The end of the WUSA has prompted some good blogging.

Justin Slotman has posts starting here and down.

Eric McErlain has posts here, here, and here.

In one post, Eric asks what we have to say about the future of women's professional team sports. I'm not sure there's much to be said that hasn't been said already.

Eric himself nails one fundamental truth about the sports market.

"From where I stand, most days it looks to me as if those Title IX babies are more interested in participating in sports, than just watching them (most days I can count 5 or 6 women jogging for every man I might see). Meanwhile, America is choked to the gills with men who spend their weekends glued to the couch watching every sport known to man (and include me among the guilty much of the time), yet most of them would die gasping for breath if asked to run a simple out pattern during a touch football game."

That's true, and we just might never be able to overcome that problem.

What can we do about it? I've said in the past that the league should focus on bottom-up rather than top-down marketing. Brian Straus at WaPo makes similar points about the WUSA.

"Emphasize building a fan base that attends games as opposed to scoring lucrative television contracts. . . . Sometimes you have to think initially small to make your eventual breakthrough. That's the reality of sports that actually succeed in the U.S."

In the short term, the WNBA (unlike major men's sports) isn't gonna make a lot of money from TV contracts. We need to start with team-by-team fan base -- we need to start locally.

As it stands today, the WNBA has a few great (and profitable) franchises -- Washington and New York are the best. San Antonio had a great first year; it may only be a honeymoon effect, but things are looking good for the Stars. And after their championship, there's a good chance that Detroit will start drawing fans consistently.

We also have a bunch of weak franchises. Some of them, frankly, probably won't be around much longer, and that doesn't bother me much, so long as we keep trying new cities. I'm all for trying new markets, including smaller markets that don't have major sports teams. Maybe Des Moines would love the WNBA?

But the point is -- in the short term, we need to try to build a viable league market by market, one team at a time.

There is also one other X factor, something that might change the league and its future. She's six feet tall. She's from Chino. She can do things no one else can, and she's got some attitude. It could be a new world once she hits WNBA arenas around the country.