Red Ink, Rosy Future

After observing his first game of women's pro basketball, a distinguished critic made the following observation: "When they're not running, they're jumping. When they're not jumping, they're diving. When they're not diving, they're shooting. When they're not shooting, they're passing. These girls can really operate." The speaker was a man who can also operate, one Julius Erving.

Last week, in the fifth and deciding game of the first Women's Professional Basketball League championship, the Houston Angels ran, jumped, dived and shot their way to victory over the Iowa Cornets, 111-104, before 5,976 fans at Houston's Hofheinz Pavilion. Houston Forward Paula Mayo, who at 5'11" and 185 pounds is affectionately called "Moose" by her teammates, contributed a game-high 36 points and 22 rebounds, but it was a tenacious defense and a total team effort, concepts preached by Coach Don Knodel, that won for the Angels.

After the game, at a party hosted by Bill Byrne, the WBL founder and president, there was a sense of relief, pride and joy. Economic pressures had not forced the eight-team league—Houston, New York Stars, New Jersey Gems and Dayton Rockettes in the Eastern Division and Iowa, Chicago Hustle, Minnesota Fillies and Milwaukee Does in the Midwest—into an early grave, as many had predicted. The WBL finished its 34-game regular season and championship series with player salaries, arena rentals and travel expenses paid. To be sure, all eight teams lost money. Chicago, which had a $150,000 deficit, came closest to breaking even. Milwaukee suffered the most—some $325,000 worth—while the other clubs lost an average of $260,000.

"It's hard to be excited when you've lost money," said Minnesota President Gordon Nevers, a great-nephew of Ernie Nevers, "but we have proved that we are credible. Now we have to market our product. We had only 45 days to prepare this year, but now we will have eight months. I had hoped to average 3,000 fans, but we ended up with only 1,500 and even that was not all paid.

"For our last game in Minnesota we drew 2,600, and I'm convinced we can sell 2,000 season tickets next year. The league has a three-year plan. It doesn't expect to break even until after the 1980-81 season, but Minnesota is going to break even next year."

Heady talk, perhaps. Although the Cornets play in a hotbed of women's basketball (the Iowa girls' state high school tournament draws sellout crowds of 15,000), they project three years of red ink, totaling $405,500. Houston's president and general manager, Hugh Sweeney, who is a promoter for the Avon tennis tour, also foresees a struggle.

"This has been a pioneer year," said the 6'6" former amateur tennis player. "We proved to the press that we're for real, but now we have to prove it to the public. It may take two or three years, but it took women's tennis a lot longer than that. The payroll is what kills you in pro sports today, but WBL salaries are low [$5,000 to $15,000, compared to the NBA average of $143,000]. I have most of my girls signed to three-year contracts, and I'm certain that we're going to make it." Asked what it was like to win the first WBL championship, Sweeney pulled on his cigar and replied, "It's kind of like being in the first covered wagon to cross the country."

For the players, the pioneers in kneepads, the season had indeed offered similarities to frontier roughing it. They had endured blizzards, tornadoes and torrential rains, including the Houston Flood that forced postponement of the second game in the championship series.

"The first year has been a great experience, but not everything has been a bed of roses," says Iowa Guard Tanya Crevier. "The travel was the worst, and some of the facilities were atrocious. We usually changed and showered in our motel rooms. In some lockers the floors hadn't been swept for weeks, paint was peeling off the walls and bugs were crawling all over the shower-room floors. In our first year we can't expect the greatest, but it would be nice to take a shower without worrying about athlete's foot."

This season the Cornets played in eight Iowa "hometowns," and to travel to their games, owner George Nissen, the largest manufacturer of gymnastics equipment in the world, purchased a $31,200 Greyhound bus, dubbed the Corn Dog. The green and gold Corn Dog is equipped with two TV sets, a stereo system, a refrigerator, three game tables, chairs that open up into beds, and floor-to-ceiling carpeting. Luxurious though Corn Dog is, travel could be horrendous. In January, after beating Chicago in Cedar Falls, the team had to follow a snowplow to Des Moines for its afternoon game against Minnesota. A trip that normally takes two hours lasted six, and en route the sweaty Cornet uniforms, stashed in a luggage compartment under the bus, froze. With no time to pick up fresh uniforms, the players thawed out their dirty ones, then stepped onto the court and lost to the Fillies, 109-107.