According to the study, a larger percent of teen girls online blog and post photos than do online boys:

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys.

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Via New York's official blog. The picture says it all as far as I'm concerned.

His strategy:
"I didn't know what she'd like, so I just went with what I like. I found three baby dolls I thought were sexy, and polled five women in the store on what looked best. Then I bought the most popular one.

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Back to it with the not-particularly joyful saga of Eric Frimpong. For those that don't know, the Ghana native was accused and convicted of rape after becoming a college soccer star in Santa Barbara. Last week Bill picked up on the latest piece that purports to declare Frimpong's innocence:

It's sad.

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Long time readers will remember how I criticized Crossley for the following line:

"We need to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for girls," said Andy Crossley, the Breakers' director of business development. "You can't make dads feel like they're visiting Chuck E. Cheese's.

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Merry Christmas, ladies, via Feministing:

First things first, congratulations to tennis great Serena Williams for winning top honors. But upon closer inspection you may notice that two of the athletes listed are not human beings. Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra, in fact, are horses.

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Via Footiebusiness a couple weeks ago, an Oregon Live article that sets annual adidas MLS merchandise revenue at over $300 million annually:

To build its U.S. soccer edge, Adidas paid a reported $150 million over 10 years to sponsor and outfit men's Major League Soccer, which is expanding to 18 teams and drew 3.

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Is surprisingly gender neutral:

FIFA announced the [World Player of the Year] finalists earlier today.
Three of the five women finalists play in MLS - the others are Kelly Smith (Boston Breakers) and Cristiane (Chicago Red Stars).

Thanks to Dan Loney for making me go back and reread that post. Click to continue reading...

A lot of you have probably already seen the post where "James Chartrand" came out as a woman who had been writing under a masculine pen name (via Broadsheet, among others):

Taking a man's name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service.

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For the last couple weeks, I've been ruminating on some way to close out the Elizabeth Lambert saga. And lo and behold: Time Magazine has dropped that way right into my lap by naming Lambert as one of the top ten pariahs of 2009.
The list places Lambert in the company of Bernie Madoff, who cost investors $20 billion dollars in his ponzi scheme; Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, who cost US Bank shareholders billions in the acquisition of Merrill Lynch; convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown; Lockerbie bombing convict Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi; baloon-boy's dad, who invented a hoax that cost local governments thousands and could land him in jail; corrupt politician Rod Blagojevich; and convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. Click to continue reading...

This article is a couple weeks old, and meanders about like so many sheep without driving the point home, but I keep coming back to it to think about this statement:

The general public doesn't know what to think of women's soccer because women's soccer doesn't know what to think of itself.

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Great answer:

Adriana, from Jackson, OH asks:
Why was the coach so scattered in selecting players to play? Sigi was very consistant and obtained great results? Also, the marketing for the club needs to improve and Crew gear selection needs to expand! (particularly for women).

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So now seems like as good a time as any to take stock of where this site is and solicit some reader feedback. The goal this year was to have fun and explore topics relevant to MLS and WPS in depth. I also wanted to post regularly, build up an audience, and see where that took us. I also made the decision that this site would be more about commentary than scoops or news, although there were a couple of the latter as the year went on. Click to continue reading...

A few weeks back it made the news that Shawn Francis, purveyor of "The Offside Rules" would be making the jump to MLS to act in an editorial role for their new digital media initiative. Earlier this week, the first public fruits of that hire were unveiled with the new MLS Insider blog.
I have to admit that I never found The Offside Rules all that interesting. Click to continue reading...

Overall, a really good article:

Lambert said she was shaken and appalled by some of the responses she received in e-mail messages, telephone messages and on blogs, which included the publishing of her parents' home phone number in Southern California and one suggestion that "I should be taken to a state prison, raped and left for dead in a ditch.

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Took some time this weekend and added tags to the blog. So now you can look for articles by topic as opposed to just searching or looking by time frame. It should make it easier to find some topics and see what I write about the most. I hope to finally get my act together with tags moving forward. Click to continue reading...

On this week's main report we take a look at the world football governing body FIFA.

Main Report 11 Transcript

'It is an institution that ... has taken on a social, cultural, political and sporting dimension in the struggle to educate children and defeat poverty. At the same time it has also become a powerful economic phenomenon.

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I just thought the sun coming through the beams at Sky Harbor this morning looked cool. Don't think this photo does it justice, but, whatever.

So, I just flew in from Indianapolis, and boy are my arms tired. Got to see some old friends and called Michigan State's 1-0, double-overtime victory over Indiana on the Big Ten Network Sunday afternoon.

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Yesterday we were introduced to Brian Dryfhout via his somewhat strangely produced interview with Chicago Red Star Michelle Wenino. The interview is on a site called Mouth Piece Sports, which purports to be a "safe place" for athletes.
Anyway, Dryfhout posted another interview today with Ella Masar of the Chicago Red Stars. Click to continue reading...

As some of you know, Peter Wilt has been on a guest blogging run at Pitch Invasion, my favorite site to leech from. At the end of last week, Wilt submitted his report card on the first WPS season. Those of you who've already read it can probably guess what I'm going to focus on. Overall, there's a lot of encouraging stuff in his report, although it's clear the league is not yet profitable for the owners. Click to continue reading...