NEU » at year he fought to get: There might be a fe

BRASILIA, Brazil -- The tour of Brazil is over. And Rio de Janeiro didnt make the itinerary.For the first time since womens soccer was added to the Olympics 20 years ago, the United States wont play for a gold medal. It wont play for any medal. The Americans are instead heading home after losing to Sweden 4-3 in the first penalty shootout in Olympic womens soccer history. That followed a 1-1 stalemate over 120 minutes against the resilient Swedes and former U.S. coach Pia Sundhage.Alex Morgan scored the goal that brought the United States level late in the second half, but her penalty kick to open the shootout was saved by keeper Hedvig Lindahl, and Christen Press put her attempt over the bar in the fifth round, leaving the shootout score tied 3-3 with Swedens fifth-round kick to come.After a lengthy delay before that kick, so goalkeeper Hope Solo could change her gloves, Swedens Lisa Dahlkvist went left when Solo guessed right. So ended the bid for a fourth consecutive gold medal by the United States.Perhaps Sweden is too experienced an international side -- and Sundhage too good a coach -- to call the result in Brasilia a stunning upset, but it is nonetheless shocking to see the reigning World Cup and Olympic champion, unbeaten in 2016, out before medals are at stake.More to come from Brasilia, but here are three observations at the final whistle.1. Year of the counterWe saw it from Leicester City when that team stunned the soccer world by winning not a sprint of a tournament but the long marathon of the English Premier League season. We saw it from the Icelandic mens team in the Euros. And we saw it with little more than an hour elapsed in Brasilia. If a team is organized, committed and precise, it doesnt need much possession to win the game. It just needs to make the most of a chance. So while there will be plenty to dissect in the autopsy of a defeat, first give Sweden all the credit it is due.The plan was no surprise. U.S. coach Jill Ellis talked about it the day before the game. Sundhage made no secret of it, either. But whether level early, ahead or holding on for dear life late, Sweden looked nothing like the team that was outclassed earlier in this tournament.A lot of teams park the bus against the United States. Few do it so courageously.2. For the love of technologyTwo wrongs dont make a right, but they can produce a penalty shootout. In quick succession in the waning minutes of overtime, both the United States and Sweden had goals waved off -- incorrectly by every available replay -- as a result of offside calls.Neither call looked close; the flag on the ball that sneaked between two U.S. defenders to Lotta Schelin was particularly egregious. If the quality of officiating remains a question mark for the sport, and it does by most accounts, then wouldnt it be a perfect place to welcome technology?3. No chance to peak at the right timeThe United States wasnt exceptionally unlucky when it came to injuries during and leading up to the Olympics. It had its share of issues, but so does every team in a tournament like this.At the same time, it seemed obvious Friday that the slow trickle of issues did take a toll. The U.S. women werent sharp on set pieces for much of the game, making it easy to wonder what might have been different with a healthy Megan Rapinoe.Beaten on the run that produced the goal, Julie Johnston looked rusty at times after sitting out the past two games with a groin injury.It isnt an excuse. The United States had chance after chance to win this game with the players it had on the field. But it also wasnt a team peaking at the right time. 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Marcus Smart Jersey . LOUIS -- Cardinals cleanup hitter Allen Craig says hes recovered from a foot injury and ready to be put on St. Baker Mayfield is short. Lord, is he ever short. Really short. So short you sometimes have to go looking for him even when you can hear his voice right in front of you. If you take your eyes off him, you have to follow the voice, tracking it like a scent, until you can relocate him.His hands are small, much smaller than hands you would expect to throw a football accurately at long distances. Theyre so small they almost shrivel into his wrists. Shaking hands with him feels like grabbing a set of keys. Hes practically a kangaroo. Hes slow too. Dont let everything else distract you from that. You watch him run and you wonder what happened. Is he really trying? Its kind of cute if he is -- disturbing if he isnt. He once got tackled from behind by Baylors Shawn Oakman, a 6-foot-8 Doric column. If you go to an Oklahoma game, youll notice he gets to run out of the tunnel a minute or two before the rest of the team, and the guys in front still worry they might run him over.Hes spoiled. Add that to the mix. He grew up in Lake Travis, a tony section of Austin, Texas, where he spent an entitled childhood being fed peeled grapes -- probably because his tiny hands couldnt hold them -- and drinking only water flown in from a pristine lake on the southern tip of Chile. A plane would land every two or three days on the private airstrip on the property, and an army of servants -- dressed, for