Marla Messing's big thinking made Women's World Cup huge

When Marla Messing left her mark on the world stage a decade ago, it was not in the way she first imagined.

As a youngster, Messing was inspired by Olga Korbut and Cathy Rigby and envisioned a future as an Olympic gymnast.

Instead, burned out on gymnastics in her teens, she settled for being "the Peter Ueberroth of the Women's World Cup."

That's how Messing, 45, describes her role as CEO and president of the soccer spectacle that unexpectedly swept U.S. sports fans off their feet in the summer of 1999.

The three-week tournament, which ended 10 years ago this week with the U.S. defeating China in the championship match at the Rose Bowl and Brandi Chastain famously stripping off her jersey, was history's most successful women's athletic event.

"Beyond our wildest dreams," Messing says of the extraordinary interest that was generated that summer. "Remember, this was women's soccer . . . so we're talking about a women's event in sort of a marginal sport. It was lightning in a bottle."

The event drew more than 650,000 fans, including Jack Nicholson and President Clinton, who were among the 90,185 on hand for the Rose Bowl finale. Clinton rushed to the locker room to congratulate the winners after the championship match, which attracted nearly as many television viewers -- 40 million - as the NBA Finals. An obviously smitten David Letterman dubbed the team "babe city" and declared himself team owner.

Afterward, the event was featured not only on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which was surprising enough, but also on the covers of Newsweek, Time and People, the latter of which declared the U.S. team "the pop culture story of the year."

Ten years later, Messing still seems to have a hard time digesting it all. During a lunchtime interview at a Brentwood eatery near her home, she says of the hoopla inspired by the tournament, "None of that was part of our planning."

Which is not to say Messing doubted the potential widespread appeal of the event. It was she who ignored skeptics and led the push to turn it into a major happening.

"She orchestrated it all," Julie Foudy, who captained the U.S. team, says in a phone interview. "It was phenomenal in a lot of different ways because there were a lot of people telling us to do it on a regional scale, do it in smaller stadiums, play it safe.

"But Marla, thankfully, was of a mind-set that we could pull off something greater and that it should be done on a larger scale and that it deserved the world's attention."