Why men's soccer is not a big college sport

[615dawg]

I have a friend that it is involved in the Team USA Development program for men's soccer. Asides from the usual "Why aren't we competitive in the World Cup" questions, he gets "Why is college soccer not embraced at most SEC schools" a lot. It's mainly an ACC/Big 10/West Coast thing, but the University of Vermont won the national championship this year, defeating Marshall in the final.

The answers are basically the same. Mens college soccer isn't a great product. You get leftovers from other countries and any great homegrown talent goes to the developmental program. He actually told me that if all of the best high school players in Alabama/Mississippi/Tennessee, etc. went to the same college and played on the club teams, those teams could make the NCAA Tournament. Instead, most either choose another sport or just lay it down to be a normal college student.

Anyway, hockey is much the same. Last night, a club team from UNLV beat the defending NCAA D1 national champions from Denver, 7-6. And it wasn't a fluke. UNLV had a 6-1 lead before Denver stormed back.

 

[randystewart]

I have a friend that it is involved in the Team USA Development program for men's soccer. Asides from the usual "Why aren't we competitive in the World Cup" questions, he gets "Why is college soccer not embraced at most SEC schools" a lot. It's mainly an ACC/Big 10/West Coast thing, but the University of Vermont won the national championship this year, defeating Marshall in the final.

The answers are basically the same. Mens college soccer isn't a great product. You get leftovers from other countries and any great homegrown talent goes to the developmental program. He actually told me that if all of the best high school players in Alabama/Mississippi/Tennessee, etc. went to the same college and played on the club teams, those teams could make the NCAA Tournament. Instead, most either choose another sport or just lay it down to be a normal college student.

Anyway, hockey is much the same. Last night, a club team from UNLV beat the defending NCAA D1 national champions from Denver, 7-6. And it wasn't a fluke. UNLV had a 6-1 lead before Denver stormed back.

Title IX

 

[FlotownDawg]

Title IX

This is the reason. Because football has so many scholarships and no women’s sport has near that many, in order to equal out the scholarships, some men’s sports have to be cut. Soccer is usually that sport. I think only two SEC schools have NCAA men’s soccer programs. They play in other conferences for soccer.

 

[patdog]

Not Title IX. Soccer development is different. If you want to have any hope of playing professionally, you have to be signed to a pro club & in their development program well before you turn 18. If you’re playing NCAA soccer you have no chance.

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

Men's soccer ends up with mostly leftover athletes in the US that don't choose football, basketball, or baseball as their primary sport in high school. Women's soccer on the other hand attracts top tier athletes.

If football gets nuked completely in the US do to injury concerns, mens soccer will finally become a serious sport.

 

[aTotal360]

Men's soccer ends up with mostly leftover athletes

End of discussion.

 

[mcdawg22]

Yu

Men's soccer ends up with mostly leftover athletes in the US that don't choose football, basketball, or baseball as their primary sport in high school. Women's soccer on the other hand attracts top tier athletes.

If football gets nuked completely in the US do to injury concerns, mens soccer will finally become a serious sport.

Yup. Imagine Cam Matthews as a goalie.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Title IX

Yep, let's not complicate things. This, and the popularity of football and other sports.

Not Title IX. Soccer development is different. If you want to have any hope of playing professionally, you have to be signed to a pro club & in their development program well before you turn 18. If you’re playing NCAA soccer you have no chance.

That wouldn't go down that way if NCAA had a better product to the above two items. Those are the genesis. Heck most schools invest in baseball instead simply because the men are playing it and there are better players available. It all add up on top of each other.

If football gets nuked completely in the US do to injury concerns, mens soccer will finally become a serious sport.

Agree.

All the stuff the OP listed from the guy involved are true, but they are just ancillary symptoms of the real issues. Soccer is just late to the party honestly. It's hard to see football ever collapsing, and it's hard to ever see the pinnacle of soccer being anywhere but Europe, but you never know.

 

[mstateglfr]

It's wild that so many view soccer players as leftover athletes who didn't choose a different team sport.
That, to me, is part of the overall explanation for why soccer isn't as popular- people view soccer as the sport that gets leftover athletes.
It's perspective- a ton of athletes had choices and chose soccer. There is nothing 'leftover' about it in that situation.

