College Soccer Should Change, But Probably Won't
Would Michigan alum Justin Meram have been farther along in his development if he'd found a way to skip college entirely? Probably.
NCAA soccer coaches are proposing a radical restructuring of the way their sport works:
Top college soccer coaches are finalizing plans and canvassing support for changes that would extend the men’s season over the full academic year.
The proposals recommend a 25-game season split between the fall and spring semesters. Individual conference championships would be held early in May with the showpiece NCAA College Cup following in early June.
Proponents of the switch point to two significant benefits for student athletes – improved conditions to aid their development as players, and a lighter fall timetable allowing for greater participation in other facets of university life.
The motivation here is to exist at some point that makes sense—last year's championship game was played on December 15th. Champion Notre Dame played 27 games in a 4 month stretch. There were a ton of midweek games that were problematic for kids trying to go to class. Then as soon as the season was over ND coaches were limited to two hours of ball-work with their players for the rest of the year.
Those restrictions look ludicrous in the context of the global soccer development process, where the years from 18 to 22 are absolutely critical. A ton of players are getting first team playing time in fully professional environments by then, training year-round. Increasingly, top players are skipping college entirely in favor of youth contracts overseas. But there's only so many of those and only so many Generation Adidas contracts to go around. The middle tier is still in school, but for briefer periods.
If NCAA soccer is going to remain relevant at all it'll have to adapt, and there is an obvious success story they could seek to replicate: hockey. Both hockey and soccer are developing players in competition with development strategies (mostly) outside the country in a sport that you can break into the major leagues at 18, or even earlier. (Baseball is somewhat similar, but the nature of the game means you play older and there's no "we do it better" foreign option.) Hockey has one nemesis; soccer has a thousand.
Hockey competes directly with the CHL, and large parts of what make it weird in the context of the NCAA are seemingly because of it. Hockey has by far the longest playing season of any NCAA sport, which allows extensive coaching from October to April. Most others are crammed into a single semester—or one semester and a small part of another—even if that makes zero sense. Hi, February baseball.
Hockey also takes a number of older student athletes; it is common for middling teams to have guys who arrived in college as 20 year olds. While these guys are usually not NHL prospects themselves, they provide a challenge for the guys who are. The long season with plenty of skill work and challenging environment leads to a situation where NCAA players are actually better-equipped to enter the pro ranks than their competition. Don Cherry's mad about it, even.
college hockey is even producing Canadian Olympians like undrafted(!) Chris Kunitz
This system hasn't made the NCAA the #1 choice for first-round picks, who generally don't care to play school. It has created an environment where 30% of the NHL comes from college—an all-time record—and the generally college-oriented USA hockey program is a major contender. And it hasn't impacted success in school at all: hockey's academic progress rate of 971 is way above baseball, basketball, football… and soccer.
The Catch
The NCAA has responded to the resounding success of the hockey model by occasionally trying to strangle it. Every few years there's chatter about, and the odd proposal to, reduce the length of the season. Hockey often has to scramble to carve out exceptions to NCAA legislation that makes no sense for them. It ends up being tough for hockey to pass things that make sense for their specific contact, like the ability to officially contact players before the CHL drafts them. That was on the table; it got shot down despite having the support of everyone in the hockey community.
Hockey started off long and snuck an extra week here and there to get to its current state. They've reached a compromise between professional development and degree acquirement only because the NCAA didn't notice they were doing the former.
Soccer trying to reconfigure itself all in one go is going to run into the usual pile of NCAA crap.
This is a reasonable and well-considered plan to improve college soccer’s ability to compete for talent and remain a valuable, even unique part of the American soccer development structure. It also has virtually zero chance of ever being enacted.
That's John Infante, former compliance officer and expert on the arcanity of the NCAA. The reason? The NCAA desires to knit some more of the emperor's new clothes.
…the last items on any agenda is adding games, in-season time, and hours to any sport’s schedule. Instead, it is more likely that all sports see in-season hours cut, voluntary workouts restricted, and significant student-athlete discretionary time added. College sports seems prepared to move rapidly away from an environment where soccer could even experiment with being a year-round sport, especially where the breaks are timed so that the best players can use them to go play more soccer.
In an effort to keep everything "amateur," the NCAA is willing to toss away proposals that promise to create something newly useful, and may even go so far as to further sabotage an already wonky development model. The idea that developing a player to go pro in something other than "something other than sports" is a problem. Even if there is a clear analogue that has succeeded as both a developer of talent and an NCAA sport.
Maybe autonomy can do something about it. At some point everyone and their network is going to look at the cavernous gulf in their programming that stretches from April to August and try to fill it with baseball, soccer, or both. Maybe lacrosse. Anything that looks like a potential spectator sport in the summer is going to appeal to the people with money, and since they're on the verge of running things for real instead of just mostly for real, you could see a compromise.
