What to make of the WUSA, or WUSA, as in Woo-sa, as we have come to call it?
The WUSA is an outgrowth of the success of the 1996 Olympic women’s soccer tournament and 1999 Women’s World Cup.
There’s an irony in these successes.
They were national stories, but the WUSA is strictly a local deal.
This is not meant in a negative way, just the reality.
For the WUSA’s inaugural campaign there are only eight teams – none between the two coasts – and national television is limited to TNT (no games in June and July) and CNN/SI (available in few markets).
American sports leagues built up strong local followings before they became national successes.
Baseball didn’t cross the Mississippi for the first half century. The NHL had only six teams until the late 1960s. The NBA’s roots are in towns like Rochester, Syracuse and Ft. Wayne.
MLS (and before it the NASL) tried to become a national league before it had local foundations.
(Why MLS hasn’t joined forces with the Rhinos group and moved into Rochester is one of the great MLS mysteries.)
The U.S. women’s national team was the darling of the national media in 1999, but there’s been surprisingly little buzz about the WUSA.
The WUSA’s success will depend entirely on the ability of its eight clubs to reach into their markets and develop new followings.
Women’s pro sports have had a tough road. The WNBA is no sure thing. Pro softball still exists, but you never hear of it.
Just as the WWC organizers sold the idea of a women’s team sport to soccer dads and the army of young fans dubbed the pony-tailed hooligans, the WUSA clubs must carve a new path in American sports.
The secret to success? A lot of hard work. As MLS, struggling for a second wind in its sixth season, has finally come to realize.