Stop the madness!

Let me start off by saying this blog won't be entirely about softball but it will tie into it.

So as alot of you probably already know the WPS suspended their 2012 season. I've spent the last two days reading blogs and articles about this and trying to process all of this. My heart is just so...broken. This is just such a huge mess and it doesn't seem anybody knows the whole story. I fear we've seen our last WPS games. One thing I have figured it out is this all goes back to one man. The former owner of MagicJack. What the WPS didn't realize or understand is he had the power to bring the whole thing down and he knew it. He knew better than anybody. The man is obviously a creep who really has no love or passion for soccer. He saw this as a way to make some money and that is all he wanted. So when they suspended his ownership rights, there should have been no doubt what the was going to do. Unfortunately this guys is smart and he knew the WPS didn't have the funds to sustain a long court battle and continue their regular business. So what does he do? He files a lawsuit. The problems go much deeper than this though. The root problem is the same problem the NPF has, a sever lack of funding. There is so little support out there for women's sports! It amazes me that so many other countries can put together professional women's league and have so much success but here in the country where we produce so many of the top athletes in these sports we can't! We've already seen 1 big professional soccer league collapse and 1 professional softball league collapse as well. Now we have 1 professional soccer league that looks to be toast and 1 professional softball league that is barley hanging on. The hard part is, I don't know what the answer is.

I believe these women should have the right to play the sport they love and make a living do it, just like their male counter parts do! I believe young girls should be able to dream about playing professionally! Yet we are no better off than we were in 10 or even 20 years ago. Women still have to fight 10x as hard as men do to be noticed. Their game is still viewed as a watered down mild version and not what it really is.

In the short term there are positive things for the USWNT when it comes to not having a WPS season. In the long run, this is devastating. Softball is finding out the hard way the international game can't carry and grow this sport alone. Not everybody will be on the national team. Only a few women can makes those teams but there is so much more talent(in both sports) out there! That is why we need professional teams! We need strong professional teams. Professional teams that are strong enough to withstand these kind of things. This man came in caused fighting, abused the system, and when the WPS tried to act he used his power for bad and single handily brought the WPS down.

These leagues have got to learn from this. They have to learn to be more careful who they let own teams and they need to be very familiar with their rules and make sure everyone follows them to a T! That is part of what got the WPS in trouble they didn't follow their own rules when it came to suspending the ownership rights of a person and because of that they got sued. They have to learn to get along with one another. Fighting and making enemies never fixes anything. That is the big problem in softball right now. You have the NPF and you have the USWNT. I've touched on this before but both sides refuse to budge. Instead of coming together and working together they are trying to do this separately. I'd like to ask them both how is that working for ya? How much could they gain by working together??

This was just some thoughts on what is going on and I might have more to say later. But for now I just want to say I am heartbroken! I am heartbroken for the women who play in this league! They've given so much of themselves to this sport and they deserve a chance to play professionally and to be able to make a living doing so! I hope this fixed and they are able to have the 2013 season but I am not holding my breath!