Tom Dunmore has a post at BigSoccer about the global rise in women’s soccer, drawing from Nigeria’s upset of the USA in the U-20 Women’s World Cup. This women’s competition has indeed been as unpredictable as a men’s U-20 event, with unheralded African teams going toe-to-toe with the big names in the sport.

This coincides with my debut at ESPN, in which I ponder the decline of women’s soccer’s popularity in the USA. The WUSA overspent, yes, but wouldn’t WPS love to have those attendance figures today? And the funny thing is that the games are better today than they were then.

I don’t have any real answers, of course. I’ve wondered before if Gen Y and the Millennials are less inclined to see women as athletes and more inclined to see them as Maxim covers, and one of the ESPN comments describing half the Washington Freedom crowd as “butch lesbians” points at a rather skewed view of the world. To cite Seinfeld, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with having that mix in the crowd, but having been to several Freedom games, I can testify that it’s just not true.

In Europe, meanwhile, the women’s Champions League just gets more solid each year. Europe is hardly a unified continent of progressive attitudes, of course — women’s ski jumping has fought through all kinds of condescending remarks, and the old guard of English journalists didn’t exactly welcome women’s soccer with open minds.

Women’s games, in general, aren’t bad at all. The diving epidemic in the men’s game hasn’t quite caught on, for one thing. After some of the drearier World Cup games, WPS provided a welcome change of attitude.

We in the USA think of ourselves as the worldwide leader in women’s sports, at least women’s team sports. Yet basketball pros find life more profitable overseas, perhaps free from snarky columnists like SI’s Jeff Pearlman.

Is that the future for women’s soccer as well?

* – yes, the headline is a Steven Wright joke