You may wring your hands, furrow your brows or just kick the cat over the collapse of the Women's United Soccer Association.

	Brandi Chastain piqued the country's interest in women's soccer, but the WUSA failed to keep the excitement coming.

Or you can take it as the valuable lessons it provides.

One, $90 million doesn't go quite as far as it used to.

And two, not paying attention to the successful leagues guarantees doom.

The first point is self-explanatory. The second, though, you may wonder about. The women who played and worked for their league appeared at a thousand clinics, signed a million autographs, glad-handed every chance they got and were so media accessible that you almost had to call the cops to get them to move along.

What they didn't do, though, was offend. They didn't take proscribed drugs, the way track athletes do. They didn't take illegal stuff or have people do their schoolwork for them, the way college athletes do. They didn't fight each other, the way the NASCAR drivers do. They didn't complain about the officiating, the way the baseball players do. They didn't sue their host cities, the way some football teams do. They never went out on strike, they never got caught beating up civilians in nightclubs, pushing their spouses down flights of stairs, lying about other players' drug involvement ... none of it.

Well, then, if you're not even going to try to market your sport, how can we expect to be surprised when you curl up and go room temperature on us?

It is clear to anyone with a fifth-grade reading level and Internet access that modern American sports is one scandal layered atop another in a hideous mountain of amoral venality.

It is equally evident that people are still going to the games, watching them on television, and complaining about them to radio versions of the agony aunt.

And while all this was going on, WUSA was putting on games, building a sport and trying to inspire young women into becoming young women athletes.

Now where's the entertainment in that?

You can rail all you want about the lost opportunities for young women, the re-deflation of the American soccer movement, and even the dreadful timing of whacking the league five days before the Women's World Cup -- you know, dying in the same hospital where you were born, and all that.

But what killed the league, other than the economy, was Mia Hamm's defiant refusal to punch Brandi Chastain in the chops after a game for cutting her off at midfield.

What killed the league was Shannon MacMillan not copping a plea on an exaggerated theft charge.

What killed the league was Julie Foudy not holding out for a 700 percent raise every year.

What killed the league was Pretinha not testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

No crimes. No misdemeanors. No loud arguments. No face tattoos or ridiculous interviews with Greta van Susteren. Only one franchise relocation. Marketing experts everywhere wept. You know what the WUSA gave a celebrity-hungry world? Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra.

Please. It was "Little House On The Prairie" in a "Jackass" world, nothing is punished more surely than being tone-deaf.

Now this isn't to say that there might not have been some treacherous miscreants in the WUSA. There might have been some shady behavior, some overly aggressive play, maybe even some outright cheating.

But you can't sweep that stuff under the rug. You have to trumpet it. You have to sing out your indiscretions to an allegedly disgusted but actually fascinated world.

Of course, you have to deny it, and then blame others for what happened, and you always need to be willing to throw an extra lawyer or two on the bonfire to keep it stoked. But you have to get the word out: "Watch Us: We're Just As Creepy as Everybody Else."

In a more noble world, one could applaud the players for their dignity and devotion to climbing a barbed-wire mountain in difficult economic times. One could admire their perseverance even as the average salary was reduced by more than 25 percent. One could say a lot of things about how well they represented themselves.

But they're still out of business because they thought that the high road was its own reward, and the sport could stand on its own with some careful care, feeding and positive uplifting promotion.

They'd have been better off with an exploding ball and a tire fire in the parking lot before every match.

Oh well. Live and learn. Maybe U.S. coach April Heinrichs will get arrested after the World Cup for taking the five-fingered discount at a souvenir stand.

You know, for the good of the game.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com