[This is the third of five commentaries I wrote on women’s football during the 2016 season. For the next installment in the series, read here.]

About seven months ago, I wrote an article on the Lingerie Football League that comprehensively cataloged many of the issues, concerns, and outright abuse lurking in the underbelly of that so-called “sports league”. I received several notes of support (and a couple folks foolishly trying to rationalize bikini football as legitimate sport, of course). But an anonymous reader – who called themselves simply “In Agreement” – submitted the following comment in response to my article:

Great article. Every thing you write is pretty much true.

Now, please write something as hard-hitting about what it will take to get the WFA, IWFL, or whatever the next league will be, to even 1/10 the exposure of the LFL.

The LFL can be disgusting, sexist, and idiotic (which it is – all of these), and yet that does nothing to answer the problems that exist in the tackle football leagues like the WFA.

That, my friend, is a complex topic, one which has been hashed and rehashed over and over again by many, many folks in the traditional women’s game over the years. First and foremost, legitimate women’s football should not consider themselves in a competition with lingerie football – lingerie football is always going to have a particular appeal to a subset of folks who aren’t interested in women’s sports at all but who just like to ogle good-looking women. The world is filled with such folks, and not only is it true that “sex sells”, but it sure as heck sells better than women’s sports, which has been fighting an uphill battle for the better part of the last half-century to try to win the same respect and exposure offered to their male counterparts.

I’m interested in increasing the exposure of women’s football for its own sake, not because I feel it’s in some kind of competition with lingerie football. Many of the folks who support the LFL aren’t going to support traditional leagues where women aren’t vetted by sex appeal and offered up in slick marketing campaigns with little clothing and lots of grease. Growing the sport of women’s football means selling the sport on its own merits…which is a tough road but the only viable one.

With that out of the way, people often ask me how women’s football can gain more exposure. Personally, I think there’s an important, overlooked step that needs to be taken before that issue is even addressed. People who are consumed with getting women’s football more exposure often don’t realize that more exposure isn’t necessarily a good thing…if the product you’re offering is going to fail to impress.

The comment above is over half a year old, and I guess my response to it is that I’m less concerned about turning the world’s attention to women’s football than I am with making sure the sport is ready for its closeup when that time inevitably comes. And that brings me to a fundamental question: What are your expectations for a women’s football league? In a perfect world, how would you want a women’s football league to operate?

After thinking upon this topic, I have several expectations regarding how a women’s football league should operate, and I figured it was a good time to share them. This list is not designed to be comprehensive, nor does it address in any way the marketing side of things…issues that commentators like Don Harrold and Oscar Lopez raise frequently. I haven’t even gotten to that point with this list…this list is just my basic set of expectations for a women’s football league, steps that every league needs to take so that they are in a position to leverage massive national exposure when it arrives.

Unlike so many proposals to revolutionize women’s football that ignore the realities (and shoestring budgets) of the sport, none of my proposals cost a prohibitive amount of money to make them work. It’s just time and want-to. And with now seven different women’s football leagues operating this year (and most of them falling short on most of my criteria on this list), I think that articulating these expectations might help leagues see where they can improve in their journey toward more efficient operations.

Communication

The biggest issue with most women’s football leagues is a stunning lack of communication – both internal (to member teams, owners, and players) and external (to potential fans and media). Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to find accurate information on a women’s football league.

I’ve said this many times: if you make the sport difficult for casual fans to follow, many of them will say to heck with it. The best and most popular sports leagues in this country are stupidly easy to follow. Of course, many of these major sports leagues – like the NFL, MLB, and NBA – have a large media contingent that covers the sport so broadly that they’d be almost impossible to not follow. Women’s football doesn’t have that support, but that doesn’t mean it can’t simplify things for the casual sports fan.

Here are a few of the main things that need to be communicated:

1) The league’s roster of teams – fans need to know if your league has any teams in their area they can follow. I’ll get to this in a minute, but ideally, the list of teams in your league should be publicized by the beginning of February to give your league (and those teams) a chance to work the appropriate markets.

