Not sure what the National Women’s Soccer League hoped to accomplish with its over-the-top, overruled suspension of Thorns star Sophia Smith this week.
Seriously, if anyone’s guilty of time wasting, isn’t it the league itself?
I’m all for enforcing the rules and Smith’s coy efforts to hide the ball under her seat when it was kicked out of play in extra time against North Carolina — clearly a good-natured ploy by the league’s best player — deserved a tsk-tsk.
That she had already been issued a yellow card was unfortunate.
That she had to be sent off with a second yellow for the gamesmanship, with an automatic suspension of one game, was an understandable, if irritating, application of the rules.
That didn’t stop the Thorns from appealing the decision, which seems to be the wont of any aggrieved sport entity.
That is where the hall monitor NWSL took things too far. By deeming the appeal “frivolous,” the league triggered a set of highly punitive measures, including doubling Smith’s suspension and fine and barring the Thorns from appealing subsequent judgments.
The players association intervened to get the second game and increased fine rescinded, but it shouldn’t have gotten to that point.
The NWSL simply could have, and should have, simply denied the appeal.
The Thorns and general manager Karina LeBlanc have not publicly responded to the process. A spokesperson said they were “unable to speak on the matter.”
There must be a ridiculous rule against that, too.
Can you imagine if every time an NBA team appealed a technical foul they risked additional punishment? Draymond Green would never play basketball again!
Smith, who became the league’s highest-paid player in March, already missed one game for the indiscretion. She fooled around, she found out. Move on.
Even though the measures against Smith have been lifted, the Thorns still won’t be able to protest future suspensions, their pursuit of due process essentially robbing them of due process.
The NWSL is growing rapidly as a league, but it does still need Smith, the face of the sport and the league’s leading goal scorer, on the field more than it needed to make an example of her.
In the end, Smith will be back on the field this weekend when the Thorns host the KC Current, which is an unfortunate development only for the KC Current.
That it was the players association, whose members Smith routinely runs circles around, that restored common sense and kept her on the field only proves how badly the NWSL erred here.
Stories by Bill Oram
-- Bill Oram