In many ways, the National Women’s Soccer League has never looked better. With last season’s post-World Cup surge in attendance, the addition of a tenth team in the Orlando Pride, and player acquisitions like Lindsey Horan and Raquel Rodriguez (not to mention the return of fan favorite and big personality Natasha Kai), fans are eagerly awaiting the unprecedented fourth season of American women’s professional soccer. Should the USWNT do well at the Rio Olympics, it will only heighten interest in the league.

Which is why it could be the best time to introduce something many have been calling for since the league’s 2013 inception: an All-Star Match.

The lack of such a game, an institution in nearly every other major sport, has been puzzling. Both the first two incarnations of top-tier women’s professional soccer in this country, the WUSA and the WPS, held two All-Star games apiece with varying formats.

The first All-Star match took place in 2002 after the second WUSA season ended. Split into North versus South, the South won with an MVP performance from Abby Wambach in her rookie year with the Washington Freedom. The following year, in what ended up being WUSA’s final season, the All-Star match was moved to the middle of the season due to the 2003 Women’s World Cup, with a team of Americans falling to a team of WUSA internationals.

WPS’ inaugural All-Star match in 2009 presented yet another format. After the season ended, a team voted on by fans, media, coaches, and players hosted Swedish club Umeå IK. The American win featured a brace from Christine Sinclair. The 2010 All-Star match moved back to the middle of the season. With the same voting format as the previous year, top-voted players Wambach and ultimate winner Marta chose their teammates in the style of a pickup match.

The WPS did not hold an All-Star match in 2011, claiming most likely players would be away on National Team duty at the Women’s World Cup. And of course, the WPS would ultimately fold before the 2012 season.

With the lack of transparency that characterizes the NWSL, it is unlikely we will ever know if discussions of such an endeavor have taken place. However, one can hope that the league recognizes the benefits an All-Star match could bring.

The NWSL has struggled to create stars beyond National Team players, which is a problem given the amount of time those players are often away. If a fan is hard pressed to name a Houston Dash player other than Carli Lloyd, that fan is not likely to attend a match when Lloyd is called up for National Team duty. With the exception of perhaps the now-departed Ella Masar, the casual soccer fan simply does not know the Kim Littles, Kealia Ohais, and Sarah Hagens of the league.

An All-Star Match brings those players to light. With a lineup that could include Lauren Barnes and Arin Gilliland on the back line, Christine Nairn and Allie Long in the midfield, and Sofia Huerta and Beverly Yanez up top, anyone would be hard-pressed to deny the talent. The NWSL is often touted as a league with some of the best parity in the world, and nothing would demonstrate that level of play more than a field of the best twenty-two players.

Another advantage of bringing these top players together would be to create a prime scouting opportunity for Jill Ellis’ National Team. What better chance to see who deserves a call-up than seeing the best players from across the league play each other all in one game? Players like Crystal Dunn, Samantha Mewis, and Stephanie McCaffrey all earned first or repeat National Team looks based on their NWSL performance.

Finally, an All-Star match brings attention, and as an endeavor that is still fairly new, this league needs all the attention it can get. A televised, marketed game (no small feat in the world of women’s soccer) can create new fans as well as showing confidence in the league. A strong, confident league will stem the flow of young talent currently lost to early retirements and the allure of European leagues. It will also attract top international talent like Amandine Henry, further increasing the fan base.

Fresh off a World Cup win with the possibility of Rio gold on the horizon, professional women’s soccer has a chance to propel this momentum into something that will last. An All-Star match can only help, and after two failed leagues, the NWSL needs all the help it can get. But hey, the third time is the charm, right?

Hey all you new NWSL fans out there. Yeah you. I have a message for you.

Pick a team.

Pick an NWSL team and stick with them. For one whole season; just pick a team and stick with them. Even if they break your heart. Maybe especially if they break your heart.

Sports in America has a lot of do with pride. We take pride in our team when we slip on a hat or a jersey or a pair of sweat pants with their crest stamped on them. And the connection we have with that team is what keeps us from maybe losing interest in that team when there isn’t a World Cup or an Olympics to get our soccer juices flowing.

I know a lot of you just found the NWSL at the tail end of last season. You got high on the World Cup and you decided to log on to YouTube and watch those same players go head to head with each other. And suddenly you got to see some great match ups. Tobin Heath’s Thorns taking on Kelley O’Hara’s Sky Blue was a great match. So was Hope Solo’s Reign taking on Carli Lloyd’s Dash.

