Instead of taking these in order as laid out by the Bylaws, we’re going to look at them from simples to most complex.

4. Each past President of the Federation. Including Sunil Gulati, there are only three living past Presidents: Alan Rothenberg & Bob Contigulia are the other two.

Whew…okay, not too bad. Let’s try another.

3. Each voting member of the board. We can do this one too. They conveniently have this listed on the website. But for those too lazy to click, they are:

Okay, we’re rolling.

5. each Life Member (not to exceed 12). What 302 (a) 5 also says is that in if

there are more than twelve (12) Life Members, then each Life Member’s vote shall equal the fraction of twelve (12) divided by the number of Life Members at that meeting, rounded off to two (2) decimal places. So these people’s votes can be diluted if more vote, however, the website also gives us a convenient list of Life Members.

So…not too bad, we’re a third of the way there and we know so far we have:

2 past Presidents

15 voting board members

and up to 12 life members.

Okay, so our total stands at 29. But already a problem is revealing itself about the governance of the organization. Of those 29 votes, at MOST 7 could be cast by women. And that’s assuming that only 9 other Life Members voted, otherwise the representation would be less.

The Fed has a gender problem. It doesn’t want to admit it. The US Women’s National Team’s success has been good political cover and we are further along than almost any other nation in terms of the development of our women’s program. But the under representation of diverse interests does not serve the best and broad interests of soccer. And just so we’re clear, the powers that be are aware of the problem and seeks to subtly put some weight on the scale because without the August 25th press release announcing a unanimous appointment of Lisa Carnoy, that number would be 6/29 or 20.68% of the senior leadership in soccer in this country.

“Oh, but Anthony, you’re cherry-picking those three categories, the National Council is more representative.” Well, is it? Let’s go deeper.

9. Let’s knock this one out, because where I have advocated for a broad membership base, this is the throwing the support and the commercial engine of US Soccer a bone, the Delegate(s) selected by Individual Sustaining Members. This is relatively new to the US Soccer, having been adopted at the 2017 AGM. It was re-announced in a Press Release in August. Anyway, for the most part it is an insignificant token of 1 to 6 delegates for “supporters” based on this breakdown (Bylaw 232, Section 3):

This is the first question for the Federation and the Credential Committee, how many members are there and in how many states?

We’re going to tackle 7. & 8. together. These are the Commissioners of the Youth and Adult Councils. In more depth it says,

(7) the Commissioners of the Adult Council’s Administrative Commission shall be delegates and also entitled to vote in the Adult Council.

(8) the Commissioners of the Youth Council’s Administrative Commission shall be delegates and also entitled to vote in the Youth Council.

This takes us to Bylaws 312 and 313. And in short it tells us there are 8 youth and 8 adult commissioners who have votes:

John Motta and company have done a good job of identifying their gang of 8. The four youth organizations and US Soccer do not identify the commissioners on the Youth Council page of the US Soccer Website.

Question #2: Who are the representatives on the youth council? How many (if any) are women?

Either way, our number of national council delegates goes to 51. Of which I know 7 are women.

6. Oops, and this one is also pretty straight forward and part of the minority, delegates from each National Association, National Affiliate, Other Affiliate, Indoor Professional League, Disabled Service Organization and Associate. On the US Soccer website, they list 8 affiliate members. Even though they represent interests and groups of varing sizes, including United Soccer Coaches’ 30,000+ members, they are, like the Fan Council mostly irrelevant in this process.

The Affiliates of US Soccer are: American Amputee Soccer Association, United States Armed Forces Sports Council, U.S. Futsal, United States Power Soccer (USPSA), U.S. Soccer Foundation, United States Specialty Sports Association — Soccer, United States of America Deaf Soccer Association and United Soccer Coaches.