That seems to come down to a lot of men's sports > women's sports thinking, in my opinion.
Women athletes should be salty if they win the World Cup, and only make a fifth of what the men make, just for getting out of group play. Whether the women could beat the men, or even the US under-15 boys' team*, is irrelevant. They don't play in a men's league; the ability to beat men is not an accurate measure of their worth. Relative to their actual field of competition, the USWNT is far more successful and accomplished than the men's team, and the fact that a mediocre men's team can still draw more money is more a reflection of the defects in our society and how we value womens' sports and women's achievements than it is in any imagined shortcomings that the women might have.
But, setting that aside, let's get back to the original thesis: you feel like the women's team "put the cart before the horse," and projected revenue based on a gold medal win. Then, they lost in the knockout stage, and got "bitten in the butt for it." Okay, cool... Why do you feel like that needed to happen? Why do you feel like they "needed" to get "smacked down to earth"? Because that's the part of your OP that I took exception to; it came across to me, whether you meant it that way or not, as a lowkey way of saying that the women needed to be put in their place.
* - And let's get this out of the way: First of All™, the US Men's under-15 soccer team is, ostensibly, the best under-15 boys soccer players in the entire country. There's nothing "roughly high school JV level boys" about that squad, so what's say we permanently put that silly talking point to rest, shall we? There's not a high school JV squad in the country that could beat that team, there's probably not a high school varsity squad in the country that could beat that team. Second of All, and more to the point, it's wrong to define a woman's worth by whether or not she can whoop a man's ass; it's wrong to define a woman's worth even by whether or not she can whoop a boy's ass. So, it follows logically that it's wrong to define a womens' sports team's worth by whether or not they can beat a mens' team, or even a boys' team, in the same sport; unless they're assigned to compete in the men's league (and they're not), that's not the measuring stick that we're supposed to be using.