Provocative photos of players and a planned Playboy.com poll prod debate on the role sex should play in selling the WUSA.
Lynn Morgan is watching her words these days, ever since a few of them – errantly reported, it turns out – raised eyebrows among the WUSA's players and sponsors.
The subject was sex, specifically a planned Playboy.com poll – Which WUSA star would you most like to see nude on Playboy's pages – and Morgan, the league's president and CEO, was gung-ho in favor.
''If they wanted to do a [center]fold,'' Morgan was quoted as saying in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, ''we wouldn't be opposed to something that would show off our players.''
Trouble was, Morgan never said any such thing. She said the league wouldn't be opposed to a poll, not a ''fold'' – the writer acknowledged he got it wrong – but it was too late. The media tore into it like pitbulls: One wire service reported league officials were encouraging players to pose au naturel; Sports Illustrated took a look at how far players were willing to go to sell their league.
And Morgan, who previously had acknowledged that Playboy's poll would mean needed publicity for the league, soon was taking another tact.
''If Playboy wants to do a poll,'' she said post-furor, ''that's certainly their decision. … It's not something we want to proactively promote.''
WUSA suits, a good number of them, privately feel otherwise. The role of sex appeal in marketing the world's top women's league has been bandied about all season, ever since agent David Bober arranged photo shoots with several of his clients – Mia Hamm, Lorrie Fair and Heather Mitts among them – as a means, he said, to show ''advertisers and sponsors … that [players] can be feminine and athletic at the same time.''
Some of the photos – sexy shots of Fair and Mitts – were among press material the WUSA sent to more than 300 media outlets; the league's press officers encouraged stories, such as those written about the women's golf tour, that focused on players' sex appeal.
That was all the encouragement Playboy needed: Its poll, says Playboy.com sports editor Blair Fischer, will be online in mid-June, with Mitts and Fair, Hamm and Brandi Chastain, and several others. The winner – Mitts is likely – will be asked to pose. No previous poll winner – in basketball, tennis, golf and among TV commentators – has yet agreed to jump into a Playboy spread, but Fischer says one will.
''It will absolutely happen,'' he says. ''I hope it happens with the soccer poll. You look at those pictures [of Bober's clients] – every one of those women is worthy of being in the magazine. It'd be nice to get one of them this time around.''
Negotiations with the runner-up in the LPGA poll – Jill McGill, pursued after winner Carin Koch said no – reportedly reached $750,000. That's a ton of cash for athletes making shy of $40,000, as most WUSA players are.
''If a magazine is going to offer a client of mine seven figures, allow them to have some financial security for the rest of their lives, that's a pretty compelling decision to make,'' says Bober. ''Everyone has a different threshold with how comfortable they are with their bodies and their interest in baring themselves to the public. It's a personal decision. If someone would ask me, I would respect the financial component, but my advice would be not to do it.''
Mitts, a Philadelphia Charge defender who strikes a revealing pose on the cover of June's Philadelphia magazine, doesn't know what she'd do if Playboy came calling.
''It's something I've never even thought twice about,'' she said. ''It's one of those things – obviously, it's flattering to be in the poll; I'd like to see where I stand.''
Chastain, who posed nude (with a strategically placed soccer ball) in Gear magazine three years ago, says she'd have to consider all the ramifications before deciding whether or not to pose. ''I don't read the magazine – I don't read the articles,'' said the San Jose star. ''I don't know too much about them. I'd have to do my homework before getting involved.''
Others wouldn't consider it. Even for $750,000? ''I would still say no,'' said Carolina forward Danielle Fotopoulos. ''That's just me.''
Fair, a midfielder for Philadelphia, says she wouldn't pose nude, in part because ''I think my family would be a little upset about it.''
Choosing to pose, Morgan says, would be the player's decision. ''It's certainly nothing we could have a say in,'' she said. ''Quite honestly, I'd be shocked if one of our players decided to do that.''
Many in the league wish the poll, and the publicity it is generating, would just go away.
''I'm not sure there are any positives, to be honest,'' said Julie Foudy, who captains the San Diego Spirit and the U.S. national team. ''It's not our audience. We're after young kids and families. We don't have young kids, I hope, reading Playboy. …
''In the short-term, people think, 'Oh, it will give us a spike in terms of interest.' But long-term it will diminish the gains we've made and take away from the focus on athletic achievement.''
Tiffeny Milbrett, the WUSA's MVP after leading New York to the semifinals last year, says that should a player decide to bare all, it would be ''such a terrible message to send to those young kids. It perpetuates the idea that a women can only make it in this world if they sell their bodies.''
Sex has sold women's sports for decades, from Jan Stephenson to Katarina Witt to Anna Kournikova, and many in the WUSA acknowledge gains can be made, especially in luring male fans, by drawing attention to the attractiveness of the players.
''We don't want to be sold as sex symbols,'' said San Jose defender Kelly Lindsey, ''but I think it's great, because men, in a way, are sold like that. Cobi Jones being in Sports Illustrated with his shirt off, that type of thing. As long as it's done in good taste, and if it brings people to the field, I don't have a problem with it.''
So long as lines aren't crossed. Where are those lines?
''Clothes on, you know?'' said Boston rookie Monica Gonzalez. ''It's fine to get girls dressed up and dolled up and posing pretty – why not? We're girls. That's what we do.''
by Soccer America Senior Editor Scott French