Today’s espnW story hints at the direction the WPS-Borislow legal proceedings will take in the wake of league’s decision to suspend the 2012 season.

A key issue: Would U.S. Soccer allow exhibition games between a magicJack exhibition team and WPS teams? WPS says definitely not. Borislow’s legal team says it wasn’t cut and dried, and in any case, the court transcripts show that the deal wasn’t even dependent on that.

Look at these court transcripts and decide for yourself. First up, the court hearing that was supposed to be a four-hour session on “irreparable harm” but instead became the announcement of the deal:

Then the telephone conversation between the parties and the judge:

I’d love to hear everyone’s comments.

The other news today: Abby Wambach appeared at a celebration in Kansas City, and ESPN’s Mechelle Voepel was there to get a word with her. The quote getting the most attention:

The truth is that the responsibility is all of ours. Nothing rises or fails with one person. We all need to step back, look at ourselves, and take responsibility for all of the things. Nobody is talking about the amazing things Dan did and how he treated his players. Everybody focuses all the attention on the negative. And that’s not how we’re going to get the WPS back and running. You can’t build something great on negativity. It has to be in a positive manner.

That’s not going to calm magicJack critics, who think players were so content with their salaries and creature comforts that they turned a blind eye to the issues raised by the league, the union, Ella Masar and others. And when you have WPS founders like Peter Wilt saying the whole thing needs to be scaled way back, you have to wonder how many other investors would be willing or able to step forward and match the “amazing things” Wambach’s describing.

But Wambach has also called for people to lose the egos and get past the issues that have come between them. Judge Sasser could very well order people to do that next week. We’ll see how that goes. And as one lawyer says in the transcripts, the devil is in the details.

On Jan. 18, I reported the following:

Women’s Professional Soccer averted another court date with magicJack owner Dan Borislow on Wednesday, reaching a deal that allows his team to play an exhibition schedule in 2012 and 2013. Borislow said he has put his temporary injunction suit on hold; the suit was intended to stop the termination of his franchise.

The details of the deal need to be finalized and the plan must be approved by U.S. Soccer.

The Deal was first reported by a mysterious Twitter person who has since deleted the tweets. But it was Borislow who was most enthusiastic about it, though our mysterious eyewitness told the world that “Fitz, O’Sullivan all seemed happy.” (That would be Atlanta Beat owner/WPS board chairman T. Fitz Johnson and WPS CEO Jennifer O’Sullivan, of course.)

News of The Deal even reached Deadspin, thanks to the fabulous (and since-departed) Emma Carmichael, with the classic headline “The Banned Boca Raton Women’s Professional Soccer Team Will Keep Playing In Zombie Form.”

And yet WPS, for its part, never publicly acknowledged such The Deal. The league didn’t acknowledge much of anything.

You may have heard this week that the news has turned a little sour.

In Monday’s conference call about WPS suspending its 2012 season, O’Sullivan addressed The Deal: “What the ownership and league have been struggling to do is put the focus back on the players and this game. We were willing to consider that as an option in order to accomplish that goal.”

This morning, we learned from Beat beat writer William Bretherton that WPS owners were downplaying The Deal. And Johnson thought info about The Deal “was put out when it shouldn’t have been.”

That, of course, is the unfortunate part about going to court. If you’re read all the legal docs that I’ve put out through this site and espnW, you’ll see a lot of things that both parties might not want the public perusing. And The Deal can’t be kept secret when it’s being discussed in a public court hearing. As I said to our mysterious Twitter witness, “FINALLY! The deal is public!!!”

The details, though, were not described in public. And William quotes Philly owner David Halstead as saying WPS and Borislow were on different wavelengths.

Want to know what Dan Borislow has to say about The Deal? Let’s check the motion his legal team filed Monday:

The first paragraph complains that WPS is blaming Borislow for the suspension of the season and, for reasons that aren’t clear to me, boasting that Borislow was likely to win his case. The second paragraph says there’s no point in having a Feb. 1 hearing on an injunction if the 2012 season doesn’t exist, suggesting that the parties meet by telephone instead. (That meeting has apparently taken place.)

Then it gets interesting (emphasis mine):

Further, as the parties reported to the Court at the January 16, 2012 hearing, the parties have already reached a complete settlement of this case on agreed terms, certain of which were read into the record. Notwithstanding the latest announcement by Defendant, it continues to be Plaintiffs’ position that this is a settled matter. The only open issue, that is, U.S. Soccer Federation approval, remains pending, and Defendant has a continuing duty to cooperate in good faith in such efforts. It now, however, appears that defendant is attempting to renege on the settlement.

And then the fourth paragraph says, “Hey, we still have a deal.”

