The biggest thrill in South Florida this summer isnt the Florida Marlins or the golf tournaments or the politicians passing through.
Its a team the top womens soccer league in the world, the WPS, fields in Boca Raton, on an always packed-out pitch at Florida Atlantic University.
Its a team with a breathtaking roster of players, unconventionally called magicJack. And it offers South Florida a look at genuine national sports stars who captured the imagination of millions of Americans in the Womens World Cup played in Germany earlier in the season.
Tweeted retired TV talk show host Larry King, If I still had a show, the magicJack would all be on it.
Miami Heat superstar LeBron James was reported as saying in a recent interview, I call the magicJack a symphony on grass.
But too many Floridians north of the Palm Beaches are unaware that women's soccer royalty lives and plays magnificently in the Sunshine State. And the ones who are aware know the magicJack exist only because of the less-than-flattering headlines in sports pages and in blog posts -- through no fault of the players.
This is a team -- including seven U.S. National Team players -- that must feel as if its communal, professional life has been stirred with a spoon.
At the start of 2011, these players were all members of the Washington Freedom. They played just outside the nation's capital in Maryland. But the financial troubles that had churned in the background during the middle of the previous season came to the front during the offseason. The longtime team owners backed out, saying 10 years is long enough to prop up the club. With a number of teams having trouble making offseason payments, the league was under threat of folding.
Enter, the enigmatic Dan Borislow.
Borislow, owner of the phone service magicJack, jumped in to buy the Freedom. He said he was going to make sweeping changes to keep the team afloat, and sure enough, that's exactly what he did -- including changing the team name (first to magicTalk, then to the name of the VOIP phone network that made him a multimillionaire) and moving the franchise to Boca Raton.
Boristow is widely considered as the league's 2011 savior. But he is also considered among its most dysfunctional, go-it-alone owners -- a brash and antagonistic businessman.
"He likes to get people talking," said former magicJack general manager and National Team goalkeeper Briana Scurry.
Another former member of the organization, speaking to Sunshine State News on condition of anonymity, has his own description of the boss: "Loose cannon? Dan is so loose he should come with a power drill."
With three weeks to go before the May season opener, Borislow hadn't hired a front-office staff, hadn't released a team roster or rebranded the club at the WPS website where it remained Washington Freedom and hadn't decided on a magicJack uniform design. Ultimately, Scurry resigned, team coach Mike Lyons was "quietly reassigned" and the river of uncertainty developed an ever-stronger rushing current.
Nevertheless, Katrina McCormack, Florida Atlantic University's head of athletics and media relations, told Sunshine State News on Wednesday, "We have a different perspective. We love Dan Borislow."
Borislow, she said, bought the team because his daughter "loves soccer so much, she's involved in a youth soccer league and he wants to encourage girls who love to play. He's doing all this for her and for them."
McCormack said Borislow came to FAU with an idea. "He wanted to put his team on our field in exchange for all the ticket proceeds and money from local advertising. Of course, he didn't think in his wildest dreams that we would be crammed and selling out week after week. But our women's soccer coach knew."
Coach Brian Dooley, she said, considered that nearly half of the magicJack team would be going to Germany for the Women's World Cup. He knew the exposure the players would get. He knew the big world event would stimulate interest back home. And so it did. FAU confirmed that less than 24 hours after the World Cup ended, the team had received an unprecedented level of calls for tickets and sold some 250 group tickets just like that.
Consider a sellout crowd of more than 2,000, and an average ticket price of nearly $14. "Brian Dooley knew what he was doing," McCormack said.
But, while FAU athletics prospered mightily, while players like Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Shannon Boxx and Christie Rampone spent hours in the community -- signing autographs, coaching youth players, serving as ambassadors of the game, while FAU was elevating the caliber of its athletics programs --Borislow was finding ways to antagonize the league over "noncompliance with league rules."
The WPS ultimately moved from giving the magicJack owner a warning to handing him a fine; from taking away a draft pick to taking away a point in the standings.
Other problems between the league office and Borislow -- with players in the middle -- included lack of sponsor signage, lack of media access in postgame interviews, failure to upload the game video for scouting and statistics, and failure to play in a stadium that seats at least 5,000 (capacity at FAU's magicJack Field is just less than 2,000, with a little more standing-room-only space available).
But the old model wasn't working, the league was dying, Borislow has said. By keeping expenses to a minimum, he can pay players no matter what. They can -- and do -- live in a luxury condominium at his expense. And he claims they love South Florida and are happy enough with Wambach doubling as a player and coach.
"The stadium the women play on now is small, yes," said McCormack. "There aren't enough seats. But everybody loves playing on real grass, they talk about it all the time. And in October, we open our 30,000-seat stadium, the magicJack will play there and we can bring in as many fans as we can find.
"The magicJack and Dan Borislow have shed a whole new light on soccer in South Florida," she said, "and a whole new appreciation for Florida Atlantic and its programs. From where I sit, Dan is a hero."
The magicJack, incidentally, won the first round in the WPS playoffs Wednesday night, defeating the Boston Beakers in Boca Raton, 3-1. They play the next round, the semifinal in this six-team league, on Saturday in Philadelphia, against the Independence. Catch the televised game at 4 p.m. on FOX Sports.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
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