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VIDEOAt-Risk Sports Teams: The WNBA
Even Coach Dyke couldn't save them.
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But they’re not the only ones in the fledgling league to have fallen on hard times: The Houston Comets, after winning the first 4 WNBA championships, folded in December 2008 due to a cash crunch, and a number of other teams are also struggling.
If the league were to fold, much would be lost: WNBA is currently the only truly professional venue for women’s team sports in the country. Big-league football and softball for women have never had any appreciable following, and the Women's United Soccer Association failed after only 3 seasons (though of course, Americans in general couldn’t care less about soccer, regardless of who plays it).
Comparing the WNBA’s coffers to that of its male counterparts is sobering, to say the least: Salary caps for an entire team were set at $772,000 in 2008; in the NBA, that number hovers around $58.68 million.
Maybe what the WNBA needs is a good old-fashioned scandal -- Latrell Sprewell-style.
After all, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity -- and people who don't normally talk about the WNBA talked about it nonstop in July of last year, when a brawl erupted between the Detroit Shock and the Los Angeles Sparks.
It's probably no coincidence that one of the offending teams hailed from Detroit, the city perhaps hardest-hit by the recession (from General Motors's bankruptcy to home prices that have fallen to a single dollar in some neighborhoods).
Following the brawl, 10 players and one assistant coach were suspended. As damage control, the Shock signed 50-year-old legend Nancy Lieberman to a 10-day contract to leave the ESPN broadcast booth long enough to play one game against the Houston Comets.
That was more headlines -- brawl, suspensions, Lieberman -- in one week than the WNBA typically gets in several months. A sure sign that controversy and scandal are the way to go, if one is looking to revive a flagging career.
Just ask Christian Bale.
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