2) The league’s master schedule – fans showing up to games are the lifeblood of any team. Not only are ticket sales a major revenue boost in many cases, but they advertise the team and the sport. The league’s master schedule – what teams are playing on what days, when, and where – is something that needs to be finalized ASAP and released to the media so that fans can make up their plans in advance. Too often fans can’t attend games, because they’re not aware that there’s a conflict with their own plans before it’s too late. Normal people have busy weekend schedules in the spring and summer…if you want them to prioritize attending one of your games, you have to let them know as soon as you can what days to set aside.

Again, I’d like to see the league’s master schedule by February 1, but leagues seem to struggle to get that done. And on that same subject, make sure your league’s master schedule is complete when it is posted. It’s incredibly irritating for a fan to check out a league’s master schedule and only find out later that league teams are playing in a game that isn’t on the schedule! (Yes, looking at you, IWFL.)

3) The league’s playoff structure and rules – There’s nothing fans want more than a logical, comprehensible playoff system…it’s the way you’re determining your champion, after all. If the playoffs make no sense, what’s the point in even watching the sport? I took the IWFL to task last season for waiting until the regular season was over and then suddenly releasing a seemingly random playoff bracket, where the number of teams and rounds of play strayed from historical precedent and was not hinted at in any way publicly until the final results were announced. Even then, home field advantage for later rounds was not announced publicly until after the opening rounds of playoff games had been played! That’s crazy pants.

And it’s not just the IWFL…most women’s football leagues, including the WFA, struggle to communicate and explain their playoff brackets and criteria to fans before the postseason begins. While we’re talking about the WFA, I love and am a huge fan of the tier system they introduced this year, but teams need to be placed in their tiers prior to the start of the season. I’ll give the league a (Karen) mulligan this year, because it’s a new system for them, but the league has to find a way to have all that set up beforehand.

Look, the playoffs are literally why fans are watching…to see who the champion is going to be. This is one area where leagues must do better.

4) The league’s game results – this seems pretty self-explanatory, but I’m going to go ahead and explain it anyway. Fans need to know within 24 hours after a game has been played what a given game result was and the final score. The larger leagues like the WFA and IWFL do a pretty good job of this, but for smaller leagues like the NMAFL-W, it can be nearly impossible to keep up. If you’re not going to let fans know that games have been played and how they turned out, why even have a league?

There are many other communication issues that need to be resolved both internally and externally by women’s football leagues, but that’s a pretty good start.

Interactions with Other Leagues

Again, there are seven different women’s football leagues in the United States in the 2016 season. All of these leagues are either the best (the WFA), delusionally think they’re the best (the IWFL), or want to be the best (everyone else). But regardless of where you are in the hierarchy, you have to acknowledge the other leagues are out there…and that means following a few basic rules for interacting with them.

1) First and foremost, any well-run women’s football league should not accept a new team after February 1. I almost said January 1, as that’s when most teams start training camp, but I can understand the desire in a few rare cases to accept a new team in January. But by the time February begins, you should have your list of teams set in stone (see the first point in the communication section above).

But more importantly (as mentioned in the second point above), it’s important for teams to be able to put out their schedules well in advance of the season to convince fans to come out and see them. One late-moving team throws not only schedules but playoff systems completely out of balance….not just for the league they’re leaving but also for the league they’re jumping into.

Now, the team that wants to move might say they are committed to playing a full schedule against teams from the league they departed. But let’s be honest…no one wants that. Neither the league the team left, the league the team is going to, nor the old league-mates the team was scheduled to play want to play those games anymore. It creates a very uncomfortable situation for everyone involved, all because of one league’s decision to accept a late arrival.

(I do have a certain sympathy for teams like the Tri-Cities Thunder, who apparently left the WFA this year after realizing they could no longer compete in 11-player football and immediately joined the LAFL to try to salvage a few eight-player games before the end of the season. But even then, it would probably be better considering the circumstances to regroup, recruit, build your roster, and make sure you’re good to go for 2017.)