some reason, like the cast of Chariots of Fire -- would rush the water from the plane to a climate-controlled building, careful to make sure its temperature didnt rise more than 2 degrees.To think that this young man -- really nothing more than a collection of athletic inadequacies -- can be the quarterback of the Oklahoma Sooners, and that he finished fourth in the Heisman voting a year ago, and that he might end up being one of the most productive quarterbacks in NCAA history, is nothing short of laughable.I KNOW. THIS isnt what you expected. You expected the traditional ventriloquism, including but not limited to: bland platitudes and rote testimonials from coaches and teammates; quirky anecdotes that illuminate the subjects pious devotion to his chosen expertise; and a montage of adversities overcome that now serve as motivation and foster newfound perspective.There is a protocol for stories like this one, and it doesnt include a ritual slandering of a personable and disarming 21-year-old whose easy composure has a way of making you realize how aimless you were at that age.But what if that 21-year-old abhors comfort and actively seeks conflict? What if Baker Mayfield needs to feel unappreciated and underestimated? What if slander becomes its own form of praise?REST ASSURED: OVER the next several months (and quite possibly the next several paragraphs), there will be plenty of opportunity for the standard hagiography. Protocol will be followed. There will be highlight packages set to inspirational music, fawning quotes from Big 12 coaches, stories like this one, profiles that check all the right boxes.Theyll include the announcement he made at 3 years old, when he and his mother were watching Saturday-morning cartoons. From now on, Baker said, Im only watching ESPN. He changed the channel in a way Gina Mayfield says not only was final but carried a hint of ceremony.Theyll tell you that 3-year-old became the 10-year-old general manager who spent summer mornings writing rosters for the games he and his buddies would play in his backyard. Hed assign teams, call players and make sure his mom made cookies. Baseball, football, jump in the pool, Gina says. Baseball, football, jump in the pool.Youll read that before Mayfields freshman year, Lake Travis High coach Hank Carter saw this tiny kid running around with near-feral exuberance. He was 5-5 or 5-6, a little fart, but he stuck out because of how charismatic he was, Carter says. I remember thinking, Well, if lil ol Baker would ever grow, hell probably be a stud.Youll learn how the little-rich-boy theme collapsed in Mayfields senior year, when his father, a private equity consultant, hit hard times and had to sell the family home. We hit a serious rough patch, James Mayfield says. It was stressful. Baker, big brother Matt and their parents moved from rental to rental -- four in Bakers senior year alone.I always have that in the back of my head -- the idea that Ive been spoon-fed because of where Im from, Baker says. I think thats one of the main things that drives me to work harder to show that, in reality, I havent been handed anything.Yes, the confidence. Youll learn about that too, and about what it might feel like to break the karmic chain to live a doubt-free life, to scoff at the idea of a safety net because you never expect to fall.COULD IT BE genetic? Was Mayfields mentality -- the easy charisma, the caustic edge -- passed down by a certain tall, white-haired gentleman with an elongated face and the bearing of a character actor who always gets the role of governor of a Southern state? James Mayfield was a quarterback and punter at the University of Houston from 1967 to 69, never lettering, and still carries himself with the certainty and ease of an old athlete.Its clear right away that James resides permanently on the verge of saying something he might regret. His wife, Gina, finishes a lot of his sentences, which feels less like a habit than a series of pre-emptive strikes.Ol James can tell a story, thats for sure. When Baker was a high school junior, James took him to OU to see old coaching friends (hes seemingly on a first-name basis with every coach in the Southwest) and ran into two Sooners assistants.Were standing around telling stories, and I see them size him up, James says. At the time, Baker was 5-11, 185. Im looking at them and thinking, This isnt going well.He didnt pass the eye test, Gina says.Of course we didnt hear from OU again, James says.There is a casual knowingness in his voice and a hint of forgiveness for OUs ability to rebound from its original mistake. After all, the Sooners arent the only team that disappointed the Mayfields. Twice James encouraged his son to bet on himself, showing up on Big 12 campuses that didnt deem him worthy of a scholarship. He became the starter both times.The idea that he was not recruited has been a little overplayed, Carter says. He was recruited, just not by the schools he wanted to play for. Its true: Mayfield was not the complete unknown that fits so conveniently into its assigned narrative slot. He chose to walk on at Texas Tech rather than accept a scholarship offer from Washington State, Rice, New Mexico or Florida Atlantic.I easily couldve gone to a place like