, and even now, soccer probably narrowly noses out junior college cross country for space in your local newspaper. Far be it from me to rap anyone's knuckles for not following soccer, or any other non-mainstream sport, as closely as the NFL. It would be a stretch for me to call myself a soccer fan, since the only players I root passionately for are the 10-year-old center halfback and 13-year-old fullback who sit at the breakfast table with me. Besides, there's nothing more irritating than being reprimanded by some Manchester United fanatic for not appreciating the nuances of a 0-0 -- sorry, nil-nil -- match, as if preferring the National League to the English Premier League automatically means you must not have more than a third-grade education. No sport deserves more attention than it gets. I find it amusing when players complain about their team not getting enough fan support or when a broadcaster says the poor attendance at some game is disgraceful, as if it's the public's obligation to buy tickets, or even to care. Paying attention to a sport, any sport, is purely a voluntary exercise, and there's no injustice being done if people are generally more interested in the NBA than the WNBA, or college football more than track and field. But you didn't have to be a soccer aficionado to know that Akers was special; you didn't have to know that she was a pioneer for the women's game. You just had to be a sports fan. At 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds, she was ferocious and physical, as hard on her own body as she was on those of her opponents. Akers played to such exhaustion in the '99 World Cup final that she spent the last moments of the game on a gurney in the locker room. Yet when Chastain scored the winning goal for the U.S., Akers tore the IV lines from both her arms, tossed aside the oxygen mask and walked to the field for the awards ceremony. She was as tough as any guy you'll ever see in a helmet and pads on Sundays. Watching her patrol her area as a defensive midfielder in the latter stages of her career was not unlike watching Ronnie Lott or Derek Jeter or John Stockton. She had unerring instincts and commanded a degree of respect from opponents as well as teammates that was obviously personal as much as it was professional. To see a player like Akers, even past her prime -- or maybe especially past her prime -- is to be reminded that sometimes in sports excellence occurs in the shadows. Greatness is out there, and it's not always brought to you by Budweiser and Chevrolet. The NFL is in full swing and baseball's postseason is heating up, and if you're missing out on players like Michelle Akers, maybe you don't much care. That is your right. But it is also your loss. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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