In the wake of an awful, unexpected upset, many autopsies have been performed on the United States Women’s National Team’s early exit from the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. We saw the worst, in goalkeeper Hope Solo. She redefined what it means to be a sore loser in the immediate aftermath; much like Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump is redefining what it means to be a pre-emptive sore loser in this November’s election.
Then we saw the best, in the #DogsForChristen hashtag this past weekend.
Moving forward, the loss isn’t really that big of a deal, as the World Cup is much more important than the Olympics.
Not to mention the reality that the United States of America still dominates women’s soccer as much it dominates aircraft carrier production. (USA currently has 10 carriers in commission, no other country has more than 2)
US Soccer is in a very strong place right now and they’ll continue to remain in the penthouse for a very long time, provided nothing Earth-shattering occurs to upset the balance.
However, there is one big issue the United States Soccer Federation can’t seem to figure out, or just doesn’t seem all that interested in trying to solve.
Fan and media interest in the domestic women’s soccer league remains minimal. The National Women’s Soccer League will get three regular season games televised this year, all next month, along with the final four and the title game. That’s it.
That’s all.
Amazingly, this is a big step forward for the fourth year NWSL because TV coverage has been almost non-existent up to this point.
With the exception of a few markets, like Orlando and Portland to name a couple, general interest in the league is on the floor. Attendance, media coverage, interest in general is on par with a low Single A level minor league baseball league.
That’s egregiously unacceptable given how popular women’s soccer is in the United States. While it’s true that women’s sports in general don’t move the needle like the men do, the NWSL should at least be on par with, if not ahead of, the WNBA by this point.
The United States Soccer Federation bankrolls the NWSL, so they are investing their money, but they’re really not investing the proper time and required effort to market it correctly.
It’s easy to joke that U.S. Soccer both runs the NWSL and somehow seems to ignore the NWSL’s existence —?? and that may be how it looks sometimes. But just because U.S. Soccer has made having a stable women’s league a priority doesn’t automatically make it the federation’s top priority. The women’s national team should take precedence and there is nothing wrong with that.
But still, it seems the USWNT and NWSL need to do a better job with communicating. If they aren’t developing their schedules side by side, they should be. A little more of a heads-up could’ve gone a long way toward building a contingency plan in the NWSL schedule.
If you’re interested in this topic, then you should definitely read the FOX Soccer piece on it.
Given how popular the women’s game is right now, there’s no excuse for the NWSL to have such dreadful attendance, poor facilities and lackluster accommodations (as Alex Morgan and Hope Solo have pointed out over the years)
Worst of all was that abomination of playing a regular season game in a minor league baseball stadium with a pitch that was dangerously far too small. What a black eye that was for the NWSL. At least the Commissioner’s office apologized for it.
USWNT Coach Jill Ellis said it herself, a solid, stable, good domestic league is very key to the continued success of her program.
Jill Ellis on the #NWSL. pic.twitter.com/QwhM4PhFvc
— John D. Halloran (@JohnDHalloran) July 8, 2016
The full Ellis quote can be found in the 4:30 mark to 5:30 mark here in the file below. It’s from the press conference the day before US Soccer took on South Africa in Chicago; the penultimate tune-up before Rio.
We bring up Chicago because they are critically important to what US Soccer needs to finally understand.
Chicago is the city both where the US Soccer corporate headquarters are located, and the largest market, by far, with a NWSL franchise.
(The team located in New Jersey is just not in the New York City market by any definition)
https://soundcloud.com/p-m-banks/jill-ellis-gives-health-updates-on-carli-lloyd-megan-rapinoe
As someone who covers Chicago’s team regularly, I can tell you that visiting player media availability has been extremely poor, and quite often utterly non-existent.
That has to change. Not just in a big market like Chicago, but in every other city too.
Every game, you need your biggest individual stars, from both the home and road teams, out in front of those cameras every single chance you have. Media access to the biggest and brightest stars is controlled through US Soccer and the individual player’s agents, not the NWSL team PR.
That’s a simple, but easy policy change that could be fixed tomorrow if all the parties here were motivated.
They need to get it figured out somehow, because they’re only shooting themselves in the foot.
The NWSL is a fledging league that needs all the publicity and attention it can get in order to stay alive in the long term. If I’m NWSL Commissioner Jeff Plush, I’m working with US Soccer, and the player publicity professionals to get this right, because it’s all kinds of wrong right now at the moment.
It’s pretty simple, really.
We’ve written this multiple times, as have many others. Every sport is all about the individual star; it’s what generates and keeps interest. Why the USSF, or US Soccer can’t act on this basic truth is beyond me. It’s not the NWSL’s fault here, but they will be the ones who suffer the consequences if some kind of arrangement can’t be reached.
Now it’s certainly not a panacea by any means, but it’s a good start. Getting your stars out there more often doesn’t guarantee the league will take off, but it’s the only hope the league has of trying to move up the American sports pecking order.
What’s really so baffling about the current status quo is just how much of a win-win this would be. US Soccer is investing their money in this league.
So why not try and invest more time and energy into making it as strong as it possibly could be?
The market demand is there, US Soccer just needs to stop taking the one hand tied behind their back approach. It’s time to reach out to that audience with both hands.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.