WPS season two hopes and dreams

Today was the inaugural expansion draft where the Atlanta Beat and Philadelphia Independence nabbed a bunch of players from every team so they could start their own teams. It wasn’t very exciting mainly because it was secret. None of the teams published their protected lists and the draft itself was behind closed doors. Fitting too because the expansion picks were about as unmemorable as last season’s Greys Anatomy season finale (go away Denny! mah huuuusband is here!). Or, to use a more fitting metaphor, today’s expansion picks were about as memorable as the inaugural WPS final. I swear Sky Blue had it in the bag before halftime and most dramatic part was discovering after the fact that Christie Rampone was already pregnant.

But the expansion draft does remind us all that WPS season two is on the horizon. I’ve been away for a while dealing with LIFE so I missed likely all the postseason reflections and reviews out there on the internets. Although I did catch Peter Wilt’s post at Pitch Invasion which is good enough for me! Just read that one. So I say it’s time to move on to season two! Haters to the left. Looks like the league has another year in it. Here’s what I’d like to see happen for 2010.

Christie Rampone is officially named head coach of Sky Blue FC By April she should be showing and I think it will be crazy cool to see her preggers self perched on the sidelines bossing everyone around like a soccer version of the movie Fargo – but without all the blood and snow and William H Macy. Even better would be Rampone solving murder cases while at the same time coaching her team to their second league victory.

Kim Zolciak becomes a sponsor of the Atlanta Beat and her headshot is screenprinted on the front of their jerseys This will, of course, coincide with the release of her soon to be hit album follow up to the smash single Tardy to the Party. Kim, THE BRAND. You know she only needs to ask Big Papa for the money. And then Real Housewives season three will feature scenes from team practices & games. And WPS, the brand, gets plastered all over Bravo tv for a few months. Win win.

Justin.tv or Ustream.tv or Veetle or whoever gets a WPS channel I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few months back there was a 24 hour online rollerderby channel. Interviews, live games, random filler. Very impressive. Just sayin’.

Rachel Brown joins WPS Perhaps the Euros final was not her shining moment but I spent most of that game thinking the England keeper really is the spitting image of Christina Cox, one of the actresses on that mediocre soap opera in space, Defying Gravity. And after reading that the British “Superleague” is on hold yet again, perhaps she really is Christina Cox? Girl has gotta pay the rent somehow.

FC Gold Pride actually sign a player under the age of 40 And the rest of us spend one more year inventing new and hilarious ways to make fun of the name “FC Gold Pride.”

A US player will finally outshine the foreign players A year ago at this time, I fully expected the brand spanking new league to unveil a whole new crop of amazing American players. Uhhhhh, no. Instead, we got to meet (some of us for the first time) Sonya Bompastor, Eniola Aluko, Lisa De Vanna, Karina LeBlanc, Aya Miyama, etc etc etc. A few fresh faces creeped into the roster for the upcoming USWNT training camp and WPS marketed the Olympic winners hard in their advertising campaigns. But on the field… I dunno… I felt like our domestic draft picks just kinda disappeared. No star quality? No flair or creativity? Are we still just settling in? Fuck it. Let’s bring on season two!

Category: Atlanta Beat, FC Gold Pride, Marketing Foo, Philadelphia Independence, Sky Blue FC, US Women's National Team, WPS News