Checking in a month after the Yates Report
It’s been a month since Sally Yates’ report on abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women’s professional soccer has been released. Soccer Holdings LLC leadership remains unchanged during this time. It is a natural human tendency to become less and less outraged as time passes. Am I as outraged as I was just one month ago? I would say that intellectually I am, but emotionally…the fire doesn’t burn as hot as it initially did. I don’t know if that is necessarily a bad thing. I want to be clear that my position has not changed. Until there is leadership change at the very top of Soccer Holdings LLC day-to-day operations, I believe there is still a risk of similar bad behavior. I think about it like a tornado watch: no tornado has been sighted, but the conditions exist where a tornado can develop. I still hold on to the hope that there will be more change to the club structure (I am not sure that a GM for the women’s team that is likely to still report to James O’Connor is enough meaningful change). Responses from sponsors have slowed to a halt. There is some encouraging news about preventing non-disclosure agreements in the future, but that still has to pass, and enforcement would likely be difficult. If any more meaningful change is likely to occur, the catalyst would likely need to be 1) additional information coming out in the joint NWSL/NWSLPA investigation and/or 2) at least one current player calling for the resignation of the team president. I feel like a combination of the two instances is the most likely way to get meaningful change and I also feel like that #2 will not happen until #1 occurs. For me, the players will dictate the ultimate response from the club. In the meantime, I have been thinking about how to continue my coverage.
Natually the NWSL offseason is not a busy time for me in terms of updating the site, but I have definitely not posted as much as I would have if the Yates Report had not come out. However, at some point there is going to start to be news for the upcoming season and I have to decide how I want to handle things going forward. Here is where I stand as of today (11/3/2022 and obviously subject to change):
I have repeated said that this site exists in part to monitor the soccer-related behavior of the owners of Louisville’s professional soccer teams. As such, as long as I am able this site will exist to call them out when needed.
At some point after the release of the Yates Report, I removed all non-historical references to the non-civic part of the name of Louisville’s top-tier professional soccer team. Going forward, I will only refer to the team as “Louisville” on this site. The importance of this will be explained in the next bullet point. Civic pride is what drew me to this club, and it is also one of the reasons I started this site. At some point, if enough changes are made at the club for me to be personally satisfied, I may decide to revert to the previous shorthand of using the nickname part of the team. Since I very rarely talk about the men’s team, I don’t see this being much of an issue. If the need arises, I will clarify which team to which I am referring. If you run into me in public, I will still likely use the nickname to refer to the club for clarity’s sake.
From my current perspective, the most critical relationship for the team is between the players and the fans, but especially the fans who are able to attend the matches. There are likely many fans now that are able to attend matches but will chose not to. I respect and fully understand that decision. On the other hand, I still plan to attend every match that I can and to support the players in person. I will likely do this while not wearing any team licensed merchandise. I will be there as a Louisvillian to support the women who are representing the city of Louisville. The nickname is tarnished due to the arrogance and ineptitude of certain people involved with the club, but they don’t own the rights to the name “Louisville” in and of itself.
The majority of my writing on this site is related to play on the field. That will not change. I still intend to do player ratings in the same manner as I have always done. I toyed with the idea of doing a disclaimer stating something like “performances are always subject to external pressures that we as fan may not be aware”, but frankly any reasonable person knows this.
I am undecided on my stance as to whether I will accept a media credential next season, and I am unsure if one is even forthcoming. This would limit my ability to attend practiced or post-match press conferences, but that isn’t necessarily a negative thing either. When you have a press credential, you get more information than a normal fan in some situations, but much of that information is curated by the club. If I do decide to be a member of credentialed media next year, I will likely skew my coverage to more observational items which is something I tended towards in the latter parts of the season last year.
I have a few final thoughts for now. I have made many new friends since starting this site. Each one of them will be dealing with their fandom in their own time and manner. Unless things change dramatically, I think that the current landscape for fan-driven content will be pretty bleak. I can’t imagine the current environment generating much enthusiasm for fan-based coverage, although outrage sometimes generates fresh content and creators. The preeminent piece of fan-created content in my opinion was the Butchertown Rundown Podcast. According to Tom and Bekki, its return in its current format is impossible (Tom has shared with me that he can’t continue, even if I hold out hope that he might change his mind one day) and its return in any format is not possible with JOC still employed at the club. As for Bekki, her coverage and abilities have moved well beyond the level of fan-driven content as she has spent the last 2 years cultivating her craft to a point where her coverage could easily move to a national focus. If she wants to continue to write about soccer, there is no real reason to limit her scope to a single team. However, Bekki told me that the scandals have cooled her interest in writing about soccer. I will leave the last word to her, “I think it’s worth noting that when coverage for the sport is dependent on dedicated fans, scandals are even more deeply harmful than they would be in other more established sports.”