A league should avoid inflicting chaos on the sport by accepting teams after February 1, when teams are well into training camp. Some women’s football leagues have a reputation for accepting defectors as late as possible to inflict maximum damage on other leagues. That’s fine, but at that point, any claims that they’re admirable stewards of the sport as a whole are pretty laughable.

2) I’m a firm believer that leagues should uphold player contracts and player discipline from other leagues. When I first started following women’s football in 2013, there was a player from a WFA team who had been suspended from the league for one year due to a pretty obvious case of player misconduct.

What did she do? She went to play immediately for an IWFL team, of course.

That kind of thing shouldn’t happen. These leagues may not agree on much, but allowing a player to skirt discipline by jumping leagues hits right at the integrity of the sport.

The WFA and IWFL also have players sign a “code of conduct” form, at which time you declare your intentions to play for a particular team for the upcoming year. This prevents players from jumping from team to team midseason, which leads to cutthroat recruiting and makes the sport very difficult for fans to follow. Yet a dissatisfied player who committed to a league team for the duration of the year can simply go over to another league and play for one of their teams with no wait. It’s another loophole that shouldn’t exist if every league were respectful of its competitors.

Long story short…if you wouldn’t allow it within your own league, then you’re being unscrupulous if you do it to another league, just because you can.

I also think leagues should encourage interleague competition, just on general principle. But that’s really all I have to say about that.

Rosters and Stats

Now let’s talk rosters and stats, shall we?

1) In my opinion, there is no single thing more important for a league to do than to compel its teams to provide their rosters.

That sounds dramatic, I know…but what could be more important than documenting the women who have played this sport for posterity? The women who have participated in women’s football are pioneers who need to be remembered long after their contributions to the sport have ended. The only way to achieve that is by having every team list out the women playing for them so that those ladies can be celebrated for being a part of this great sport.

This is where the WFA has always been a leader in women’s football. 42 of the league’s 43 teams have submitted their 2016 rosters to the league (and the Daytona Waverunners need to get their act together). Last year, 39 of the WFA’s 40 member teams listed their rosters for public display, with only the Central Maryland Seahawks (who folded after Week 3) coming up empty. Kudos to the WFA on that note…this is important, people.

Contrast the WFA’s success in this area with the IWFL, where only 12 of their 32 member teams have submitted their team rosters to the league. That’s deplorable. Laurie Frederick loves to claim that 16,000 women have worn an IWFL patch at some point (without recognizing, of course, how many of those players finished their careers wearing another league’s patch due to the IWFL’s long, storied history of mismanagement). But in light of Frederick’s claim, it’s worth noting that she can’t even tell you how many women are playing in her league this year.

2) And then there’s the issue of player stats. Football fans love to see player stats…it helps them identify the top players in the sport in any given year. I recently saw the WFA getting grief online because the league didn’t post the previous weekend’s stats until the following Thursday.

While the timeliness of stats submission is somewhat important, the bigger issue is to convince member teams to submit stats at all. The WFA, again, is the leader in that regard…28 of the league’s 43 teams have submitted player stats for at least two games this season.

The WFA can still do better, of course. I think they need to at the very least insist that their Tier I teams submit player stats on a timely basis (yes, I’m looking at you, Atlanta). And I hope that the league continues to hold the same policy they’ve had in previous seasons, declaring that players are ineligible for All-American recognition if their team has not submitted stats on their behalf. That’s a significant carrot that gives most teams the kick in the pants they need to calculate and submit their player statistics.

Again, we can contrast the WFA’s success in this area with the IWFL, where only nine of their 32 member teams have submitted up-to-date stats and only ten teams have submitted anything at all. Believe me when I say that fans would love to see annual rushing and passing leaders when following the sport. But that can’t happen if leagues don’t care if their teams do their jobs or not.

3) With rosters and stats, it’s not just about the current year. Fans want to see all-time rosters and statistical records and things of that nature, and leagues have a responsibility to keep historical rosters and statistics available for research purposes for the good of the sport.

Of course, some leagues completely erase the stats and rosters of their former members once they leave their league. That’s a classic example of a league putting their own interests above those of the sport as a whole.

