What are your thoughts? TLDR: Actually, it is, and will be, causes (plural) AND professional football. Following other teams evolving and embracing that concept, Angel City is the team that came right out and said: We were formed because we have a community mission and we will play professional football. This post could have been a 6-8 page essay, but I am too lazy to do the work to research and compose such a piece, so I will resort to three dots to separate fragments. I have long felt that women’s professional football will not have arrived until we stop hearing the post-game questions such as “How important is it to be a role model for young girls?” or “What does this mean for equality?” Over the course of the Challenge Cup, and personally having been pushed over the edge by the Angel City announcement and coverage, I have come to the belief that collectively these women (players, coaches, staff, owners) will forge a new paradigm, where the “OR” in the question is not a valid conjunction. The correct conjunction will become, correctly, “AND.” And the correct answer will be: “Yes, women’s professional football is a Cause (actually several Causes) AND it is professional football.” I see the conjunction of Cause and Professional Football emerging in several forms, such as · Connection between teams, players, and the real-world community they live in · Connection of the teams and players with the social media community they live in · Activism by NWSL media leaders Connection between teams, players and the real-world community they live in The Red Stars have always been tied to the city: perennially drafting local players; the Elevated kit; the Neighborhood kit - the launch featured photos of players in the neighborhoods where they lived; at the beginning of the Challenge Cup, Arnim Whistler announced significant Red Stars initiatives to build a more diverse, equitable organization and to further engage the community… Portland embraced the Thorns like an Abby Scuito hug and the Thorn players have been hugging back ever since… The Challenge Cup was the first time I heard the Dash (Rachel Daly) say “we did this for Houston,” not the club, but the city; Katie Stengel’s pre-cup tweets were all about her exploring the city… Angel City’s ownership could be subtitled “People of L.A.;” the launch: “The time has come to reshape expectations on & off the soccer field;” the club has an institutionalized partnership with the LA84 Foundation (la84.org: “P.E. is a social justice issue - the LA84 Foundation is committed to closing the play equity gap”)… Washington Spirit has an active relationship with DC SCORES (dcscores.org/our-program/program-model)…. All teams now have a PRIDE game… Players from all teams are active in charity work in their markets… During the Challenge Cup, player pre-game demonstrations to support ending racism were heartfelt and very public. Connection of the teams and players with the social media community they live in Sarah Gorden’s Pass-It-On Challenge on Twitter raised $15,700 for Get Yo Mind Right Chi, a mental health initiative… Players used Twitter to encourage participation in the June 11, 2020 great American takeout to support black-owned restaurants in their markets… Washington Spirit hosted video/podcasts related to racial and LGBTQ equity issues and posted them on youtube… Chicago and Washington creatively used twitch during the COVID stay at home period to keep fans engaged with their teams… There were at least 11 special Challenge Cup twitter accounts [I liked @NWSLcupmountian]; Lisa Baird embraced them, especially @NWSLplayground… Yuki Nagasato did a video blog for her entire stay and posted the episodes on her youtube channel… Orlando Pride converted @ORLPride Twitter to be the Challenge Cup Stan Account and very successfully kept the team engaged nationally even while not playing. Activism by NWSL media leaders Meg Linehan – throughout her footprint… Jeff Kassouf (especially Kickin’ Back podcasts) …Sandra Herrera- also throughout her footprint… I am sure others deserve mention, but I’ve run out of gas. The connections among players, teams, communities, and causes will only strengthen over time – and those strong connections will be another part of the women’s game that sets it apart from men’s professional sports. Regardless of my accepting the conjunction of Causes and Women’s Professional Football, I still am going to hate the “role model” and “what would you say to young girls” questions. -CJ
Good thoughts. It is a different thing to say "I follow this team/player because I love the soccer and what they support" than to say "I follow/support this team because I think women's soccer is the cause." It's a sign of the growth of women's soccer that we're saying the first now, much more than the second. The second was more the message of the WUSA and WPS years, and as the NWSL has become stable, imo, it hasn't been the underlying message of this league anymore thankfully.
There have been many concepts banging around inside my skull and you have highlight the one discussion point that I did not address in my opening post. We used to complain that women's soccer should not be treated as a Cause (i.e. 'the right thing to do'), but it should be treated as a business. As you point out, a corner has been turned, in that now we (or a lot of us - Budweiser/Secret/P&G) see women's soccer as a business worthy of investment.
By the way, not sure if women's football (soccer, for us Europeans) is a Cause or not; what I know is that the "business" model has ruined men's football in my eyes to the point that I just can't follow it anymore and I turned to women's football instead (finding it more and more attractive the more I was going deep into it). Now, for sure we're light-years far away from the moment when being treated just as a business would damage women's football too (and I'll admit this approach, at the moment, would probably mostly benefit women's football instead, with the prospect of having the players live on their own sport only, for a change), but I'd anyway like women's football to keep being different from men's football and I guess limiting the "business-side" of it is a way to grant that.
