The National Women's Soccer League has been without a commissioner since Jeff Plush stepped down in March 2017.
Nineteen months later, the league doesn't appear to have made much progress in the search for a new commissioner.
During a recent press conference, National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) Managing Director Amanda Duffy, who has been the public face of the NWSL since Plush's departure, said that the league remains committed to filling the commissioner role, but admitted that no candidates had been interviewed for the position.
"With the commissioner, it's important to the members, it's important to U.S. Soccer that the best candidates are identified and interviewed," Duffy said. "It's an ongoing process. There's no new update on it right now, but the NWSL members are certainly supportive and interested in having the best candidates interviewed and the best candidate put in that commissioner role at the right time when it makes sense."
The NWSL has continued to make progress over the last two seasons, despite the absence of a commissioner. But the inner workings of the league have remained a bit of a mystery to fans and the media. For example, it was not immediately clear to public whose job it was to make the final decision to move a playoff game between the North Carolina Courage and Chicago Red Stars to Portland in September due to Hurricane Florence.
Despite the continued absence of a commissioner, Duffy said the league was already turning its attention to its preparations for the 2019 season.
The NWSL plans to make some key changes heading into next year. Duffy said that the league would increase its roster size in 2019 and also look to increase salaries and housing allowances league-wide.
While the increase in roster size is a good step for the NWSL, the rosters likely won't look too different than they did in 2018. When the Boston Breakers folded ahead of the 2018 season, the NWSL made the decision to allow the remaining clubs within the league to select up to four players from Boston's roster without those players counting against the 2018 roster or salary cap. That essentially allowed teams to carry up to 24 players this year as opposed to the stated roster maximum of 20.
The roster increase was always going to be necessary heading into next year as well with the league preparing to navigate significant absences during the season due to the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup. The NWSL previously used amateur players to navigate national team absences, but moved away from the amateur player rule in 2018.
"We will look to expand our roster for the 2019 season, which is part of a growth step that we want to take as a league to have more players in the league," Duffy said. "We will be expanding our roster size next year and, as we've done the last few years, we'll continue to look at increasing our player salaries and also our housing allowance to give teams a better opportunity to put players in reasonable housing conditions within their respective markets."
Duffy also announced that the NWSL will have a new streaming platform in 2019. Non-televised games will be streamed on Yahoo! Sports during the 2019 season. International fans will continue to be able to stream games on the league's website. The streams will continue to be produced by Vista. The NWSL will also continue to have a Lifetime Game of the Week on national television.
Non-televised NWSL games were streamed on go90 over the last two years, but go90 was discontinued in July.
"We have confirmed that those games next year for domestic viewers will move to Yahoo! Sports," Duffy sad. "We're really excited about moving those games there and the visibility that that it will afford us."
-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com
503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg