The heartfelt, grassroots effort to save the financially embattled Women’s Professional Soccer league from extinction was well underway last week when one of the architects of that league poured a heavy dose of cold reality onto what has been an emotional situation.

The U.S. Soccer Federation is set to hear today the request of WPS officials to re-sanction it for a fourth season. Specifically, it will be asked to extend a waiver allowing it to continue below the eight-team minimum for Division 1 men’s and women’s professional soccer.

(Here is a good overview of the situation from Jenna Pel of the excellent women’s soccer blog All White Kit.)

With the recent dissolution of a Florida-based franchise to get rid of a troublesome owner, WPS is down to five teams.

Peter Wilt, a front-office veteran of WPS and Major League Soccer franchises, wrote in a thoughtful, detailed post at the Pitch Invasion site that perhaps WPS needs to die in order to save the idea of women’s professional soccer in North America:

“It’s ironic that WPS’ cause of death will be the same as its predecessor WUSA. WPS thought it learned lessons from WUSA and spent much less than WUSA. WPS indeed did spend less than WUSA, but was dealt fatal blows on two accounts: 1) revenues fell in proportion to expenses and 2) ownership wealth had been replaced by passion. Passion can’t pay the bills.”

Bingo.

I covered WUSA (Women’s United Soccer Association), which grew out of the passion and the feel-good story of the 1999 Women’s World Cup. WUSA lasted just three years because of financial, attendance, marketing and other reasons. While I am less familiar with WPS, the business model parallels offered by Wilt, the former president and CEO of the Chicago Red Stars, which left the WPS this year for the semipro Women’s Premier Soccer League, are rather striking.

His restructured system would have up 20 teams and “a coast to coast imprint for the sport.” His financial ideas for reshaping the structure of the women’s game would seem to some as a step back into the wilderness, especially for players’ salaries. He admits that this move, along with lower operational costs, would take a hit in the image department:

” . . . but the reduced expenses are needed to bring fiscal sensibility to the business. Increasing the number of teams will result in a growth of the base, get more people involved as investors, players, administrators and cumulatively as fans. Critical mass of teams will ultimately generate more interest from sponsors, supporters and broadcasters in the future at which time teams can justify increases to their operational and player compensation budgets.”

Wilt also is suggesting that the existing minor league structure and the USSF get things going, with MLS to take over the revamped women’s circuit after the first year. This, too, would be novel, given how both WUSA (which rejected a business plan written by an MLS executive at the request of the USSF) and WPS have insisted on independence.

Very rarely in the Save WPS effort (soccer journalist Beau Dure has collected “vigil” links) is any mention of the business of women’s pro soccer. Instead, the appeals are all emotional. Billie Jean King retweeted a follower’s plea: “don’t let dreams die & hearts break! pls sign & spread the word!”

As I wrote on Pitch Invasion two years ago, so many who want women’s soccer to succeed have been wrongly pushing the buttons of passion and the sport as a cause instead of producing hard-headed business solutions. Sadly, this mindset hasn’t seemed to change, especially from women’s sports supporters.

While WPS may point to a petition drive on the change.org website as evidence of fan support, ultimately a gesture like this just isn’t going to cut it, no matter how well-intentioned.

I don’t blame the USSF for keeping WPS on its toes a little. I’m not buying complaints from some in the women’s soccer community and elsewhere that the USSF hasn’t done much to back the women’s game. Certainly it can do more and I think it should and will re-sanction WPS.

What the federation ought to do next is take a serious look at the Wilt proposal and follow the “collaborative and unselfish” approach he suggests. For this isn’t about the fate of a league, but something much larger.

FanHouse’s Brian Straus thinks that re-upping Bob Bradley for four more years reveals that U.S. Soccer Federation boss Sunil Gulati . . .

“didn’t want exciting. He wanted stability and a coach who has many more wins than losses. In Bradley, he found his man.”

Martin Rogers of Yahoo! Sports thinks Bradley — and the decision to reappoint him — should be cut some slack:

“For any nation, a period such as this should be one of optimism and the beginning of a long road that, if traveled correctly, can lead to a pot of gold. As it embarks down that path, the USA can at least be safe in the knowledge that it does so steered by a man who has taken the journey before, and will surely have learned to avoid some familiar pitfalls.”

• The Sports Illustrated World Cup preview edition included a well-crafted profile of Landon Donovan and his odyssey of carrying the burden for the U.S. soccer team. While it was a bit rich to include the genius references to Mozart, Picasso, etc., Joe Posnanski cut to the heart of Donovan’s dilemma, which is rooted in his early crashing out in Europe.

