Chris Henderson (not the MLS veteran) follows women’s college soccer in rather remarkable detail, and I’m absolutely not qualified to question his selections in AWK’s 2012 WPS Mock Draft v1.0.

But one point is provocative: Would the Atlanta Beat make a colossal mistake by passing on heralded goalkeeping prospect Bianca Henninger?

A team’s goalkeeping needs may be more obvious than, say, a glaring gap at left wing. But goalkeepers are rarely in demand in the top few selections of the draft.

Check MLS: Out of the 120 top-10 picks of the past 12 years, only six have been goalkeepers. Brad Guzan was the highest pick, going No. 2 in 2005. Adin Brown was No. 3 in 2000. Steve Cronin has bounced between MLS and the second division since being picked No. 10 in 2004. The last three top-10 keepers — Chris Seitz (No. 4, 2007), Josh Lambo (No. 8, 2008) and Zac MacMath (No. 5, 2011) — were picked as prospects.

And that’s no surprise. Goalkeepers typically mature later than field players. We don’t have as much data in women’s soccer as we have in men’s soccer, but it’s safe to say we don’t see a lot of teen phenoms breaking through on the U.S. national team. Hope Solo debuted before age 20 but still wasn’t on the 2004 Olympic roster at age 23.

So if Atlanta is thinking of immediate improvement in goal, would Henninger be the pick? Or would the Beat look for someone who has already gone through the apprentice years?

With only five teams in the league (pending Dan Borislow’s legal action to get magicJack reinstated), you’d have to think goalkeepers would be available. The U.S. player pool lists five goalkeepers, so that’s one per team, right?

Well, no, it’s not that simple. But let’s take a quick look at the goalkeeping pool, focusing with the 13 goalkeepers who saw action in WPS last season. We’ll take into account that some keepers may miss time for the Olympics if the USA and/or Canada can qualify. And if a goalkeeper has retired or definitely isn’t in the mix for the team in question, her name isn’t in italics.

Boston: Has Alyssa Naeher (18 games in 2011) under contract after a successful offseason stint in Europe. Also re-signed backup Kati Jo Spisak, who started a couple of games in 2009 after sticking with the Washington Freedom from its W-League days. Naeher is in the U.S. pool but not in camp, so she’s not expected to miss time in 2012. They’re just looking for a third-stringer. Ashley Phillips played nine games for the Breakers in 2010 and remained on the roster last year along with 2010 third-round pick Kelsey Davis.

Western New York:Like Naeher, Ashlyn Harris (18 games) is in the U.S. pool but unlikely to miss time in 2012. The former Washington Freedom phenom is in U.S. camp, though, so she might get a shot in a friendly or two. She has re-signed for 2012. The Flash had two backups last year — FC Gold Pride alum Brittany Cameron and 2011 draft pick Ashleigh Bowers.

Sky Blue: The Jersey team has Karina LeBlanc (1 game, magicJack) under contract. The former Los Angeles Sol starter, who split time with Val Henderson in Philly in 2010, might miss time if Canada qualifies to the Olympics. Keeper/sweeper Jenni Branam has retired. The question mark is English starter Karen Bardsley (3 games), who played a lot for Sky Blue in 2010 but much less for the club last year due to World Cup duty and Branam’s play. Bardsley is likely to be in London with the one-off Great Britain team; would she want to spend part of the season in the USA? (Bardsley is indeed staying overseas, as Jenna at All White Kit points out.) Sky Blue carried two more keepers last year: Erin Guthrie, who has an FC Gold Pride appearance on her resume, and Kristin Arnold.

Philadelphia: Terrific tandem last year with two-year FC Gold Pride starter and veteran U.S. backup Nicole Barnhart (9 games) and former Los Angeles backup Val Henderson (9 games). Re-signing them would be a great way to signal championship intent this year. Also on the roster last year: Robyn Jones.

That brings us to the team in question …

Atlanta: The Beat’s keepers were certainly busy last year. Allison Whitworth (11 games) had 67 saves; Ali Lipsher (7 games) had 44. Both have experience elsewhere — Whitworth with Gold Pride as Barnhart’s backup, Lipsher with a lot of starts in Boston. They also have one of the two keepers drafted in 2011, Katie Fraine.

