Welcome to Women's Professional Soccer

The long awaited top-level women's soccer league now has a name and a logo. As you can see in the title, the name is Women's Professional Soccer (WPS). It might not be the most exciting of names, but it does tell you exactly what it is.

As far as the logo, much like the name, it gives you what it is, a woman playing the game of soccer. The fact that the woman in silhouette is none other then Mia Hamm kicking at the ball, just lets you know the level they are hoping to achieve.

The league will have their first kick in Spring of 2009 with teams based in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. It is very interesting that all but one of those teams is in a MLS city (hello St. Louis).

By the way, they provide the media with a great deal of information regarding the name and how to use it:

Please first reference the league in print or broadcast coverage using the full name of “Women’s Professional Soccer,” after which the “WPS” acronym can be incorporated. Please do not abbreviate the league’s name to “Women’s Pro Soccer,” or qualify it as “the Women’s Professional Soccer,” “the WPS,” “Women’s Professional Soccer league,” “WPS league,” “the Women’s Professional Soccer league,” or “the WPS league.”

Kind of reminds me of Toronto FC asking the media to not call them TFC. Let's hope WPS has better luck with the grammatical choices of reporters.

One last aspect of this launch that might be the most important thing, they are planning to have a large web presence. Their site will include "...access to behind-the-scenes videos on WPS TV, prospective player blogs, event and community calendars, league and team news, job and volunteer opportunities, links to individual team pages, and much more."

The people heading up this effort are smart so they must realize how little coverage they are going to get in most outlets. If they really want to reach people, they will need to take in on themselves and the web is a perfect way to do that. But they can't just slap some stuff up on a site and call it a win, instead they need to let it define itself. Find ways to allow readers to make things happen and encourage players to blog honestly about things. If they do this, they have a chance of standing out.

So we have a name, next step, finding players.