But as long as the NCAA is trying to pretend they're something they no longer are, sense will not be made.
Autonomy gives me some hope that things will be sane one day
but another part of me feels that they'll put in a seemingly similar government of old people except that instead of crushing everyone's dreams like the NCAA, this new body will spend all of their time figuring out how universities can squeeze every last cent out of their athletic departments.
(1) Soccer sort of gets "lost" in the fall --- competing against the 100000 pound gorilla of college football. Only 2 SEC schools (South Carolina & Kentucky) even sponsor men's soccer. The Big XII doesn't sponsor Men's soccer either. Texas doesn't play it! There would still be the Title IX hurdles to clear, of course, but this would clearly give the sport more visiblity.
(2) I read that 15 of the 23 members of the US 2010 Men's National team played college soccer. Not sure on the 2014 numbers.
(3) The NCAA finals every December --- rarely are they well-attended (the exceptions tending to be when they're hosted in places like Los Angeles or Santa Barbara, where weather is not often a worry). A May final would clearly be more fan-friendly than a December final.
Only 11 of 23 on the 2014 played college soccer. I would disagree that college soccer is a future breeding ground.
The best players are always going to sign homegrown deals with MLS or go abroad and for the very elite talent that's the best route. And as MLS teams start to all have their own USL pro teams that will help their players get games as opposed go sitting on the bench. But there are going to be a whole host of players who aren't ready for that and can use the development they could get in college soccer. Since it already exists why not take advantage of if and improve it. The more players who can get good development opportunities, the better US Soccer is going to be. Our major advantage over other countries is our population, this will help us to start to take advantage of it.
If those changes and other changes are made, I can see college soccer maintaining their area in the landscape of US Soccer.
If no changes are made, I'm afraid that college soccer will become irrelevant when it comes to developing talent.
Like you said the best players sign early contracts to MLS/European academies. College soccer will just become a way for players with no chance at a professional contract to earn a free education.
Unless they DO make changes, 22 is WAYYYYY too old to start your career as a soccer player. As the US continues to get better and gain more respect internationally (and even as MLS gets better), you will see fewer and fewer college players on future US World Cup rosters (other than maybe some goalkeepers who have much longer professional careers -- see Brad-I should have let the Make-a-Wish kid score-Friedel). College soccer's unlimited subs and countdown clock are things that absolutely need to be changed if they are to be taken seriously for professional players.
Good stuff. What college soccer administrators need to do is just wait a couple of months for people to kinda forget about soccer here in the US and then start pushing through changes. I know that they want to hit while the iron is still hot from the World Cup, but nothing gets the attention of old, rich, out-of-touch men quite like a bunch of changes so close to something similar that made millions of dollars. But while the sport is definitely growing is relevance here in the states, it can still enjoy the same (relative) freedom as hockey once the focus turns to football and the like.
As for the actual proposal, I like the idea of splitting the season from a weather perspective, but this feels like it would be a wider range than hockey, and I wonder how that would affect recruiting, offseason training, etc. But yeah, kinda dumb to play soccer in freaking December in the states.
If there are already teams out west that are minor league MLS teams associated with a university, why not do that in general? Can't Michigan teach a team of soccer players that don't participate in the NCAA? Form their own league, etc like you recommend with B1G Baseball?
I'd love to see the season expanded into the spring. Wouldn't have to compete with Football so much in the fall, and could have the most important games in more moderate weather instead of finishing off the season in the cold.
But we can't forget the impact it would have on amateur club soccer teams in the PDL and the NPSL. Many Michigan Soccer players had significant contributions to the Michigan Bucks and Detroit City FC this spring & summer. If the NCAA season expanded into the spring, I doubt those players would be splitting their time between school and the club.
They may not be getting as much experience in NCAA competition as their contemporaries in the European academies, but the top players ARE getting more than just NCAA experience.
At the end of the day, the decision needs to be made as to whether we're trying to grow soccer or grow soccer players. This proposed change would be good for the development of college players, but would pretty much eviscerate the PDL and NPSL amateur leagues if they couldn't get any college kids over the summer.
As clownshow as those leagues can be at times, I think that'd be a net negative to growth of soccer in the US because there are clubs in those leagues having success in bringing fans out to watch soccer in markets like Detroit, Chattanooga, New Orleans, Tulsa, etc. (Heck, a Lansing United-Detroit City FC match at MSU's DeMartin Stadium drew more than 2,000 fans, at least double what MSU normally draws there.)