So Atlanta could stick with the corps from last season or perhaps take a run at signing Barnhart or Henderson. But then there are all these other keepers in the mix from magicJack, some of whom might not mind signing with a WPS team this season. …

We can probably rule out Brett Maron (4 games), who played for the Beat in 2010 before Hope Solo’s arrival but has signed overseas. Shannon Myers (1 game) also did time in magicJack’s front office and was pressed into service with two goalkeepers out on World Cup duty.

That leaves three big-time goalkeepers, though we don’t know how much interest they’ll have in WPS:

– Jill Loyden (8 games): Hope Solo’s backup with magicJack (and St. Louis before that) and another contender for the U.S. roster.

– Hope Solo (4 games): With magicJack gone, can anyone lure her to play in WPS, or will she work her way back into Olympic shape in residency?

– Erin McLeod (not in WPS): Canadian starter ditched magicJack to go overseas. Would she come back?

We’re dealing with a lot of moving pieces here. But given the talent that’s available, it’s hard to imagine any WPS team going into the draft with the intent of starting a rookie goalkeeper all season.

Chris sees Atlanta passing on Henninger to make the glitzier pick of U.S. national camp-dweller Sydney Leroux. Then Sky Blue could pick Henninger out of the No. 2 spot. That might be for the best all around. Henninger can sub for LeBlanc during the Olympics and maybe even push her for the No. 1 spot, especially later in the season.

Now if the Beat pass up Henninger and fail to pick up Loyden, Solo, McLeod, Barnhart or Henderson, that would be a sign of trouble.

I’m guessing that some of these keepers have actually signed without having that news announced, so please check back for updates.

The U.S. Soccer board will go into a conference call this evening to discuss Topic A in the U.S. women’s soccer community: Will WPS get a waiver to continue as a Division I league with five teams?

Don’t expect any board members to chat openly before that meeting, but in the meantime, we’re getting some interesting conversation that relates at least indirectly to the concept of professional women’s soccer:

The Whitecaps’ white hat knocked off? Canadian writer Duane Rollins chatted with Vancouver Whitecaps exec Bob Lenarduzzi recently and confirmed that the Caps aren’t interested in WPS at the moment. Rollins concluded that if the Whitecaps were turning down WPS, perhaps something is wrong with WPS.

Irish-Canadian player Ciara McCormack fired back a response that made other journalists (well, me, anyway) wince in terror. She has had a couple of stints with the Whitecaps and takes issue with the notion that they’re committed to the women’s game or should be considered any sort of bellwether on WPS’s viability. (I’ve asked the club for a response and will post it as soon as I get one.)

McCormack and Rollins have continued a polite but firm discussion about his reporting. I took issue with the shots at Rollins initially (disclaimer: I know him from MLS circles), protesting that he couldn’t have known that the Whitecaps were anything other than a model women’s team that had a lot of terrific players. (One quibble: I don’t think “just a blogger” applies to Rollins. He’s a journalist. And since so much of the best reporting on women’s soccer takes place on blogs — All White Kit, Equalizer, etc. — I don’t see that as a meaningful distinction in the first place.)

But that disagreement has led us all to a larger issue, which McCormack raises: Let’s start talking openly about the conditions of the women’s game. We’ve seen a wall of silence in women’s soccer this year — players who used to be open with the media have been guarded and even cliched, and no one’s willing to talk about the astounding case of Dan Borislow.

Which leads to this curious case:

No peace in Perth: Two international players left the W-League (Australia)’s Perth Glory soon after Sydney FC beat the club 11-0, a score that has never, ever been approached in WPS play. The initial story was that Norway’s Lisa Marie Woods and New Zealand’s Emma Kete were sacked “for the benefit of overall team harmony” after some sort of incident.

Woods and Kete released a joint statement acknowledging that they had a heated argument in their shared living quarters but denied that they had a physical altercation. And they didn’t appreciate their demeanor being questioned. The club apologized, adding this: “We acknowledge that there may be a somewhat disparity between the culture and professionalism of the W-League and what you may have been used to in Europe and that on the pitch and at training you have acted professionally and given it your all.”

