1.   Although female athletes now have their own professional leagues, there is still some debate over whether subjective matters like greatest should be segregated by sex.

2.   And if it is lost, it would give the NBA the unenviable honor of being the first professional league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.

3.   And unlike most other professional leagues, Major League Soccer pays salaries that real people can relate to.

4.   Besides the strong professional leagues in Japan and South America, Italy has professional leagues sprouting up, as do down-under nations Australia and New Zealand.

5.   Big-media companies are aligning their resources with professional leagues, and baseball was one of the last holdouts.

6.   A championship run for the U.S. women could mean the birth of a North American professional league.

7.   A new professional league does not pay enough to keep the best Russian players home, which makes national team commitments more difficult to keep.

8.   A professional league supposedly linked to Cup was embarrassingly delayed by at least a year.

9.   After an adulthood without an opportunity to play in a major professional league in the United States, Woodard is going pro.

10.   After two more seasons, he moved on to the Venezuelan professional league and joined league champion Marinos De Oriente.