As of April 2009 the United States will welcome the opening game of the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS). It will become the highest level of professional soccer in North America. It originally was formed in September of 2007 and has finally created seven teams across the country and will have its season opening next fall. Many are not taking this league seriously due to the fact that the WUSA continually got postponed "one more year" until their collapse in 2003. But what many people don't realize is that this league has seven different sizeable financial commitments to help the league be a BIG success. There is no TV deal in place for the WPS so there are weighting heavily on the new social networking sites of the Internet such as MySpace and Facebook. The WPS is looking for a reasonable amount of fans to attend; a mere 5,000 would be considered a success. I find it ironic that we have been back and forth and have struggled so much with getting a women's' professional soccer league off the ground for the last ten years. Along side, the men's' professional soccer league accumulatively pays David Beckham about 37 million dollars to play in the United States. Seems like we should have possibly taken some of that money and seen what kind of excitement the women can stir up… am I overreacting or is this seem like we favor men sports over women's?
Madelyn Monteath kin 388 sec. 6
1 comment:
It is very unfortunate to see that we do not have a Women's Professional Soccer League that is up and running in the United States. I know a few people who played women's college soccer and after their eligibility were reduced to playing recreational soccer. There are a few semi-pro league teams in Souther California, but nearly enough for our most talented female soccer players. Granted soccer is not the most popular sport in America to watch, but its ever growing popularity should inspire some of the television stations to pick up the WPS for next year. Also it is definitely not fair that the women get pushed away because supposedly they aren't good enough or not as good as the men. But if we look at the history of USA Women's team in the brief World cup history starting in 1991, we have two championships(1991 & 1999) and three third place finishes. Whereas most of the time the men can't even get out of their bracket. I really hope to see the WPS take off next year and the sport of soccer in general.
Brian Tunnicliff
Kin 338 T/Th 9:30-10:45
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