How professional is Europe? From a BigSoccer discussion, I was directed to a couple of entertaining reads on how much money players are making in Europe — both in French. At this point, French soccer in particular seems to have a couple of fully professional teams and some that are nowhere near. If you’re looking for an underdog story, consider Juvisy, which leads Lyon in the current French standings despite operating on less than 10% of Lyon’s budget.

The tips came from a BigSoccer reader who goes by “Katreus,” whose Twitter feed is a recommended follow. Also from Katreus comes this shocker:

Pro women’s soccer in Los Angeles! Ali Riley, Christen Press, Rebecca Moros, Sarah Huffman, Jen Buczkowski, Tina DiMartino, Val Henderson and other WPS veterans — all on the same team? Yes indeed. This makeshift squad will apparently play Mexico and Trinidad/Tobago in friendlies in January. They also have really ambitious plans for 2012, trying to bring Sweden, Canada and Mexico to California for a December tournament.

And they apparently scrimmaged against the U.S. women’s team recently. Here’s some footage. The U.S. defense might want to watch that counterattack.

Safe to say I’m looking into this. If you have more info, please share.

The petition drive. Former Boston Breakers exec Andy Crossley isn’t impressed with the WPS petition drive or the idea that women’s soccer should be sold as a “cause.” I don’t think Andy — who has already shared plenty of WPS info in his piece on FC Gold Pride and his interviews with former Gold Pride exec Ilisa Kessler and player/journalist Tiffany Weimer — would object to me saying his piece raises more questions than answers.

One thing I’ve kicked around in my head: Many sports teams are owned out of affectations. Russian moguls lavish luxuries on women’s basketball players. Barcelona’s finances are questionable. Plenty of American sports teams lose money. And some — from Manchester City to magicJack — are essentially loss leaders for companies.

Given that, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to reach out to the Ellens and Oprahs of the world. Ellen DeGeneres has a show to advertise. Oprah has a fledgling cable network that needs to advertise. If one of them were to buy a WPS team and operate it for roughly the same money that Puma spent each of the past three years to equip WPS teams and then have stores that don’t even offer soccer gear, would that be such a bad investment?

And for many fans, petitions are all they can do. It’s not reasonable to ask someone in Seattle to buy Sky Blue season tickets. That fan can only support the league by watching games and possibly buying merchandise.

So maybe instead of U.S. Soccer requiring a season-ticket drive, it should require a merchandise drive? Get all 45,000-plus signees to buy a T-shirt?

It’s moot at this point, anyway. The call is due to start in less than an hour. We might hear nothing tonight, or U.S. Soccer could just punt a decision once again. Or the next few hours could be the most important in league history.

The reason given for the delay in WPS sanctioning was to give the league time to line up a sixth team.

That has not happened. Here’s WPS CEO Jennifer O’Sullivan:

While our discussions with expansion candidates continue to be positive, we are now at a point in time where adding a team for 2012 at this late date could put the club at a great disadvantage both in a business and competitive sense. We are moving forward in planning the 2012 season with the current field of five teams that are committed to play in the League and continuing expansion discussions for 2013.

So O’Sullivan and company have been making the case to U.S. Soccer’s Pro League Task Force that the league should be sanctioned in 2012. Not much comment about those discussions beyond this, also from O’Sullivan:

While we won’t comment in detail about our ongoing discussions with U.S. Soccer, we can say our meeting on Tuesday with U.S. Soccer regarding the sanctioning of WPS for 2012 was productive. Discussions will continue and we’re hopeful to have an opportunity next season to build upon the league’s strong momentum, both on and off the field.

Also today, U.S. women’s national team captain Christie Rampone did a Twitter chat on the U.S. Soccer WNT feed. She likes to sew, wants to be remembered as someone who led by example, treasures her fitness and prefers chemistry to biology. She did not address WPS.

Other WPS-related reads:

– GOOD suggests women’s sports should be run as a charity, not as a business. That’s an unfortunate choice of words (“degrading,” said at least one sane person on Twitter), but the notion of subsidizing a sport isn’t unusual. It’s done in other sports all the time, but it’s usually a bit more subtle than saying “charity.” (For a contrasting view, see the espnW piece that former WNBA president Val Ackerman wrote in October.)

– A couple of us have reported for a while that the Vancouver Whitecaps weren’t planning to leap into WPS as it currently stands. This Canadian Soccer News interview goes into more detail.