2014 NWSL – A Few Mid-season Gripes

We are past the midway point in the 2014 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) season. This second season has improved its presentation of professional women’s soccer in the U.S. from the somewhat rushed-onto-the-pitch inaugural season. That said, and as enjoyable as the competition has been, I still have a few things that irk me to the point of wanting to write a post about them.

The Broadcasts

The single most obvious wart comes with the quality of broadcasts. While this doesn’t apply to all venues (some hold themselves to a high standard), and it’s overall better than in the first season, now that the league has set minimums, the game presentations can still be a frequent source of irritation on many levels.

While it’s great that every game has been available on Youtube, the bandwidth hasn’t always been there. Too often, the little buffering wheel pops up. These delays have tended to decrease somewhat as the season has gone on, but it is still not to levels were most games are free of buffering. (From the live comments section, it’s easy to tell its not local audience ISPs, but that of the source and/or Youtube.)

At most of the venues, the camerawork often leaves something to be desired. My biggest gripe with this is the inability of the cameraperson (especially the cameraperson on the primary camera) to competently follow the action. Too often the ball will leave the frame and the camera won’t even try to find it, hoping the action will simply return to the field of view. Other times, the camera-person will slavishly follow the ball out of bounds and stay focused there even though the play may be continuing elsewhere.

The image above is your typical 16:9 modern display. Except for when the ball gets kicked out of play, there is no excuse for the camera-person to consistently let the ball drift outside the dotted “safe” area during the run of play. Whether it’s due to inattention, lack of soccer knowledge, too high a tension set on the tripod head, the wrong tripod head, or whatever; it’s simply reflects badly on the franchise and the league.

Most venues don’t have enough well-positioned cameras. There is the usual one more-or-less at midfield (and what’s with not always having it right down the stripe? Grrrr). League rules require a minimum of three cameras, but too often their placement, or failure to utilize them well, results in a lack of coverage of the action. Whether the cameras are perched above near the eighteens or on the field scattered along the sidelines, there is ample opportunity to make sure the viewing experience is nearly seamless. I wouldn’t mind the league upping the minimum number of cameras to three high and two at field level.

A not uncommon result of both bad camerawork and insufficient coverage: there is simply no excuse for not being able to show corner kicks on the near side. Whether it’s a camera installation limitation or an obstacle, it’s not like it’s a surprise that can’t be anticipated and avoided. For every venue where this is a problem: that’s your proof that you don’t have enough cameras.

Directors, too, deserve a share of the snark; mostly because of overly-long (or too frequent) replays that interfere with showing the run of play. Also: the lack of wherewithal to cut away from said replays when action has ramped up on the the field. The audience should never become anxious that they are going to miss a goal for the sake of a replay, never mind the sin of actually missing a shot on goal.

As for the announcers: some of you need to get a pronunciation sheet for the players. Please. It’s embarrassing enough to mispronounce names from the opposing team, but to consistently goof up the names from the home squad is simply inexcusable. For the few where this is a problem: at least pretend to care.

And, in this sea of gripes, I want to give a shout out to the patient prodding of one director to his camera people very early in the season. I don’t remember which game, but the director’s audio feed leaked into the broadcast. Until it was shut down in the second half, you could hear him constantly instructing his camera-people how to shoot a soccer match. That day he had the patience of a saint.

I understand all this is largely due to growing pains. I’ve suffered through many (many) seasons of the WNBA trying to get streaming right — which they finally seem to, mostly. My whining at the NWSL doesn’t even rise to the level of full-on snark (well, maybe for the ball-in-frame thing). With this second season, they’ve done pretty well. The grousing is mostly to spur them on to be even better.

The Refereeing

The NWSL is hardly unique in regards to inconsistent refereeing. Some are very free with the bookings. Others give lots of warnings. Some will toot their whistle so often that you’d think they were auditioning for a band. And it’s not just head referees. The 2nd and 3rd officials vary in their interpretations of whether a ball has fully crossed a touchline. Again, this is hardly unique to this league (Men’s World Cup, anyone? Anyone?).

I suspect that some of the inconsistency comes from the retirement of Kari Seitz following the first season. She set a very high standard. With her gone, there’s a bit of a vacuum. Until one referee really stands out as the new standard, I expect we’ll continue to have this sort of inconsistent anarchy.

The Pitches

It’s nice that everyone agrees that playing on football fields isn’t ideal. I’ll go a step further: playing on a gridiron is insulting and should be banned. Some teams at least try to paint over the lines to make the game less confusing, but it still comes across as table scraps. How bad can it get?

This is at Harvard Stadium (as if you couldn’t guess). You have a gridiron plus lines for college women’s lacrosse, college men’s lacrosse, pro lacrosse, and soccer. As you can well guess, sometimes goalkeepers have accidentally touched the ball outside the 18 yard box simply because they lost track of which lines were which. In contrast, let’s take a look over on the other coast:

This is what NWSL teams should be playing on (Providence Park in Portland, OR). A well-tended pitch. Is it any wonder that opposing teams look forward to playing here? (This has a side-effect of making life harder for the hometown Thorns — they face happy foes.)

I don’t expect grassy fields. In a country with a lot of drought-ravaged areas, that’s too much to expect. Even so, it’s not too much to ask that the turf they play on be in good condition, purpose-built for soccer, and maybe even have a hint of new-turf-smell.

Doubtless, as more MLS teams buy into the league the quality of the arenas will improve. In the meantime, there have got to be better choices than football hand-me-downs. For a pro league, that’s just awful.

In Conclusion

Amazingly, that’s pretty much it for my gripes. While a couple franchises stand out as exceptions, for the most part the league needs to level up. It’s not a big step up, mostly just some fine-tuning. They have a good product that is getting attention. This being the third try at a women’s pro league, the better the foot that can be put forward, the more likely the sustainability. Sure, money is tight. The tough choices come with deciding how to be frugal without embracing a false economy.