“My twelve-year-old nephew plays football in a Catholic school league and has had a girl team-mate for four years,” explains Theresa Bousson. “I’m doing this for her, for her future.” With this attitude, anyone can understand why the National Women’s Football League is bound to succeed.
Bousson plays on the defensive line of the Detroit Danger, one of the twenty-one teams in the NWFL this 2002 season. She does not get paid, though she practices three times a week. She had to buy $250 worth of equipment and uniforms with her own money. Nevertheless, she still had to compete against 250 other women for a spot on the team.
Semi-professional women’s football is alive and well and is growing by leaps and bounds. The NWFL was founded in August of 2000 by Catherine Masters. Masters, a former music promoter based out of Nashville, Tennessee, started the league with only an idea.
The idea was that women could play football, but, more importantly, wanted to play football all across the United States.
She got the idea after sharing the frustration of having no outlet for women to play football. American high schools and colleges don’t allow women on football teams and the age at which girls stop competing with boys in minor leagues was deemed far too young by Masters.
The NWFL has grown exponentially over the last 18 months. “Last year, we didn’t even have a product, we just had an idea,” said Masters. “Now we have a product with marquee players.”
What began as a six-game exhibition season between two teams has evolved into a five-division, twenty-one team, eight-game season with a playoff series and championship game.
All this has taken place in just one and a half years. This season, the league’s third, will begin on April 20th and conclude July 20th, to be immediately followed by a playoff schedule.
“We could have had fifty teams, but we just couldn’t take anymore,” said Masters. Interest has skyrocketed across the US since the league’s inception. Masters meets with any interested investors, who have to shell out $35,000 for a team. If plans for a team mesh with the league’s plans for the next few years, a deal is made.
Teams come from all corners of the US, from Connecticut to Baltimore or Kalamazoo to DC, from Alabama to Pensacola or Detroit to Philadelphia, all twenty-one teams are expected to do well this year as regards fan turn-out and sponsorship drives.
“Sponsorship and ticket sales pay for stadium rentals,” explained Debbie Lening, the VP of Marketing with the NWFL. “The teams usually use high school stadiums and ticket prices range from $10 to $20, depending on what game you’re going to.”
The marketers of the league, the players and coaches, are responsible for selling tickets and arranging sponsorship partnerships. If players are unable to shell out $250 immediately to play, they are often able to work out deals with team owners where they are responsible for generating $250 worth of advertising revenue or else allowed to pay their way over an increased period of time.
None of the players or coaches (they volunteer as well) were paid after last season. Lening went on to explain that most team owners will give their players a commission on the tickets they sell, after the expenses of the playing field and officials are taken care of.
“All the teams are working together off the field to get this league off the ground,” said Bousson. “We are constantly networking and promoting the league, carrying flyers and schedules to parties or to school when picking up our kids.” The hard work seems to be paying off in spades.
Last year’s target of roughly 2000 fans at every game was met by every team, with some, like Florida’s Pensacola Power, averaging up to 5000 fans per game. That figure is sure to increase with their appearance in last year’s championship game, despite their 40-7 loss to Philadelphia’s Liberty Belles.
Having finally established themselves as a league to be taken seriously, the NWFL’s players look to this year as yet another opportunity to overcome challenges.
Though many other women’s sports are gaining momentum with the Olympics fast approaching and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) embarking on its fifth season after years of commercial success, the NWFL finds itself in a unique situation.
“The difference between [the WNBA and women’s soccer] and us is that they have a big corporate umbrella that they work under and we don’t,” explained Masters. Continuing the aggressive promotional drive will stay a top priority.
Television is a medium Masters wants to break into as soon as possible. “We’re going to produce our own pre-season television special called ‘Chick Football’ and bounce that all over the cities where we have our teams,” she said.
Though pleased with Pensacola’s turn-out for last year’s championship game, Masters has her eye on greener pastures. “We are actually talking with FOX about [broadcasting] our championship game,” she explained. “We don’t have a done deal with them yet.”
Going after television as an outlet to familiarize the public with their league will require tact on the part of the players. Masters intends to circulate a media handbook to the players sometime soon.
She recognizes the challenge of “teaching the girls [how] to deal with the media. How to act like professionals.”
These comments may be the result of a recent dispute between Masters and one of the league’s MVPs on her recent coming out in a Sports Illustrated for Women article.
The league also plans to branch out to high schools across the country in an effort to get girls thinking about playing football at a younger age.
As it stands, there is no venue for teenage girls to play organized football.
“We want to start some feeder systems,” Masters explained. “We want to go after colleges a little down the road.”
This outreach program will prove to be one of the biggest challenges of all for the league. Bousson explains, “We have to keep breaking down the barriers of professional football. We are training and putting plays together just like the NFL does, and the only difference is that we’re women.”
Fortunately, the initial reception of the league and its game has been positive. Communities that traditionally support American football have done so with its female participants as well.
Bousson echoes the sentiments of everyone involved in the NWFL: “I’ve had so many people supporting me, but there have been others who’ve asked ‘Why?’ To them I ask, ‘Why not?'”