But if you want to keep the league going and healthy you can’t just be a fan of Tobin Heath or Hope Solo or Morgan Brian. You have to be a fan of the Thorns or the Reign or the Dash. You have to buy in to that team as more than one to four national team players. If you really want to support the league you have to buy in to one team even if your favorite national team  player is traded or gone for national team duty or out for a season due to pregnancy or injury.

Fan bases take time to grow. As year four of the NWSL gets ready to start it’s hard to really have the baked in relationship to one of the ten teams in the league unless you live in one of the cities. I get that. I live four hours away from three different teams so any home town pride for a team isn’t there for me.

That is why I present the following tips on how to pick an NWSL team.

1) Look at the team as more than a showcase for USWNT players.

Sure the Dash have Carli Lloyd who hit a hat trick in a World Cup final. But will that World Cup final moment and Carli Lloyd really be enough to keep you a fan of the Dash for more than 2 or 3 games? Most likely no.

So look at the team rosters. Look for other players that you might know. Watch past games and see what other players stand out to you. Try to find ones not on the national team that you really like. Try to find a team with a style that you enjoy watching.

2) It’s alright to be pissed off at your team.

I am a Reign fan. I make no bones about the team I support even if I try to take my bias out when I’m writing about the NWSL or another team. But no team in this league pisses me off like the Reign. Because they are my team. Because I invest time and energy and even money into them and sometimes they just let me down.

But you know what? If I team pisses you off that means you care. That means you are invested in them. And that is a great sign.

3) It’s alright to like players on other teams without it being your team.

One of the biggest problems I faced when trying to pick my team after finding the NWSL was feeling like if I picked one team it would cut me off from supporting other players I liked. And then I remembered the MLB and NFL where I have my team, the Red Sox and Packers respectively, and I still managed to like other players in those leagues.

Case in point, I am a huge Becky Sauerbrunn fan. She is one of my favorite 3 players in the world right now. And yet I am not an FCKC fan. I can want Sauerbrunn to do well, really well in fact, and still not call myself a fan of the team or support them. In fact I personally hope they end up at the bottom of the table. But that is the Reign fan in me coming out.

The bottom line is whatever team you pick is not as importuning as picking a team and sticking with them. And it’s ok to say that you’re a fan of one team but like another. I like the Chicago Red Stars a lot but they just aren’t my team.

Whichever team you pick for the upcoming NWSL season I want you to remember the most important rule. Portland sucks.

A lot has been written lately about if the amateur NWSL players should be paid, why they aren’t paid, and if the league or their clubs can afford to pay them.

Very little has been written about how these players should be paid and about what might be a reasonable agreement under which these players, who put in as much work as the players under contract, could be paid.

Every unallocated player (someone who is not being paid by the United States or Canadian federations) makes between $7,200 to $39,700 for the duration of the season, going from April to October. And while this is not a livable wage and needs to be raised if the league wants to retain talent, the amateurs aren’t paid at all. They are simply reimbursed for some, but not all, expenses.

Unllocated players, therefore, make between $360 and $1,985 a game, per their 20-game schedule.

Side note: USWNT players make $54,000 for the NWSL season, meaning $2,700 a game. Still too low, but much more reasonable than their solely NWSL counterparts.

If the NWSL keeps needing to use amateur players going forward, and they will always need to with a 20-person roster and a slough of both United States and Canadian national team players, they should be required to pay them. This pay should not count against the team’s NWSL salary cap (currently set at $278,000). 

This is the current NWSL language on amateurs:

An amateur Player is any person other than a professional Player.  An amateur Player may not receive or retain any remuneration for playing except expenses directly related to a game or games which have actually been incurred by the Player.

This is my proposal for paying amateur players:

An amateur Player is any person other than a professional Player.  An amateur Player will receive $200 each time they are listed in their club’s 18-person game-day roster. They may also receive remuneration for expenses directly related to a game or games which have been incurred by the Player.

The shoestring budget that some clubs operate on should be able to accommodate this modest pay for players putting on their uniforms to go out and try to score or defend goals in the club’s name. If they can’t, that has to be a sign that the ownership group might not be the right fit for the NWSL, going forward.

