RIP WUSA [NRC]

With any luck the WNBA will go with it

It wasn't a lack of money, or a lack of TV

It was just bad soccer

 

It was plain awful. I'll make a predicition that the WNBA has one more year left.

 

I don't see why some fans of the MLS have to be so hateful towards the WUSA. It is the same game with different strengths and weaknesses. There were good games. There were bad games. So goes the sport. As hard as some people try to deny it, there is talent there. Little girls have dreams, too. Get past the gender folks, seriously. I for one, am pretty tired of it. I have put in my 2 cents and I am returning to lurkdom. The WUSA will be missed, at least by this fan. And no, I won't celebrate if the MLS finds itself in the same situation shortly.

 

There are going to be a thousand posts about how sad everyone is and what a shame it was and all that, but there were plenty of us around here who strictly dealt with the facts, weren't all that excited about watching women playing soccer, and just in general didn't really give a crap.

Let this be the one thread where we can say "I told you so" without a bunch of other people flaming or trolling us - whaddaya say? If you want to talk about equality and all that, do it on another thread. This should be for all us sanctimonious pricks who knew the WUSA had no chance because we deal with the realities of sports, not the feminine-charged landscape that is enveloping this country.

I can't be sad about a league folding that had no chance to exist anyway. It was a pipe dream.

 

Amen, Keeper. The folding of WUSA does not bode well for the future of MLS.

 

Different strokes for different folks. It was the best women's league in the world and, as such, displayed a higher relative quality in the women's game than MLS does in the mens. Contrast the Breaker's 2003 performance with the Revs.

One may not care to follow it but the WUSA certainly didn't produce bad soccer.

My condolences to all involved and I hope that a first division women's league can jumpstart as quickly as possible.

JIM DOW

 

Ah, George it's so nice to have you back contributing your usual pearls of wisdom.

I won't argue about the merits of WUSA or other womens' sports, but I don't see how anyone who considers themselves a fan of the game could be dancing on their grave. I didn't regularly attend Breakers games, but I know a lot of people who did and followed the league closely. I feel particularly bad for those like Joe Cummings (and a host of other people), who put everything he had into the Breakers (not to mention the New York Power) and to see it fall.

I wonder if the teams can somehow resurface as more like a regional version of the A-League than a national league with all the travel expense, etc.

WUSA, RIP

Tom

 

Bring on WMLS, baby!!!

Honestly, I never understood how some men ended up being anti-WUSA. If you didn't like the standard of play, then fine -- move on. But in some cases, it seemed like the male hatred of the league was motivated by something more.

Whatever. I went to a couple of Breakers games... I was entertained... and I'm sad that it's gone.

 

That's too bad.

 

It is a damn shame, but indeed hardly surprising. The cable companies investing in the league clearly didn't have any long term plans in mind, and the marketers spent too much time focused on little girls and not enough on the sport. Hopefully all the men and women involved in the league can find their way back into soccer one way or another....

(In an aside - It's hard to justify savaging WUSA quality of play if you're a Revs or Metros fan. I've seen a lot of MLS games in Foxboro and the Swamp that make WUSA look like Serie A.)

 

One has absolutely ZERO to do with the other. The future of MLS bodes very well. Attendance and season ticket sales are up, players are being sold to Europe and overall the league profile is higher than it's ever been. MLS will continue to grow, no matter what happens to women's sports leagues.

 

Its unfortunate for soccer in America, but fact is, there was no support for the league, thus they had no money to keep the league alive. Star players took pay cuts yet they still couldn't pay for it. But I do believe it has to do with style of play. WUSA wasn't attractive football (there was attractive footballers) and the fan base was very small. This wont affect the MLS.

 

"Let this be the one thread where we can say "I told you so" without a bunch of other people flaming or trolling us - whaddaya say?"

I say let this be the one thread where Revolution supporters can focus on the Revolution - whaddaya say?

The Magpie

 

I am sorry to see the WUSA and the Breakers go. Soccer is still soccer, whether it is men or women playing.

I do not believe there was much of a crossover of fans between the two leagues at any serious level, so the news shouldn't have much of an effect on MLS -- outside of how precarious the very existance of professional soccer leagues are in this country.