If soccer's going to be truly successful in the US it can't solely exist at the MLS level. The rest of the pyramid needs to be healthy as well, and that means amateur outdoors summer leagues that can attract casual fans with NCAA-quality soccer and give them that $5 ticket option to take the family on a Sunday afternoon. If the NCAA is finishing its season in June and shut down until fall but the players are training with coaches year round, you're saying "no soccer for you" for the summer in any community that doesn't have at least USL-PRO.
What is the purpose for your proposal, in 1-2 sentences? B/c it reads as, "to have NCAA D-I soccer become a pro-development league on par w/ MLS or Euro-academies."
I don't think the NCAA is interested at all in structuring sports for the sole purpose of becoming top developmental leagues for world class atheltics. Basketball and football turned into developmental leagues by circumstance, not design ... and hockey- hell IDK how to explain that.
I think NCAA soccer 'remaining' relevant is a moot point- it's completely irrelevant now on a global skill level at least. It's like NCAA baseball- sure, a few guys can make a jump to MLB, but that's like once in a decade kind of circumstances. NCAA baseball is not a relevant league on a global skill level - but it fills it's niche by taking hard working, well skilled if undersized kids and late bloomer-type kids who want to use what baseball skills they have to gain opportunities ouside of (playing) sports. Sure some very talented kids play in the South/West but primarily mLB developes them, not NCAA. One could argue that it's the same in hockey, but to a lesser extent (more guys go right to the NHL from NCAA, but most still take a year or 2 to develop in the AHL, etc).
The bottom line is, the NCAA doesn't see itself as a pro-developmental sports league (in spite of basketball and football becoming the defacto- developmental leagues). I would say it is right in doing so.
Actually puts a lot more players in the pros then once in a decade type circumstances. Sure a lot of people go straight from high school to the minors or from a foreign country to the minors but there are a lot of players who played NCAA baseball that go on to successful MLB careers: Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, Jason Giambi, Mike Schmidt, Jeff Kent, Will Clark, Rafael Palmero, Fred Lynn, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Mike Mussina, Tim Hudson, Todd Helton, Albert Belle, Ryan Braun, Lance Berkman, Jason Varitek.
I think even to make such a list is to imply that college-to-MLB is a limited pipeline. It isn't. Claiming that college baseball is comprised almost entirely of players with no pro prospects - that is a thoroughly bizarre claim that is completely without merit. Really a stunning display of ignorance of the sport. There are over 8,000 MLBers in the Baseball-Reference database associated with a four-year school. That's out of roughly 20,000 or so who've ever played.
and almost all of those guys spent a significant amount of time in the minors before they made it to MLB. that's the point.
of 'a significant time in the minors'?
the equivalent of a MLB season? so 1.5-2 minor league years?
That makes a ton more sense if you're saying college doesn't get you straight to the major leagues; not how I read it, but if that's where you're going with it, I can see it. Still, I think you're letting college be a victim of its own success in a way. Part of the reason the minor league system is so huge is because there's so many players to fill it, and college is a big reason for that.
I have no way of doing this in two minutes, but I would bet that the difference in time between a player graduating high school and making his MLB debut isn't real big one way or the other if you compare the college and minor league route. They still come up at about the same age, all else being equal. That says to me that college is just as good a way to go as any other.
I think you're underselling college baseball a bit. What you say is true in the north, but I bet half or more of starters on most programs in the south and in the west are fighting for a future in pro-baseball. Sure, they usually still go through the minor leagues to finish development, but college baseball is hardly limited to the realm of guys that couldn't sniff the mlb draft out of high school. It's an alternate path for kids, who, if they're true MLB prospects will have a shorter stint in the minors then they would if they had gone straight from high school (Verlander, for instance).
Other than that, I do generally agree with you. Though, I don't see why it isn't in the NCAA's interest to improve the pro-development aspect of any one of their sports, especially if the alternative is less kids attending college at all.
of course a few guys who could have signed decent minor league developmental contracts go on to play NCAA baseball, but generally that's b/c they value the educational opportunities- which is why it's such a good fit. the purpose of NCAA baseball (and every other sport besides the Big 3) is not 1st and foremost professional development and generally speaking the kids who choose NCAA over available alternatives (CND Major Jr, MLS, mLB) understand that.
It's not just a few guys. Every southern and western college baseball program sweats out the period between the MLB draft and the deadline to sign players to see whether their prized recruits will be on campus. The recruiting pitches concern development for a professional career. It's a viable developmental alternative.
The sooner the NCAA goes away at the D1 level the better.
As usual.
Not sure how school sponsored travel expenses fit into this. Maybe they don't and the "club" can get sponsors.
I was under the impression that NCAA athletes can't compete in intramurals in the sport in which they compete. That might be out of date but I'm pretty sure it's on the books.
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