Florida Atlantic, but my dad pushed me to realize that my dream was to play somewhere big, Mayfield says. He was right. At Tech, he became the first true-freshman walk-on QB to start an FBS season opener and was Big 12 freshman offensive player of the year.It looked like the first draft of an answer to all those critics, but the plotline shifted over the course of the season as Mayfields relationship with head coach Kliff Kingsbury deteriorated. There were communication mishaps, injuries and James Mayfields assertion that Kingsbury -- in his infinite wisdom -- decided Baker couldnt stay healthy enough to be the starter.Shortly after Kingsbury declared a three-way competition for the starting job in the Holiday Bowl, Mayfield called home and said he wanted out. He quit Lubbock in December, added another enemy to his list and went to Norman. Tech refused to grant Mayfield his release -- cue the ominous bad-guy music one more time -- even though Oklahoma and the Mayfields argued that walk-ons should not be subject to the Big 12 rule that requires intraconference transfers to sit one year and lose a season of eligibility.Mayfield spent much of his mandatory scout-team year dominating the intramural circuit in a way that suggests an almost unhinged competitiveness. An all-state first baseman at Lake Travis, he moved to short for a team that won its first game 41-1 in two innings and never won by fewer than 12 runs. Mayfield agreed to play flag football, but only at receiver. His team was trailing late in its first game, and -- ?no doubt seething at the possibility of defeat -- he threw a wide receiver pass that won the game. A protest was filed- that an intercollegiate athlete shouldnt be allowed to play intramurals in his sport, and Mayfield was banned. Great, he said. I cant play on Saturdays, and now I cant even play for fun?During a pickup basketball game (Im just awful, Mayfield says), an opponent lashed out, calling hhim Frat God.dddddddddddd To Mayfields ear, this sounded a lot like spoon-fed. I lowered my shoulder into his chest with a dribble and put him on his back, Mayfield says. But if I wasnt playing a sport, Id be in a frat. So I guess I cant knock him too hard for that. I need to apologize, but I dont know who he is, so ... hey, if youre out there.Mayfield played Halo for hours on end, engaging in the same Xbox therapy that carried him through much of his tumultuous senior year in high school. He calls it his nerdy side. Later that fall, when he was quoted by the universitys website as saying he was the best Halo player on campus, he was flooded with challenges. I whipped the crap out of people, he says. I had kids who were genuinely mad when they saw my claim, but they dont realize I spent hours with that game. I could have been a pro.Brash is the word you hear most, but it seems too proper, almost Victorian. At first I didnt like him, says junior wide receiver Jeffrey Mead. He used to drive me nuts. Then I thought, Maybe hes doing this for a reason. The more I got to know him ... OK, I actually like him. I just have to understand what hes doing.Mayfields confidence is somehow both blatant and disarming. Brash doesnt describe the guy who confronted Oakman after that tackle like he wanted to fight. His former center, Ty Darlington, dismisses the notion of a mismatch: Which way? I aint betting against Baker. Oakman said hed fight him in the parking lot, and I think Baker would have kicked his ass.Undersized player is motivated by slights real and perceived -- storylines dont get more conventional than that. But Mayfield needs to believe there is still a legion of nonbelievers. He needs it for sustenance.If all doubt turned to praise, who would he be? How would he treat every form of competition as a referendum on his worth as a human being? How would he continue to consider every slight as the worst form of tyranny, so offensive that he penned a list -- a handwritten list!- -- that reads like the worlds worst scouting report:Too shortToo slowSmall handsSystem quarterbackSpoiled rich kidSeriously, its nearly pathological. Silly, sure, but pathological nonetheless. He is no longer overlooked, but dont tell him. If no one doubts him, whats the point of playing? MAYFIELD IS SITTING in a construction trailer as the hum of the air conditioner drones in the background. The trailer is temporary; itll be gone as soon as the crews finish the suitably exotic end zone office complex on the south end of mellifluously named Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.There was an interview before this one and another to follow. He has quickly reached a point in his career where the doubts must be self-generated. His first year in a Sooners uniform was, by all accounts, a success: He was second-team All-American and led his team to the College Football Playoff, where it lost to Clemson. And this June, he became the patron saint of walk-ons when he fought the Big 12 and won back his eligibility.Its been crazy, Mayfield says. In a three-year span, its gone from people not knowing about me to sometimes people knowing way too much.Aside from the trailers Guantanamo vibe, everything seems to be going well. Hes on the shortest of short lists for the Heisman. Oklahomas offense