{image1} Like a houseguest that has overstayed its welcome, the WNBA is back. The league that can't stand on its own and won't ever make a profit, launched its eighth season last week. And the first thing that comes to mind is "why?"

Why does a league that has sagging attendance, TV ratings that rival only dogsled racing for "niche" status, and franchises that come and go with the frequency of Chinese takeout restaurants, deserve to be kept on life support any longer?

From a purely public relations standpoint, the league makes sense in one regard. It punches the NBA's ticket on sensitivity, gender equality and the ever important "we can brag about this to our elitist liberal Manhattanite friends" card.

But otherwise, the WNBA is just sucking off the teet of David Stern's day job, the NBA. They use the same buildings, the same game operations managers, the same PR staffs, the same ticket sales staffs -- just about everything but coaches and a basic basketball ops staff.

And some WNBA players are stunned that things aren't going better. In Houston - home of the four-time league Champion Comets - Sheryl Swoopes said, "I'm shocked that our league didn't take off like I expected it to. Maybe these Olympics will help it. I think it has a future. I know it's a good product."

Yeah, sure. The Olympics. Or Diana Taurasi. Maybe global warming. Something.

The queen of delusional thinking, however, is WNBA president Val Ackerman who claims (straight-faced) that the league will be "profitable" (however you slice that accounting pie) by 2007.

2007?

Sez Val: "We're in a very good place." Hello? Crack test, aisle five!

The Comets are the WNBA's Lakers, and they have drawn fewer fans three years in a row. This year, their home opener drew 2,000 less warm bodies, despite the team's first dribbles in a brand new downtown arena.

Columnist Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle lamented, "Whatever the reason (for this decline) the WNBA deserves better."

No it doesn't. The concept of "deserving" in sports doesn't exist. What you get is exactly what you "deserve." And what the WNBA has, is a minimal fan base, that is overwhelmingly populated by lesbians and soccer moms. Nothing against either, by the way, but these are not the core ingredients of a sports empire.

You ask the typical WNBA game attendee what other events she's been to this year, you're likely to hear "Indigo Girls concert" and/or "Fifth grade talent show" before you hear another professional sporting event.

And it's not like the league hasn't had a nauseating amount of hype to help it get off the ground. You can't go long without getting blasted with promos for games on NBA playoff telecasts. There are huge billboards and wall murals in major markets.

Then the average "pigheaded male sports fan" gets lectured and scolded about how "fundamentally sound" the women's game is in comparison to the men's.

Enough already. Let's just call it like it is. The women's game will never be as popular as the men's game, because it sucks. They fall down a lot, miss layups, and can't jump.

Did you hear me? Can. Not. Jump.

They don't do anything on the court that the best intramural team at a major college couldn't do as well or better. And that's the problem. Spectator sports in this country have always been about giving the fans a "wow factor" that leaves your carpool mates buzzing on the ride home.

Tayshaun Prince blocking Reggie Miller at the end of Game 2 was a highlight the women's game couldn't replicate with a trampoline and a ladder. And yet the WNBA refuses to do things that might actually give it a fighting chance. Like lowering the basket to nine feet. This should have been done years ago, once every modern stadium had easily adjustable goal standards.

So why has the WNBA refused? Because being Stern's sugar daddy means you can afford to be militant and stubborn every now and then. My sense is that the league specifically resists lowering the rim, for the exact reason that men would want to see that!

To truly grasp how insane this is, imagine if the LPGA Tour insisted on playing courses as long as the men, and set up just as difficult. Then, when the best players struggled to shoot 79, they yelled at us about how scrambling to get up and down for par was more fundamentally sound than just making lots of birdies.

If the NBA really wants a great summer league to sell to sponsors, I've got a killer concept that they can have for free. Are you ready for this? "NBA Street League." One city, eight playgrounds, one team per playground made up of guys who get their regular "run" at that park. Then you play a 14-game "regular season" with the top four making the "playoffs."

Two best-of-three series to determine the winner, and that team takes home a million bucks.

Call your own fouls (won't that be fun), mic up the players and groupies, roll cameras, and it will be impossible to turn away from. Sure, there might be some fights that make Kermit Washington vs. Rudy Tomjonovich look like powder puff stuff, but boys will be boys, right?

One summer it can be NYC. The next, Chicago. And then Detroit, LA, and on and on. You get the picture. Represent your playground, and have a chance at two hundred grand each. The line to sign up will be around the block, and they won't even need to get paid.

Or, I suppose, if it makes Stern and Co. feel better about its role in society, it can keep throwing money down the WNBA spider hole and the last one dribbling can turn out the lights.

As Swoopes said before the season opener: "I don't know what more we could have done."

Yeah. Play naked.