The U.S. Soccer board will go into a conference call this evening to discuss Topic A in the U.S. women’s soccer community: Will WPS get a waiver to continue as a Division I league with five teams?

Don’t expect any board members to chat openly before that meeting, but in the meantime, we’re getting some interesting conversation that relates at least indirectly to the concept of professional women’s soccer:

The Whitecaps’ white hat knocked off? Canadian writer Duane Rollins chatted with Vancouver Whitecaps exec Bob Lenarduzzi recently and confirmed that the Caps aren’t interested in WPS at the moment. Rollins concluded that if the Whitecaps were turning down WPS, perhaps something is wrong with WPS.

Irish-Canadian player Ciara McCormack fired back a response that made other journalists (well, me, anyway) wince in terror. She has had a couple of stints with the Whitecaps and takes issue with the notion that they’re committed to the women’s game or should be considered any sort of bellwether on WPS’s viability. (I’ve asked the club for a response and will post it as soon as I get one.)

McCormack and Rollins have continued a polite but firm discussion about his reporting. I took issue with the shots at Rollins initially (disclaimer: I know him from MLS circles), protesting that he couldn’t have known that the Whitecaps were anything other than a model women’s team that had a lot of terrific players. (One quibble: I don’t think “just a blogger” applies to Rollins. He’s a journalist. And since so much of the best reporting on women’s soccer takes place on blogs — All White Kit, Equalizer, etc. — I don’t see that as a meaningful distinction in the first place.)

But that disagreement has led us all to a larger issue, which McCormack raises: Let’s start talking openly about the conditions of the women’s game. We’ve seen a wall of silence in women’s soccer this year — players who used to be open with the media have been guarded and even cliched, and no one’s willing to talk about the astounding case of Dan Borislow.

Which leads to this curious case:

No peace in Perth: Two international players left the W-League (Australia)’s Perth Glory soon after Sydney FC beat the club 11-0, a score that has never, ever been approached in WPS play. The initial story was that Norway’s Lisa Marie Woods and New Zealand’s Emma Kete were sacked “for the benefit of overall team harmony” after some sort of incident.

Woods and Kete released a joint statement acknowledging that they had a heated argument in their shared living quarters but denied that they had a physical altercation. And they didn’t appreciate their demeanor being questioned. The club apologized, adding this: “We acknowledge that there may be a somewhat disparity between the culture and professionalism of the W-League and what you may have been used to in Europe and that on the pitch and at training you have acted professionally and given it your all.”

How professional is Europe? From a BigSoccer discussion, I was directed to a couple of entertaining reads on how much money players are making in Europe — both in French. At this point, French soccer in particular seems to have a couple of fully professional teams and some that are nowhere near. If you’re looking for an underdog story, consider Juvisy, which leads Lyon in the current French standings despite operating on less than 10% of Lyon’s budget.

The tips came from a BigSoccer reader who goes by “Katreus,” whose Twitter feed is a recommended follow. Also from Katreus comes this shocker:

Pro women’s soccer in Los Angeles! Ali Riley, Christen Press, Rebecca Moros, Sarah Huffman, Jen Buczkowski, Tina DiMartino, Val Henderson and other WPS veterans — all on the same team? Yes indeed. This makeshift squad will apparently play Mexico and Trinidad/Tobago in friendlies in January. They also have really ambitious plans for 2012, trying to bring Sweden, Canada and Mexico to California for a December tournament.

And they apparently scrimmaged against the U.S. women’s team recently. Here’s some footage. The U.S. defense might want to watch that counterattack.

Safe to say I’m looking into this. If you have more info, please share.

The petition drive. Former Boston Breakers exec Andy Crossley isn’t impressed with the WPS petition drive or the idea that women’s soccer should be sold as a “cause.” I don’t think Andy — who has already shared plenty of WPS info in his piece on FC Gold Pride and his interviews with former Gold Pride exec Ilisa Kessler and player/journalist Tiffany Weimer — would object to me saying his piece raises more questions than answers.

One thing I’ve kicked around in my head: Many sports teams are owned out of affectations. Russian moguls lavish luxuries on women’s basketball players. Barcelona’s finances are questionable. Plenty of American sports teams lose money. And some — from Manchester City to magicJack — are essentially loss leaders for companies.

Given that, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to reach out to the Ellens and Oprahs of the world. Ellen DeGeneres has a show to advertise. Oprah has a fledgling cable network that needs to advertise. If one of them were to buy a WPS team and operate it for roughly the same money that Puma spent each of the past three years to equip WPS teams and then have stores that don’t even offer soccer gear, would that be such a bad investment?

And for many fans, petitions are all they can do. It’s not reasonable to ask someone in Seattle to buy Sky Blue season tickets. That fan can only support the league by watching games and possibly buying merchandise.

So maybe instead of U.S. Soccer requiring a season-ticket drive, it should require a merchandise drive? Get all 45,000-plus signees to buy a T-shirt?

It’s moot at this point, anyway. The call is due to start in less than an hour. We might hear nothing tonight, or U.S. Soccer could just punt a decision once again. Or the next few hours could be the most important in league history.