is loaded. His father and brother have teamed up on a private equity business that is on a good run.So what bothers him now?People, man, he says with mock exasperation. Im walking around and they tell me what I need to do for us to win a national championship. They ask, Are you going to win the Heisman this year? Here he begins speaking in Bull Durham canned-quote mode as voiced by a small-market news anchor. Well, I dont really know. Im going to work for our team to get better and win a national championship, and if that comes with it? Then yeah.I get it. It comes with the territory. I appreciate all the kids who come up and enjoy my play at OU. But everybody giving me their opinions is where I draw the line. If its someone who hasnt been there before, I really cant handle it. Its Slide more. Dont take as many hits. Get out of bounds. I know they have my best interests at heart. I just have to remind myself of that.His batlike sonar is so acute it will hear advice as criticism. And the slights must remain in the present tense -- after all, a Mayfield never forgets. Back in Bakers senior year at Lake Travis, after dissuading his son from going to Florida Atlantic or Washington State, James took it upon himself to find his son a walk-on spot at a suitably large school. James says he floated the idea with some Longhorn Foundation friends at Texas, and they came back with a message from Mack Brown: Tell James we already have five scholarship quarterbacks. To which James replied, in a line he is proud to repeat: Tell Mack hes got five kids on scholarship who cant play at Lake Travis.Gina pats James on the arm and says, Now now, with a nervous laugh. She is smiling, but the look says: Dude, let it go.I know, James says, laughing at himself. That was just my cheap-shot stupid talk.But its TCU that holds a special place in the Mayfields Rolodex of resentment. As a high school senior, Baker was so sure Gary Patterson was going to offer him a scholarship that he turned away other schools. Before the semifinal against Clemson, Baker made a point of saying that TCU kind of hung me out to dry and that Patterson doesnt like me, and I have no comment about that.Patterson responded by saying, If Baker Mayfield wants to blame TCU for 128 BCS schools not offering him a scholarship, thats fine. But ask Kliff Kingsbury why he didnt offer him a scholarship at Texas Tech. Ask about Bakers dad. Hes an arrogant guy who thinks he knows everything. If people knew the whole story, they might not have a great opinion of Baker and his father.Reminded of Pattersons statement, James chuckles a bit and shakes his head. Gary, he says.Gaaa-ry, Gina says, drawing out the syllables like a piece of gum. Hes like Newman from Seinfeld. We loved Gary. We really did.James and Gina share a look. They both smile. Theres clearly a secret language being spoken, perhaps centered on the idea that Gary once mattered but no longer does.OK, James says, heres the deal: Just before signing day he called assistant coach Chad Glasgow, who was recruiting Baker, and asked, Chad, is this going anywhere? Glasgow, according to James, said, Well ... To which James replied, If you cant commit, we need to move on and do whats best for Baker. Glasgow, who refused comment through a TCU spokesman, suggested he come to Austin to have dinner with the Mayfields, to which James replied, Why the hell would we do that?I think I hurt Pattersons feelings by saying that, James says. It wasnt a harsh exchange. Then he got mad at Baker because Baker was on the sidelines two years ago reading their calls.Oh, yeah. Theres that.Current TCU co-offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie left Texas Tech the week after Mayfield did. (Left with impunity, James says.) That fall, while sitting out the season, Mayfield noticed that Cumbie hadnt changed the hand signals he used to call plays. Patterson and TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin said Mayfield was telling Oklahomas defense what was coming. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops denied it. Oh, its true, James says. Thats on Cumbie.He laughs. Thats his boy, the unapologetic competitor, the one who -- along with his dad -- is not content that people simply know they missed out. They must be subjugated. This is why everyone believes hell stay for that year he fought to get: There might be a few more heretics who must bow before the truth.This is not a kid trying to prove himself. This is a siege. After every big play he made in a 63-27 rout of Texas Tech last fall, he looked over at Kingsbury and shook his head in disgust. Look at me, Kliff. How could you let this get away?Yes, things are going well. The critics have been silenced. Almost. But their doubts still echo in one place: inside Baker Mayfields head. In there, hes still short, still slow, still lil ol Baker getting sized up and ignored. Hes still the little fart, not a Heisman candidate or the leader of a team that has legit national championship aspirations.But if it turns out that he wins one -- or both -- of those trophies, lets hope theres someone there who can hold it for him.Tim KeownKeown is a senior writer for ESPN. join the conversation follow @TimKeownESPN follow @ESPN ' ' '