So what have they agreed to do, and what might Judge Sasser — who has already ruled against WPS even on issues that seemed to be cut and dried such as jurisdiction of this case — compel WPS to do?

I’ve written a check to the State of Florida and filled out a request form to get audio recordings of the Jan. 16 hearing and the telephone hearing. It might take a few days, but I’ll let you know.

Dan Borislow won part of his case in Florida, with the court saying WPS improperly terminated his magicJack team while reserving judgment on “irreparable harm” and other issues of the case. A hearing on Jan. 18 will address the rest. (Skip toward the full circuit court ruling if you like.)

This evening, WPS released a statement from CEO Jennifer O’Sullivan:

“We are extremely disappointed with the court’s findings and will consider our legal options.  Mr. Borislow’s abusive behavior and blatant disregard for League rules were a clear breach of contract and led to the Boards’ dismissal of magicJack as a franchise. His statements and actions negatively impacted the league’s business including efforts to attract expansion teams and sponsors, jeopardized player safety and threatened the very integrity of the League.

“WPS owners took several measures to rectify the situation before making the difficult decision to dismiss Mr. Borislow from the League. If the court rules to reinstate the franchise, my fear is that ownership will seriously consider folding the League, thus ending professional soccer for women in the United States.”

No one else has commented today (not to my knowledge, at least — please let me know otherwise), but in checking with several teams, it appears Friday’s draft is still set to go on as scheduled.

The WPS saga is starting to creep out beyond the women’s soccer media into some other outlets:

• The Soccer America headline “History isn’t on WPS’s side” doesn’t quite tell you what’s in Paul Kennedy’s analysis. History isn’t on WPS’s side in the sense that World Cup booms typically don’t last. (Not mentioned here: That’s also true in men’s soccer. Or any Olympic sport, frankly.) Kennedy states two points well worth remembering. First, WPS doesn’t have its Anschutz or its Hunt, someone with extraordinarily deep pockets who has demonstrated that he’ll stick it out no matter what. (Little wonder the Twittersphere reaches out to Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey or, more curiously, Rachel Maddow. Being on TV doesn’t make you a megamillionaire, folks.) Second, if WPS fails, it’s likely to be a long time before we see another Division I league. We’ll get back to this point.
• The head of women’s soccer for FIFA, Tatjana Haenni, hopes WPS survives. That’s not the most interesting part of this AP story. Check out Eniola Aluko, saying she was fortunate to play for a big salary in the league’s first year and that it should’ve been more conservative from the get-go.
• Venerable soccer writer Frank Dell’Apa summarizes the story for Boston.com. The suggestion that WPS terminated magicJack “mistakenly having been assured a replacement had been lined up in Connecticut” is interesting. I’d like to find out more about that. Surely the league would deny it, and in any case, they seem to have reached their breaking point with Dan Borislow no matter how many teams they had.
• Player signings! Anita Asante and Carolyn Blank will stick with Sky Blue.
• Fox Sports Southwest pounces on Megan Rapinoe’s Tweet to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, imploring him to buy a team. Cuban’s HDNet once broadcast MLS. But the reality check here is that it would be awfully difficult to start from scratch and start a team.

Plenty of people have been asking to see the exhibits. Careful what you wish for. See the whole thing at Scribd. Some language NSFW.

Links to the individual documents follow (since I can’t get the Scribd widget to embed here) …

Previously linked here:

• Borislow complaint
• WPS response to motion
• Borislow motion
• WPS motion to dismiss

Borislow’s exhibits

• Exhibit A: WPS LLC agreement
• Exhibit B: WPS agreement with teams
• Exhibit C: Sun-Sentinel feature on Wambach
• Exhibit D: Letter from WPS attorney Pamela Fulmer on summer dispute
• Exhibit E: Follow-up letter from Fulmer
• Exhibit F: espnW story on new CEO Jennifer O’Sullivan
• Exhibit G: One page of an invoice. WPS disputes that it sought $2.5 million from Borislow. There’s no context in this invoice, so it’s very difficult to tell what’s being sought.
• Exhibit H: Letter from Borislow attorney Louis Ederer on “purported termination”
• Exhibit I: Response from Fulmer to Ederer
• Exhibit J: Palm Beach Post story on termination
• Exhibit K: Palm Beach Post story from summer

WPS exhibits

• Exhibits 1-15: BoingBoing story on Borislow’s suit against their site, email exchanges over sponsor signage, email from Briana Scurry, and a couple of insulting emails.
• Exhibits 16-28: League notice of several violations from first magicJack home games and from public comments.
• Exhibits 29-40: Atlanta Beat protest, email exchange over whether Borislow contacted bench during suspension, union grievance.
• Exhibits 41-62: All about the termination.

And that’s all for now.