So the scrutiny on Rodman as she entered the N.W.S.L. final in November was intense. Her performance that day proved to be, by her own assessment, a disappointment. About twenty minutes after she came on, Gotham’s Rose Lavelle scored what would end up as the game’s only goal. After it was over, Rodman was visibly distraught. More than the loss seemed to be weighing on her. Her contract with the Spirit was expiring at the end of the year. She had made clear that she did not want to leave the team, but the championship was possibly her final game.
There was little doubt that Rodman could command an eight-figure salary on the open market. In fact, the D.C. Power, a team in the new Gainbridge Super League, which is seeking to challenge the N.W.S.L. as the dominant women’s league in the U.S. and has no salary cap, reportedly offered Rodman upward of a million dollars. Rich European clubs were also interested in Rodman. Players have many reasons for choosing which club to join, including geographic considerations and tactical styles. Not everyone goes with the highest bidder. But money matters, too. Constrained by the salary cap, there was no way that N.W.S.L. teams could remotely compete with those sorts of deals.
The stakes were high: if Rodman departed, not only would it fuel the growing sense that the N.W.S.L. is unable to retain top talent but it would also mean the loss of the league’s most charismatic and recognizable player. Alex Morgan is retired; Megan Rapinoe is now a podcaster. Rodman is sponsored by companies such as Adidas and Red Bull. Verizon put her in a commercial. Home Depot signed her for its “creator portal.” Dove Men built its advertising campaign for the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the men’s tournament—around her. During the annual state of the league address in November, just before the championship game, the N.W.S.L.’s commissioner, Jessica Berman, said that the league would “fight” to keep Rodman. But she also defended the need for a salary cap to maintain balance and encourage owners to continue to invest.
Then, in early December, the Spirit reportedly presented Rodman with a contract that would average out to more than a million dollars—back-loaded so that most of the money would be paid after the N.W.S.L. negotiated a new television deal, which should lead to a rise in the salary cap. But the league office—which played a role in contract negotiations because, technically, players sign with the league, which operates as a single entity, and not directly with individual teams—rejected the deal, calling it not within the “spirit” of the salary cap. The logic was that Spirit had projected the league would grow at a rate that the league itself found unreasonable, and so would not be able to field a team while also paying Rodman. The Spirit could point to a mechanism where it could buy out the remainder of the contract if it turned out to be infeasible, but that didn’t sway the commissioner. In effect, the league was betting against a high projection of its own success.
The commissioner’s office did little to elaborate on the decision. “Our goal is to ensure that the very best players in the world, including Trinity, continue to call this league home,” a spokesman for Berman told me in an e-mailed statement. “We will do everything we can, utilizing every lever available within our rules to keep Trinity Rodman here.” Except that it wasn’t clear which rules, if any, the Spirit was breaking. The N.W.S.L. Players Association immediately filed a grievance, saying that the league had interfered with Rodman’s free-agency rights—and so, potentially, every player’s rights. “Not a single person” pointed to a rule that had actually been violated by the proposed contract, the N.W.S.L.P.A.’s head, Meghann Burke, told me. Whether or not a contract was a wise contract was a question best left for individual teams and players to decide, she argued. It was, she added, “really difficult for me to understand other than the league wants control.”
In mid-December, ESPN reported that the owners were crafting a new rule to create an exception to the salary cap for “High Impact Players”—not limited to Rodman but obviously built around her profile. Near the end of the month, the rule was officially enacted by the N.W.S.L., over the union’s objections. It allows for teams to use up to a million dollars to sign players who meet certain criteria, including the amount of minutes played on a national team, being recognized as an N.W.S.L. M.V.P. finalist in one of the two previous seasons, or being named to one of a number of lists, such as the top thirty in the Ballon d’Or, the top forty of the Guardian Top 100 football players, or the top forty of the ESPN FC Top 50 players in the two years prior. One of the lists—the SportsPro Media Top 150 Most Marketable Athletes—had no measure of sporting value.
“There is not a single player I’ve heard of who supports this rule,” Burke told me. Some of the lists were famously Eurocentric. African players—who include some of the N.W.S.L.’s best—were less likely to be eligible for the funds. And the inclusion of marketability criteria created incentives that could better fit a social-media influencer than an élite athlete. The union’s proposal was to increase the over-all salary cap by a million dollars, and to give individual teams the right to use the funds as they saw fit, rather than dictate how the money could be spent. The C.B.A., in fact, allowed for the cap to be lifted in consultation with the N.W.S.L.P.A. at any time.
Louisa Thomas
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