One potential upside to this for the Revolution -- BU's Nickerson Field now becomes wide open for spring and summer dates.

If the Krafts get out of the soccer business like many fans seem to be hoping, and Anschutz or the Hunts or someone else comes in for them, they have an alternative venue to paying rent at Gillette.

Nickerson Field isn't the greatest facility to be sure, but it is in Boston and it wouldn't take much to put up new stands in the endzones and the opposite side to the main stand and get the capacity up over the 20,000-25,000 mark. It was nearly 30,000 when the Boston Breakers of the USFL were around.

 

Good point. Who put this in the Revs forum?

 

The Breakers had to tred lightly in the Spring until BU finished classes. There were considerable problems in the run-up to the first season as construction affected the student's hangovers, er, I mean, interfered with studies.

I'd think there would be similar issues with a MLS team playing at Nickerson in the Fall, too.

Also, parking sucks and tailgates would be out of the question (although the Common Ground is only a half mile away).

 

Nice to see you too Timmy

Bad soccer,crap soccer will never ever help advance the cause

Blindly supporting any product because it involves soccer might be your cup of tea. I guess I have more taste

 

WUSA RIP

I'm so tired of hearing people say that WUSA wasn't good soccer. Here's a newsflash: Men can beat women at basketball, tennis, the 400 meter high hurdles, lacrosse - everything in which size, speed, and strength are the determinants of success. Does this mean that everyone likes to watch women's athletics? Of course not. Does this mean that women's athletics are a waste of time? Of course not.

Back when George Plmr and I were kids there used to be a show called ABC's Wide World of Sports in which the intro talked about "the human drama of athletic competition". Isn't there a place for women's athletics in the human drama of athletic competition? Maybe you didn't like to watch the Breakers, but my daughters and many other peoples' daughters did.

Ultimately, what mattered to WUSA's owners was who was buying tickets and advertizing space. This could not be the girls who are actually playing, so perhaps WUSA's demise was inevitable. Perhaps NASL's demise was inevitable also, and had to precede the birth of MLS.

But just as many of us have no love for those who bash MLS, because it's not EPL, the WUSA-bashers should remember that the best women's soccer league in the world had importance for every one of the girls on my 10 year old daughter's team who listed "professional soccer player" as their life's ambition.

 

Maybe the 5-7K people that haven't been showing up at the razor were at the WUSA games will start to come back to Gilette and support the REVs.

Looking for a silver lining and REV content.

 

Re: WUSA RIP

Its pretty simple Jon, let me break it down. Would you rather watch MLB or Triple A baseball? 9 out of 10 people would choose MLB, because the competition is more intense and the skill is much better. When you have two leagues of the same sport, the one with more skill and competition will beat out the other league. This was the case for the WUSA, WNBA, and XFL (not to mention the mergers of leagues in the past).

 

Re: WUSA RIP

So the WUSA owners should have gone broke so youth players would have someone to look up to ?

Good business acumen there

The WUSA was slow. Dreadfully slow. Grass grows faster. It was dull boring unattractive soccer. It had ZERO excitement

That's why it died

Soccer in this country has a weak barely discernable pulse. We don't need bad examples of it out there to ruin what little cred the sport has

 

Re: Re: WUSA RIP

I understand that the level of play in MLS is better than WUSA. EPL is better than MLS. So why bother with MLS? The reason is because MLS is special for us because it is our home league. If we lived in Tidewater, we'd be rooting for the the Tidewater Mets. If we lived in Toledo, we might well be rooting for the Mud Hens, despite the fact that they are AAA rather than MLB.

So what is your home side if you are a female soccer player or if you are the parent of female players? Sure you can be a Rev fan or an Hertha fan, but don't you think if you were a female player, it would be more fun to be a Breaker fan?

I admit that for myself, I prefer to watch the Revs - that is my team. But I want my daughters to feel like their dreams have legitimacy too, and I feel like a whole generation of young women are having their dreams deferred, just like soccer-playing men from the 80's when NASL folded.

 

A whole generations dreams deferred because a SOCCER league went under ??

Great ceasar's ghost............

Maybe being in the desert wasn't so bad after all.....................