USWNT's Rapinoe to Congress: 'We don't know the real potential of women's sports'

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United States star Megan Rapinoe said Wednesday that the world is missing out on the "real potential of women's sports" due to inequalities that still exist, including pay and working conditions.

"With the lack of proper investment, we don't know the real potential of women's sports," Rapinoe, the captain of the National Women's Soccer League's OL Reign, told lawmakers. "What we know is how successful women's sports have been in the face of discrimination, in the face of a lack of investment in every level in comparison to men."

Rapinoe will join other USWNT members later Wednesday to meet with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden to mark Equal Pay Day.

Rapinoe's comments come on the heels of outrage over inequalities between the NCAA's men's and women's basketball tournaments. She called the discrepancies "completely unacceptable."

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Rapinoe called out Emmert by name, saying he "and the executives at the NCAA, you just simply have to do better."

"For an organization like the NCAA, similar to the U.S. Soccer Federation, that's a nonprofit, it's just absolutely unacceptable," Rapinoe said. "To say that you value your student-athletes and to have your women's players show up for one rack of dumbbells is just completely unacceptable."

In her prepared opening statement, Rapinoe issued lawmakers a call for equal pay.

"One cannot simply outperform inequality of any kind. I am here today because I know firsthand that this is true," she said.

"The Women's National Team has won four World Cup championships and four Olympic gold medals on behalf of our country. We have filled stadiums, broken viewing records, and sold out jerseys. Yet despite all of this, we are still paid less than men -- for each trophy, each win, each tie, each time we play. Less. And if that can happen to us, to me, with the brightest lights shining on us -- it can, and it does, happen to every person who is marginalized by gender. And we don't have to wait. We don't have to continue to be patient. We can change that today. Right now. We just have to want to."

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