Did the New York Cosmos make the right decision by staying out of the USWNT victory parade?

Millions of fans tuned in on Sunday evening to watch the United States women defeat Japan in the FIFA World Cup final. On Friday, many of those fans will tune in to watch the women celebrate that victory in New York City, during their victory parade at 11 am ET.

While Major League Soccer is attempting to piggyback off of the success of the women's team by putting several floats in the parade, the Cosmos have elected to sit the celebration out, rather than joining New York City Football Club, MLS, and the New York Red Bulls as participants. Like many, I'm perfectly content with the club's decision to decline the invitation to participate.

US Soccer and MLS have been using each other's successes to cross promote for years, but in this case, I can't help but feel that putting floats in the women's victory parade takes away from the event a bit. The idea behind this particular event should be to honor the women's team for what they did in Canada, not to use it as an opportunity to advertise, and in that regard, putting floats promoting MLS clubs in the parade seems more than a little bit tacky.

That said, I can understand why SUM would want to use the opportunity to push other brands they promote, even if those brands had nothing at all to do with the success the USWNT has had over the past several years. The NASL aren't backed by SUM, however, and aside from the one local club, weren't invited to take part.

Personally, I wish the two New York MLS clubs had decided to go the route of the Cosmos, and politely declined the chance to have a float in today's parade. By all means, come out and support the women's team, but do so as supporters as opposed to an opening act. This should be their big moment, and I can't help but feel that SUM is taking away from it.