'Leftover athletes who didn't choose a different sport' seems like an oxymoron since how are they leftover but also having the choice of playing many sports?


Moving away from that misnomer though, yeah Men's College Soccer isn't more popular because...
- soccer as a sport still isn't a super popular sport to watch, despite the gains it's made over the years.
- limited scholarships at the top level push talented players to even lower levels(conferences/division) so the product isn't as good as it could be.
- many colleges don't even field teams due to scholarship allocation. It won't be popular on a wide scale until all major colleges field teams.
- the best known players in HS should already be in development programs either domestically or overseas. So the college product won't be as interesting to some soccer fans.

 

[mstateglfr]

Yup. Imagine Cam Matthews as a goalie.

Based on his FT % he better defend penalty kicks instead of take penalty kicks!


Bad joke aside, thru the years my brother in law and I have talked about the physical makeup of elite soccer players because soccer is always on in his house and my in-laws house. He is in his 40s and still plays at least 3x per week, watches it, etc.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and yet you don't see bulked strong tall players in the highest levels of the sport.
You don't see freight train style players like LeBron or even Cam Matthews.
Soccer has some tall gangly players and it has some shorter jacked players, but really doesn't have the tall(6'3 to 6'9) and jacked player even though that body type is so common it's on most every college basketball roster.

It's interesting to see that hasn't translated over to soccer. Agility and speed are obviously still prized too.

 

[L4Dawg]

Yu

Yup. Imagine Cam Matthews as a goalie.

I’m not sure he wold be that good to be honest, different skill set.

 

[WilCoDawg]

You know what would jumpstart it? If MSU took it seriously and gained traction. Then OM would jump i as they always do and then other SEC schools would as well. Let’s be the catalyst like we were in baseball.

WE’RE A FUTBOL SCHOOL!!!

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

It's wild that so many view soccer players as leftover athletes who didn't choose a different team sport.
That, to me, is part of the overall explanation for why soccer isn't as popular- people view soccer as the sport that gets leftover athletes.
It's perspective- a ton of athletes had choices and chose soccer. There is nothing 'leftover' about it in that situation.

'Leftover athletes who didn't choose a different sport' seems like an oxymoron since how are they leftover but also having the choice of playing many sports?


Moving away from that misnomer though, yeah Men's College Soccer isn't more popular because...
- soccer as a sport still isn't a super popular sport to watch, despite the gains it's made over the years.
- limited scholarships at the top level push talented players to even lower levels(conferences/division) so the product isn't as good as it could be.
- many colleges don't even field teams due to scholarship allocation. It won't be popular on a wide scale until all major colleges field teams.
- the best known players in HS should already be in development programs either domestically or overseas. So the college product won't be as interesting to some soccer fans.

Okay. Leftovers may be harsh. How about the skinny white kids, hispanics, and kids who's parents let them choose a gender?

 

[OG Goat Holder]

It's wild that so many view soccer players as leftover athletes who didn't choose a different team sport.
That, to me, is part of the overall explanation for why soccer isn't as popular- people view soccer as the sport that gets leftover athletes.
It's perspective- a ton of athletes had choices and chose soccer. There is nothing 'leftover' about it in that situation.

'Leftover athletes who didn't choose a different sport' seems like an oxymoron since how are they leftover but also having the choice of playing many sports?


Moving away from that misnomer though, yeah Men's College Soccer isn't more popular because...
- soccer as a sport still isn't a super popular sport to watch, despite the gains it's made over the years.
- limited scholarships at the top level push talented players to even lower levels(conferences/division) so the product isn't as good as it could be.
- many colleges don't even field teams due to scholarship allocation. It won't be popular on a wide scale until all major colleges field teams.
- the best known players in HS should already be in development programs either domestically or overseas. So the college product won't be as interesting to some soccer fans.

They are leftover, mainly due to the word in bold - scholarships. It's just the truth.

Situation will be now be exacerbated when football and baseball getting more scholarships. In this world of expensive travel sports, I don't see much benefit in all that training if the most you'll get is a little high school status as a soccer player (unless you're in Rankin County, where high school sports are the best of all status symbols).

