Which team should host the 2020 championship? Excluded 2019 host North Carolina and 2018 host Portland.
I would lile to do away with "neutral" sites and just let the team have home field as a reward for being the higher seed. But that said, I like Utah, Chicago, or even LA if possible.
I would too, but only if teams with undersized fields were required to use larger ones for the title game. Specially, Sky Blue would have to use Red Bull Arena, Washington would have to use Audi and Seattle would have to use Century Link.
The use of "neutral sites" to mean "any non-NWSL city" isn't quite accurate... Any predetermined site will be neutral if the host doesn't qualify. And I highly doubt NWSL will draw in a non-NWSL city, so it's kinda silly to include. The only exception to that would maybe be if you give the championship in one year to the following year's expansion team, as a sort of ramp-up event. But that'd be it. Utah could probably draw 8k+ for a neutral game. I wouldn't be so sure about Chicago. And, as I insinuated above, I don't think LA could draw either unless they knew they were getting a team the next spring. Agree about DC or NJ, but SEA at CLink would be awful visibility. I wouldn't even put SEA in the same category as POR/UTA/maybeDC - I think they'd have trouble drawing for a neutral game, similar to CHI or NJ.
The "higher seed hosts the final" was in place for the first two seasons. My guess is it was changed to a predetemined site because the Reign were booted out of Memorial for the 2014 final. The league wanted to make sure there weren't any more finals having to be held in less desirable venues.