The NWSL Players Association is in the midst of a No More Side Hustles campaign, i.e., a campaign saying that its players should receive enough compensation for playing professional soccer that they do not need to have additional (side) jobs to generate enough income to be able to support themselves. I would like to see discussion about this and, rather than opening a new thread, think this is an appropriate thread on which to try to get things going. My starting point is that I think it would be great if all NWSL players receive enough pay from their teams to not need to also have side jobs. I think there is a question, however, that goes along with that: Where would or should the money come from? This is a question the campaign does not seem to address. I am assuming that most of the clubs presently are not generating enough income to cover all of their current expenses. In other words, that they are losing money. This almost certainly is not true of Portland, but there is a good chance it is true for many -- if not all -- of the other clubs. So, to pay the NWSL players at the level they are campaigning for, the money needs to come from somewhere other than club operating income. I believe some of you posters have more information than I on how the clubs are doing financially, so maybe you can provide some good information on how the clubs are doing financially. Should the owners pony up their own resources -- in other words, lose more money -- to allow the players to put an end to side hustles? Should the USSF give the league more money so that this can happen and, if so, does it have the resources to do that? Should we fans contribute financial support above and beyond what we pay for tickets? These questions all seem to fit within the bigger question whether NWSL soccer is a cause or a professional business -- or both as CoachJon suggests it may be. Hopefully, some of you will post thoughts on this.
It might be instructive to look at how the MLS has changed in the last 15 years ago, and how the league came to be able to afford higher salaries. first, there was the Beckham hire which at the time was thought to be not possible. It was ultimately financed through the side hustle of the side hustle of the personal services contract, supposedly for sponsorships. https://www.latimes.com/sports/socc...ng-with-the-galaxy-made-lasting-impact-on-mls in one sense the allocated players are treated that way in terms of the league structure. Only a portion of their salaries goes to salary caps. keep in mind that Beckham’s last year in Spain before he came to MLS earned him $29.1 million , ridiculously low by today’s standards. a general overview od the last 15 year of mls salaries is here: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blo...ferent-way-of-looking-at-MLS-salary-data.html And another comparison to days of yore from 2005 has some interesting bits. The highest paid players was Landon Donovan, but 16 YO Freddy Adu was the highest paid player on his club at $330,000and the league minimum was $11,700. That was also the salary mode ( what most players got). The current NWSL minimum is $22,000, I think. Running $11,700 through one of the inflation calculators returns $17,276 in today’s dollars. Adu’s salary was supplemented by contract with Nike, Pepsi, and Campbell’s Soup, among others. I don’t know if sponsorship contracts are side hustles or not, but a good number of current NWSL players have them, though I think only allocated players have very high ones. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ry-list/4247233e-7503-407d-aca0-158f257e0e8d/ anyhow, from the descriptions of Olivia Moultrie’s 16 year old salary, she has a way to go. ( she actually doesn’t turn 16 until September).
Yikes. "Most players got $11,700.". Actually, at most 4 players out of 28 got that. And that was the lowest. It was the "mode" because it was a "non-negotiable starting point." Which is a horrible stat to use. The better number is the "median" or "middle" It was the minimum rate for the junior development players. Teams had 18-20 "senior roster" players, up to 4 senior developmental players - making around $17-18k, and up to 4 junior developmental players. Dev squad players were age capped to 24 (25 for GKs). Basically the practice squad players. The league minimum for "senior roster" players in those days was, I believe, $30k. All of those minimums (dev and senior) were first year minimums with mandatory percentage raises for each year of service. The "median" (or middle) player in 2005 was over $40k if I recall. Let's see if I can find it. Well a quick Google search got this with data back to 2007. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blo...ferent-way-of-looking-at-MLS-salary-data.html In 2007 the minimum had gone up to $12,9. The median was $50k, and the average (brought up by the marquee players) was $113k. Once the MLSPU (now the MLSPA) started negotiating CBAs, the "developmental" positions went away in 2010 and the league minimum for all rostered players was over $30k. The "senior roster" minimum was higher still. And if anyone mentioned MLS's Salary Cap - ignore them. MLS has a Salary Budget. It 1) only covers players on the 18-20 player "senior roster", and it only covers salary amounts 1) below the individual player maximum and 2) not "bought down" with other discretionary funds supplied to each team (and tradable) such as GAM/TAM and for forth. Furthermore there classes of developmental players that are exempt from the Salary Budget that make way more than most of the development squad players. Homegrown Players, Nike Pro-40/Generation Adidas. Finally there is now another mechanism for U22(?) designated players where the amount charged against the Budget is lower. So while the MLS Salary Budget is $4.9 million. https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/2021-mls-roster-rules-and-regulations Okay, looking at that, I was close. Senior Roster (18-20 players): Maximum Salary Charge: $612,500 Senior Dev (up to 4): $81,375 (does not count against Salary Budget) Junior Dev (up to 6): $63,547 (does not count against Salary Budget) (at least two must be Homegrown players) "Salary Budget" is $4.9 million. Additionally each team received $1.5 million of General Allocation Money and $2.8 of Targeted Allocation Money. Plus teams are able to spend additional money on homegrown players and Generation Adidas players - whose salaries don't count against the Budget. Let's not forget that the 10 supplemental spots also add around $700k in spending. Finally teams can spend unlimited funds above the maximum salary charge on up to 3 designated players. If you add it up, the base for most MLS teams is over $9million a year (though a couple of teams might be lower than that if they trade away TAM/GAM). Add in DP spending and the average MLS team spends around $12-13 million per year on player wages. https://theathletic.com/2585286/2021/05/13/mls-salaries-breakdown The average wage for MLS Senior Roster players is $398k in 2021. The Vancouver Whitecaps are spending $8.7 million this year. At the other end Inter-Miami is on the books for $17.8 million.
Heh-heh, this reminds me of a thread I started in 2008. (They called it the WPS back then for you old-timers who can remember that far!) I may glance through it to see if there's any points which stand out as being useful to our present discussion, but in the meantime, here's the original post ->