I’ll give you a perfect example: the D.C. Divas played four seasons in the IWFL from 2007-2010. During that time, the team submitted player stats to the league through a system which, at that time, was exclusive to the IWFL. When the Divas left the IWFL, the league took those statistics down and made them publicly inaccessible.

The Divas’ general manager (who, unlike me, is a very likable guy and admired pretty much throughout the sport) contacted the IWFL years ago, requesting that the league share those old stats. As it turns out, the IWFL has all those stats archived and ready for download at the push of a button.

In classic fashion, the IWFL didn’t just come out and refuse the request. They responded that they’d get right to it. Then nothing. Months and years passed, with our general manager repeatedly following up and asking if they could spare a moment to turn over that information.

Instead, the Divas are looking at the prospect of going through four years worth of old game film and recalculating all of our stats from that era. What a time-consuming waste.

Here’s another example…my recent book, The Women’s Football Encyclopedia, lists over 10,000 women who have played the sport of women’s football. Virtually every player who has played in the WFA or in the final four or five years of the NWFA are listed in the book, because those leagues put that information out there for everyone to see. The IWFL, on the other hand, has about a decade’s worth of historical stats and rosters sitting on Laurie Frederick’s computer gathering dust. Such a shame…and an insult to those women who have given their blood, sweat, and tears to this sport. All the while, of course, the IWFL continues to talk a great game about how much they care about growing the sport as a whole.

The IWFL’s duplicity is tiresome but not at all surprising. It’s an important distinction for everyone involved in this sport to make: we are trained to think our ultimate loyalty is (or should be) to our team or our league, but it’s not. Our overriding loyalty needs to be to the sport, even more than it is to an individual league or team. It’s easy to confuse the two…some folks promote their team or league under the guise of advancing the sport. But if you spend enough time around women’s football, it doesn’t take long to see who’s in it for all of us – the sport as a whole – and who’s in it only for their team or league…who’s in it only for themselves.

Of course, this section on rosters and stats overlaps with operational expectations I have for individual teams as well, not just leagues. That’s a topic for another time…but leagues share in the responsibility, too. Rosters and stats are too important for leagues to leave at teams’ doorstep and simply shrug about whether they compile them or not.

Wrapping It Up

One last operational expectation…leagues should maintain a decent website. Is that too much to ask? How is it that so many women’s football leagues can’t get this right?

The WFA’s website is pretty bare-bones, yet it’s still the best league website in women’s football. That says more about the state of the sport than anything else. I’ve pilloried the IWFL’s website enough, to no avail. (Nothing like clicking on a page promoting “IWFL Award Winners” and finding a partial list of gameday MVPs from 2010.) Here’s the thing…Frederick has a background in IT. The IWFL website is the one thing you could reasonably expect her to get right.

One of the primary things I am tasked to do in my role as VP of Communications with the D.C. Divas is to maintain their website. I put that thing together from scratch, having had no experience with website creation. I’m darn proud of how it has turned out, and I think it is one of the very best websites in women’s football. And you can see how all the information I think is important – game results, rosters, stats – can fit right onto a slick-looking website. If a complete novice like me can do this for a single team, the leagues in women’s football have no excuse that I can see.

Now, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my organizational expectations for leagues and how the WFA and IWFL are faring in these regards. You’ll notice I barely even mentioned the other five leagues…which only goes to show how far they have yet to go in all these areas.

Once again, this doesn’t even get into the marketing side of it (well, perhaps the website topic does a little.) Here’s the thing so many people miss about women’s football…we are often our own worst advertising. It’s not just about getting as many people as possible to notice you…it’s about giving them a professional product they can objectively respect once you have their attention. And you don’t get a second chance to make that first impression.

So, yes, marketing is important. But in my view, all this stuff comes first. What good is getting people’s attention if you don’t have something worthwhile to show them once you’ve got it?

Time to get down off of my soapbox. However, if you’re involved in a women’s football league – or, heaven forbid, thinking of starting one – take this commentary to heart. Image is everything, as they say, and if you adhere to all the expectations I’ve laid out here, you’ll be in a position to project an image that any sports fan can admire.