{image1} So the WUSA has taken the one-way ticket to the scrap bin of professional sports leagues, eh?

Look, ladies. It's no great shame. Plenty of men's pro leagues have come and gone over the years, as well. Need we remind anyone of the XFL? Or the USFL, USBL, WHA, WLAF or NASL? The list goes on and on. World Team Tennis? Box Lacrosse? Stop me, anytime. Please.

What our fearless girls in silky shorts got a lesson in, was cold hard market economics. To have a league that thrives and survives, you need people who will pay money to actually leave the house and watch it.

It's really that simple. And nobody was clamoring for professional girls soccer. In fact, if the WUSA finals were being held in my back yard, I wouldn't open the curtains to watch it.

(Okay, okay. You got me. I was intentionally using the term "girls" instead of "women's" just to get the feminists worked up. I apologize. It was just so easy, and so fun. I couldn't help myself. It's "women" not "girls", got it. Hear them roar, yada yada....)

Anyway, the league itself was formed on the most noble of intentions, and launched by a genuinely "feel-good" moment. Awash in the glow of 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in 1999 (not to mention the feminist cover girl Brandi Chastain and her taut sports bra) marketing types ran out and conducted a bunch of surveys asking fans if they would go see games like that if a professional league were started.

Low and behold, enough people said "yes", and before you knew it, the WUSA had arrived, then spent and then folded. What happened? Maybe everybody who talked to the marketing folks back in the summer of '99, thought shirt-stripping celebrations was going to be a staple of the new league.

Not like that would have mattered . but you never know.

In all seriousness, do you think a pro league would have been launched if Chastain's penalty kick had sailed wide, and the good ol' US of A had lost, and the girls we so love (um, "young ladies", how's that?) had been crying on each other's shoulders instead of enjoying a huge group hug in the California sunshine?

Or even if Brandi had kept her shirt on?

I don't think so.

You could estimate that Chastain's PG-13 rated "strip tease" generated at least an additional $100 million in publicity and buzz for women's soccer in America. It was so perfect. Chastain was (and still is) the All American girl-next-door. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fabulously fit, and with lovely tanned muscles.

If they had tried to pose her for a better photo to market the game, they still would not have come up with something as good as that shirt in hand, victorious "hail mary" knee-slide.

It was, literally, the topless photo that launched a $100 million pro league.

The timing of the WUSA's demise, came as withering kick to the crotch (or should I say "ovaries") for the many gals (now, is that word ok? It sounds less formal than "ladies." I mean, they are athletes, not Texas debutantes!) who are on the US National Team. After all, they were just 5 days away from starting the 2003 Women's World Cup, and suddenly every question is not about the trapping Chinese midfielders, but instead about their pro league that was now in the dumpster.

And speaking of questions, the only one I would have asked anybody at the WUSA, was specifically: "How in the name of Pele did you manage to spend $100 million dollars on a soccer league?" Seriously, I tried adding up expenses, and it never came close. Shorts, shirts, a few hundred soccer balls, and goal nets added up to roughly $893.26.

I guess the rest was on nice looking color brochures, and mini-bar expenses while on the road.

My friend Chris Knoche remarked: "It would take a women's league to have a $40 million dollar budget, and go over it by $60 million. What, did they have a rack of complimentary Nine West leather shoes and Prada hand bags behind the bench at every game?"

Now see, this is the kind of sexist, and mean spirited wisecrack that I totally, and utterly object to. (Namely, because I didn't think of it first.)

The league said through a spokesman (who we presume was speaking as a favor, not "on the clock") that the WUSA could not afford to keep it's doors open and the lights on "for even one more day" without jeopardizing the severance package of its employees.

Naturally, the women of the WUSA were crushed, because they had hoped this year's World Cup (moved conveniently to the U.S. thanks to last summer's SARS outbreak) would attract the necessary $20 million to keep it going for at least another season.

My hunch is, the WUSA's pocketbooks, wanted to make sure nobody was dumb enough to repeat the mistake of 1999. I mean, you get a tight 1-0 game in the final, and then some gal named Mia, or Brandi, or Muffi, or Aly rips off her shirt - hey, before you know it, corporate sponsors are throwing another $100 mil down the soccer rat-hole.

Oh yeah, did someone say "Aly." How about one Aly Wagner? I gotta feel a little bad for her, because she was the WUSA's #1 overall pick, and then the league folds on her! Does she at least get to keep the fake #1 jersey the team made up on draft night?

Some players gamely talk about resurrecting the league after the Cup, and how the $20 million isn't that much in today's corporate sports dollars. Well, yeah, and no. I bet Mia Hamm has $20 mil in the bank from all those Gatorade and Nike commercials, but I don't see HER writing a check!

In related news last week, the Cleveland Cavaliers cut all ties with the Cleveland Rockers of the WNBA, citing intractable financial difficulties. That makes two WNBA teams to fold in the last 12 months, one to move, and the Rockers to well ... We don't know just yet.

What's that league's slogan? "We got next?"

Don't get me wrong, I like the concept of women's pro sports leagues. But here's the catch. Amateur sports are played for the love of the game, and to provide wonderful role models for little boys and girls.

Pro sports are played for only one reason. To make money. Confusing the two, seems to be a problem.

Chastain's penalty kick was not the seismic cultural shift for women's sports as it was made out to be. Just like the death of the WUSA is not an end to little girls (and not so little women) chasing a black and white soccer ball on Saturday morning.

There will still be min-vans, and orange slices, and yelling dads. If you are good enough, there will be select teams, and college scholarships. And if you are really really good, there will still be the World Cup. That ain't so bad.

After all, I have two young daughters who may play soccer someday. Would I want all that for them? Sure. But at the end of the line, I'd rather have soccer pay for their scholarship to Duke en route to becoming a world renowned surgeon, than I would watching them play "professionally" for $40,000 in front of 3,000 "fans" with free tickets.