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It's time to give the Rapinoe thing a rest. This has become a case of the media driving a story long past its sell by date. Rapinoe now stands for the national anthem.

For the Chile game, she did stand for the anthem...No, she did not frown that time. I think most fans, like you, have moved on...How to explain the good ratings for games? I myself have not moved on yet...I am not yet supporting USWNT 100% like I did before...

Two earlier women's professional leagues folded but the NWSL seems to be holding its own. A couple of the franchises are quite successful, though most play to very small crowds. National Team players get a big bump from that, but most NWSL players are paid a pittance.

I went to several WPS games many years ago...LA had a WPS team for just one year. I have not been to any NWSL game...There is no NWSL club in CA. FOX announcers mention NWSL frequently when talking about which club players belong to. I am sure that most American viewers have no idea what NWSL is...I am not sure if they even care what that NWSL is. Many Americans are watching WWC to see how Team USA is playing...Many of them are not women's soccer fans. I just don't see NWSL seeing some attendance boost because of this World Cup...

U.S. Soccer does need to get off the Rainbow Flag bandwagon. The BLTQXYZ crowd is pushing all major institutions to make homage, and in women's sports, I'm sure there's an extra push coming from gay players. The men's team has sported rainbow colors as well; this isn't just a women's team issue.

I wish that US Soccer would do that also...But, I really don't see that happening. Does the Federation get letters from parents who complain about promotion of homosexuality? Maybe the Federation ignores those letters... About USMNT...Robbie Rogers did play for the team several times. He announced that he was homosexual many years ago...He even played for LA Galaxy. No, I never heard of him protesting national anthem...

U.S. women's soccer is trying to build a fan base. They do some smart marketing. Look at the former players who are doing the commentary on tv.

Cat Whitehill is doing commentary on FOX...She is very religious. She was on USWNT.

U.S. Soccer does need to get off the Rainbow Flag bandwagon. The BLTQXYZ crowd is pushing all major institutions to make homage, and in women's sports, I'm sure there's an extra push coming from gay players. The men's team has sported rainbow colors as well; this isn't just a women's team issue.

So does Major League Baseball:

I've been to three NWSL venues, and what jumps out is that right-sizing the stadium makes a huge difference. (I have a total soccer nut daughter, and a group of us dads still love taking our little girls, now in college, to games when they're back in town ….) It takes some work to make sense of the attendance numbers. Portland is way out ahead of everyone; in terms of raw attendance, it's Portland and then everyone else way back in the rear view mirror. Orlando draws well despite being a dismal team. Utah is a new team but is drawing well in its second season. Houston is solid. The rest of the league typically plays to crowds of 3,500-5,000. No one is going to get rich at that rate, but numbers are growing slowly.

The players don't get paid very much, so a team can make those numbers work. The owners seem to have learned some hard lessons from the failure of the previous leagues. There is a very bad ownership situation in New Jersey, which is an embarrassment to the league, but most of the teams seem committed to doing things right and building for the future.

The Portland, Orlando and Houston NWSL teams are all partnered with their MLS counterparts. I don't know if there is any financial support involved -- as there is with the WNBA, which is a subsidy stepchild of the NBA -- but there do seem to be synergies of marketing and branding that benefit the women's teams with partnership deals.

I live in DC. The Spirit play most of their home games at the SoccerPlex in Germantown, which is about four zipcodes out of DC (at least it feels that way). It is monumentally inconvenient to anyone who does not live in Montgomery County. My circle of friends got used to the drive when our kids were playing travel soccer; the SoccerPlex is a former dairy farm turned into a soccer mecca, and the stadium sits on a loop drive with over 20 immaculate grass fields all lined up. In season, it's a hoppin' place, and travel teams in this area will end up playing there a lot.

That said, it is a very cozy, clean, attractive small stadium that seats about 5,500 (including the kids on blankets on the hill behind one of the endzones -- something 'ya don't get to see much anymore in the NFL or MLB). It is small enough that there are no bad seats. A small crowd fills it up nicely and a crowd of 4,000 or more feels electric. It's just an all-around nice stadium experience as well as a relatively cheap ticket. The Spirit played one home game at Audi Field (next to Nats Park on the waterfront) last year and will experiment with two this season. A bigger stadium and more convenient location might do wonders for attendance. (Plus they're playing well this year, after a miserable two year rebuilding slump.)

I've never been to a minor league baseball game, but I'm guessing the NWSL has some similar dynamics in terms of the stadium/attendance synergies. As long as the operation is right-sized, smaller numbers are ok. I would urge the soccer fans on this thread to check out a game or two. There is some good soccer being played, and it's a cheap ticket. It doesn't hurt to give it a try. The league also has a better television contract this year, which can only help in the long run. To make it a success, however, will require one big change in U.S. sports culture: women and girls will have to start buying tickets, instead of relying on their husbands and boyfriends to pay for everything. Women can't expect women's professional sports to succeed unless women support it themselves.

P.S. There are no soccer hooligans in NWSL stadiums. There are too many U-10 to U-13 girls' teams around for anyone to even think of misbehaving. It's really a bit of a throwback to the days when dads could regularly take their kids and their kids' friends to a baseball game without taking out a second mortgage.

I just don't see NWSL seeing some attendance boost because of this World Cup...

The NWSL will get a significant attendance boost if the USWNT does well in this World Cup. The national team players are well distributed across the league and are major draws. A lot of national team players from other countries also play in the NWSL. The foreign leagues are improving but most observers seem to regard the NWSL as the strongest women's professional league in the world, though the Europeans are closing the gap rapidly.