In light of what he’s done at the World Cup, and the role he’s expected to play as the Americans face Ghana Saturday in the second round, this piece is especially illuminating now. Donovan found his emotional and psychological breakthrough earlier this winter, while playing for Everton in England’s Premier League on a short loan stint:

“It isn’t because he proved himself on such a stage. It isn’t because, at 28, he established himself unquestionably as a world-class player. It isn’t because he doused the final doubts about himself.

” ‘No, here’s the thing,’ Donovan says. ‘I proved something to myself. I proved to myself that I could play at a high level game after game. I couldn’t do that before. I always needed something outside myself. I used to be on the field and think, ‘Maybe I’ll hear a song that will remind me of my family or where I came from or my wife. Maybe the crowd will get really loud, and that will lift me up.’ I realized I don’t need that.’ “

• The Americans won a group stage for the first time since the first World Cup in 1930, but Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke wonders if the bar is being set too low for American expectations now. Ghana is 18 places below the U.S. in the current FIFA rankings, but Plaschke should know that FIFA rankings never amount to much. Still, it’s hard to fault this thought:

“I suspect that one reason U.S. soccer does not become a superpower is because, as fans, we don’t demand it. We don’t pressure a losing coach like a Southeastern Conference football crowd. We don’t push a struggling player like a New York baseball crowd. We blister an NBA coach for ripping a referee, yet we allow soccer players to fire away.

“We give soccer excuses it doesn’t need, then shower it with praise for a job it hasn’t finished. We treat American soccer like a precocious prodigy instead of a burgeoning powerhouse. The youth soccer movement in this country is at least 30 years old, Major League Soccer is 15 years old — isn’t it time for everyone to grow up?

• Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel has a terrific piece on U.S. coach Bob Bradley, who’s heard plenty of calls for his head since succeeding Bruce Arena after the 2006 World Cup. Bradley wasn’t the first choice to lead the Americans into South Africa, but he’s certainly looking like the best choice regardless of what happens Saturday.

• Congrats go out to a friend of mine, New York Daily News soccer correspondent Michael Lewis, who’s been in the business for 36 years, most of it covering the game he loves the most. And a conscientious, down-to-earth guy to boot.

• During a very busy week, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the epic Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. But reading just a bit of a live blog on the match at The Guardian was exhausting enough. The folks at the All-England Club need to seriously think about putting some limits on how fifth sets should be settled. Stoppage time, perhaps?

• One more clip of Landon Donovan’s goal against Algeria, a classic radio call by Andrés Cantor. Save your voice, my friend!

• Not surprisingly, my post yesterday at Blue Star Basketball about Title IX drew some heated response from the predictable quarters, although one critic did bother to respond directly in the comments section. So I thank him for that.

• And with World Cup euphoria reaching a fever pitch here in America (believe that!), I’ve come to love Stefan Fatsis’ dispatches from South Africa. At The Goal Post, he dazzles again, just like Landon Donovan, on the subject of the U.S. team’s success and political ideologies. To both he says: Pshawwwww! Bravo, Stefan!

“This is where soccer fearmongers on the right and worrywarts on the left are wrong. The  apparent concern among certain conservatives is that soccer equals socialism and our personal bogeyman, immigration. Lock your doors, suburban U8 players of America! Over at The Nation, meanwhile, Dave Zirin frets that the comments of a couple of unlisten-to-able D.C. sports-talk radio soccer troglodytes reflect a ‘nasty undercurrent’ embedded in all US victories in all international sports. So let me see if I have it straight: The right thinks soccer is un-American and the left thinks the right will use a soccer victory as cause for American triumphalism. Drop ball, people.

“Anyone with a dust speck of knowledge of US soccer’s place in the world understands that the euphoria surrounding Donovan’s goal and the prospect for the US in this World Cup have nothing whatsoever to do with reinforcing American cultural might and everything to do with celebrating a long-time-coming (and still-not-there) American ascendancy in the rare place it hasn’t existed. Those chants of ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’ aren’t an expression of American superiority. They’re a foam finger in the world’s eyeball from a historically and justifiably overlooked, disrespected, disregarded second-rate soccer country. It’s all about redemption on the field, not politics off of it.”

• The immediate — and sometimes consternated — reaction to the unveiling of the U.S. World Cup team prompted Pitch Invasion proprietor Tom Dunmore to proclaim this “the first Twitter World Cup.” (Disclosure: I’ve been a contributor to his site, which explores the culture of soccer).

• At my own site, Atlanta Soccer News, I offered up a quick look at the 23 men who will soon travel to South America, including local hero Ricardo Clark, and linked to an early analysis of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids. Atlanta is included in the official U.S. book, with a decision coming from FIFA in December.