Blog: Women's Soccer Is Once Again Taking the Wrong Path

Professional women's soccer has a problem. Actually, a lot of problems. But here's one I'm not sure has occurred to the backers of the latest league: Women's soccer is running out of acronyms. There was the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA, 2001-3) and Women's Professional Soccer (WPS, 2009-11), and now there's going to be the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL, 2013-?). After this league folds (in 2015, if my math's correct), someone will be able to start up the WNSL and WNPS, but then they'll have to really dig deep in 2028 for a name that doesn't carry with it the stench of failure. Maybe by then it'll occur to women's soccer advocates that a different tack must be taken to establish it as a professional sport.

I've written about this three times now, twice with regard to the WUSA and once after the first full season of WPS. The problem with women's soccer is that people insist that it must start out as a "Major" league, rather than go through the process of going from semipro to minor/lesser to major. Major League Baseball didn't spring up, fully formed, with 30 teams playing coast to coast and a $7 billion television contract, in 1876. To become "major," the league would have to change its rules dozens of times, stop spectators from standing on the field behind a rope line, produce the Cleveland Spiders, retire the dead ball, throw a World Series, ban Negro players (and reinstate them half a century later), and put an asterisk next to Roger Maris' name. From Abner Doubleday to Connie Mack to George Steinbrenner takes multiple generations.

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