2015 and 2016 have seen teams having to often bring on amateur players because of the World Cup and Olympics. If the pay changes are put into effect in 2017, a non major year for the United States and Canada, fewer players will need to be called up. Too late to help out those who have already gone without pay, but a good time to implement a new policy and have two seasons to try it out on a smaller scale before the next World Cup year.

Pay the amateur players. It’s bad enough we call them amateur and not non-contract players. The least we can do is pay them. Maybe not what they are worth, but at least something. It’s the right thing to do.

“Per league and club policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed.”

That sentence shows up in every story on NWSLSoccer.com about a player signing. Officially, no club  can create a page on their website that lists  what each of their players make. The only things we do know are that non-allocated players (players from the United States and Canada on their women’s national teams) are paid between $6,800 and $37,800 and that each team has a salary cap of $265,000. 

The National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), which just finished its first season, took a different route. You can go to their website and find a page that lists the salary for each player. The 72 players on the 4 NWHL teams have what they make listed. From the 16 players making just $10,000 to Kelli Stack who makes a league-high $25,000. This isn’t to say the NWHL is perfect, but in this one area it’s already ahead of the NWSL. 

Yet, in the NWSL, it’s league and club policy not to give out any information of the terms of the player deals or how much they make off of those deals. 

And that’s not even getting at the impact that having such low salaries has on teams and players in the first place. 

To look at the impact that the $265,000 cap has on a team, we need to have some fun with math. Let’s look at the 18 player roster for Seattle from the 2015 Championship game and see what Laura Harvey, head coach and GM, might be paying her players. 

The roster: Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Kendall Fletcher, Rachel Corsie, Lauren Barnes, Stephanie Cox, Elli Reed, Keelin Winters, Kim Little, Jessica Fishlock, Merritt Mathias, Katrine Veje, Beverly Yanez, Haley Kopmeyer ,Amber Brooks, Mariah Bullock, Danielle Foxhoven, and Kiersten Dallstream. 

First off, Solo and Rapinoe can be taken out of consideration, because they are United States allocated players. US Soccer plays them to play in the league. (About $55,000 according to the court documents in the law suit between US Soccer and the United States Women’s National Team.) 

For the moment, let’s assume that no other players outside of the 18 that dress for game day are getting paid, just to keep the math simple. Teams are allowed to carry up to 20 players even if not all teams do.

So, 16 players have to fit under a salary cap of $265,000. That would be $16,562.50 per player, if everyone on the roster was being paid evenly. But as we know, in the world of sports, things are rarely fair.

Out of the 16 non-allocated players, Seattle has two from the Scottish Women’s National Team, (Kim Little and Rachel Corsie), one from the Welsh Women’s National Team, (Jess Fishlock), and one from the Danish Women’s National Team, (Katrine Veje). Let’s say each of them made $30,000 each. They are good enough to be called on for international duty after all. 

What does that give us? Two allocated players (Solo and Rapinoe), four international players making $30,000 (Little, Corsie, Fishlock, and Veje) and the 12 remaining players making roughly $12,083.33 each, if we’re keeping the rest equal. 

But the 12 left wouldn’t be all paid equally. The starting XI would likely be getting more than a bench player, right? 

The starting XI: Solo, Fletcher, Corsie, Barnes, Cox, Winters, Little, Fishlock, Mathias, Rapinoe and Yanez. 

So let’s increase the rest of the starting XI (Fletcher, Barnes, Cox, Winters, Mathaias, and Yanez) to $20,000 each.

So now you have two allocated players (Solo and Rapinoe), four international players making $30,000 (Little, Corsie, Fishlock, and Veje), six starters making $20,000 (Fletcher, Barnes, Cox, Winters, Mathias and Yanez), and the six bench players making $4,166,66 each. 

That puts the bench players’ salaries under the league minimum. 

See how quickly that $265,000 goes? 

I can’t tell you, with 100% certainty, what the players on Seattle make (outside of Solo and Rapinoe), but I can tell you that some of the players make close to the league minimum. Not making that information known only serves to keep the public from seeing just how many of those players are closer to the $6,800 end of the spectrum than the $37,800 end. 

Releasing the players’ salaries would give the public a chance to see just what each team is doing with their $265,000. It will give fans a chance to call GMs out if they aren’t using the money wisely, just like every other sports league has their fans do. 

The NWSL making it to its fourth season is huge. But that doesn’t mean that fans and members of the media should give them a free pass. The only way the league will change for the better is by fans and the media pushing them in that direction. 

And push we shall.