Women’s Sports Continue to Crest In 1970, 1 in 27 girls played on high school teams-less than 4 percent. By 2002, it was 33.5 percent. The reason was simple : Title IX. And the Title IX generation is coming of age, with marketing implications that we will examine throughout the book. To be sure, there have been stumbles at the big-time level, most notably the failure of women’s professional soccer-the WUSA. Begun in 2001 on the success of the 1999 World Cup, the WUSA was out of business by late 2003. Analysts blamed the demise on a lack of financial controls, poor media strategy (including the decision to spurn a TV deal with TNT in favor of one with the Pax network), and an overreliance on “soccer moms” as the target audience. As one consultant said, “For Gen-X moms, the whole “soccer moms” concept is dead” (14)