With women’s sports seemingly reaching new heights in popularity every day, leagues like the NWSL are taking advantage of the moment by expanding into new markets.
This week, the NWSL celebrated its upcoming team in Boston with a social media blitz revealing their new name: BOS Nation FC. They were hoping to hit the right notes of empowering women athletes and appealing to a 21st century audience.
Instead, they released a hype video that felt like a one-minute Rob Schneider movie, in which some writer decided to spend the entire running time talking about testicles.
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As the video began, a dramatic voiceover intoned, “Boston: a city of champions. A legacy filled with trophies, banners, rings, and…balls.”
It wasn’t a good sign for a fledgling women’s sports team when their promo clip went to the testicular region quicker than most Pornhub videos.
Sadly, the wit did not improve from there. “Boston loves its balls.” “There are too many balls in this town.” “No balls necessary.”
In the span of 60 seconds, the BOS Nation video mentioned the word “balls” nine times. It was the first time I’ve ever watched anything from the NWSL and wondered if it would end with, “Shut up, Beavis.”
Yes, I realize that reference was ancient. In my defense, so was promoting a women’s soccer team with a balls joke every six seconds.
While soccer fans excoriated BOS Nation in comments sections across all social media platforms, a few NWSL players also made their opinions heard.
Most prominently, in an Instagram comment screenshot by journalist Frankie de la Cretaz, Seattle Reign FC midfielder Quinn responded, “Feels transphobic. Yikes.”
Although their comment later disappeared and was presumably deleted, Quinn’s rebuke was in line with hundreds of NWSL fans who were appalled at the BOS Nation video’s tone and subject matter.
As one of the most prominent transgender and nonbinary athletes in the world, when Quinn calls out a team for being transphobic, their words carry extra significance. Especially when that team is just introducing itself to the league in which Quinn has become an institution for the past six years.
One day after a rollout that rivaled the Titanic’s, BOS Nation appeared to shift into damage control mode. Writer T.L. Pavlich tweeted that the club had pulled its “Too Many Balls” merch from online stores and edited out all mentions of balls in the video on most of its social media accounts.
Pavlich also noted, “The official team twitter still has the full video, as of 9am ET. They haven’t paid for premium so they can’t edit.”
At first glance, that sounded laughably cheap. But honestly, BOS Nation not giving money to Elon Musk might have been their best PR move of the day.
To sum up, one day after introducing themselves to the sports world, BOS Nation had embarrassed their burgeoning fanbase and offended one of their league’s most celebrated trailblazing athletes.
Thankfully, the club isn’t scheduled to begin play until 2026. By that time, maybe they’ll come up with a slogan that doesn’t sound like it was rejected by Barstool for lack of subtlety.
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