Colleges will need to invest in soccer, or it's going to need an incredible growth in popularity (to fight against and mitigate all its previously stated disadvantages).

To me, this sounds like a great opportunity for teams who don't want to pay all the money for football, who may still have a negative balance sheet even with the revenue. I don't know what group that would pertain towards, but I'm sure they exist.

 

[patdog]

Yu

Yup. Imagine Cam Matthews as a goalie.

A guy with his body type would suck at soccer. Even as a goalkeeper. You have to get to ground quick to make a lot of saves. If you’re 6’7” you’re not going to get to ground as quickly as a 6’1” keeper. Really about the only USA major sports athletes who could be good at soccer would be NFL / major college cornerbacks. They have the size & athleticism to excel at soccer.

 

[johnson86-1]

There’s some truth to it being a title ix issue and that making it a secondary choice for high school athletes, but US soccer sucks on its own. Soccer more so than other sports is hammered by morons focused on winning in elementary instead of skills development. Hurts other sports too, but not like soccer.

get a Hispanic kid that’s been playing in his neighborhood and put him on a team of US kids that have basically been taught that the way to score is the equivalent of a fast break/brute force offense and it’s really apparent. I would hope it’s better in major metro areas, but huge swaths of the US basically don’t give soccer players a chance because the odds are stacked against them by not having the chance to play good soccer.

the US response has been to try to shuffle promising young players into developmental programs, but I’d argue that’s the opposite of what they should have done. We need to cast a bigger net by having neighborhood games that actually consist of good soccer that teaches kids outside of training the way we do in basketball. Instead a few players selected as much for affluence as promise are doing formal training and there is basically no neighborhood soccer.

 

[Barkman Turner Overdrive]

I wish Mutt The Hoople was here to answer this question.

 

[aTotal360]

Okay. Leftovers may be harsh. How about the skinny white kids, hispanics, and kids who's parents let them choose a gender?

It's not that harsh. Go to an MLS game. It looks like a bunch of accountants playing each other. I went to one game back when ATL United won it all. It stood out to me.

 

[patdog]

It's not that harsh. Go to an MLS game. It looks like a bunch of accountants playing each other. I went to one game back when ATL United won it all. It stood out to me.

MLS is not a good product to watch. It’s about the 10th best league. I doubt the best team in MLS could get promoted to the Premier league if it played a season in England’s second division.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Soccer more so than other sports is hammered by morons focused on winning in elementary instead of skills development. Hurts other sports too, but not like soccer.

You are 100% correct on this, but other sports suffer from this too. This is why none of the do-gooders get very far with their podcasts, articles and crusaders about 'development', because at the end of the day, nobody wants to sit around watching losses (especially parents). And I do wonder whether or not it truly matters, if you play enough, the good players rise to the top, no matter how you do it.

It still comes down to popularity in this country. Look at Tanner Tessman......one of the most heralded homegrown guys in the US......brought into FC Dallas, first chance he gets, he gone to Europe.

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

You are 100% correct on this, but other sports suffer from this too. This is why none of the do-gooders get very far with their podcasts, articles and crusaders about 'development', because at the end of the day, nobody wants to sit around watching losses (especially parents). And I do wonder whether or not it truly matters, if you play enough, the good players rise to the top, no matter how you do it.

It still comes down to popularity in this country. Look at Tanner Tessman......one of the most heralded homegrown guys in the US......brought into FC Dallas, first chance he gets, he gone to Europe.

Iron sharpens iron. Playing in Europe is where you want to go. Like patdog said, MLS talent wise is well down the list of leagues in the world.

 

[99jc]

because it is boring as hell!

 

[OG Goat Holder]

because it is boring as hell!

So is baseball. But we all know it, grew up playing it, etc. Funny thing is, we grew up playing soccer too, as little kids, until football took over. Soccer is almost seen as the intro to kid sports.

So my question is, which is the biggest enemy of soccer? If it’s football, may as well give it up. If it’s baseball, they may have a chance to overtake it, though I doubt it. Think about it, MLS and MLB have roughly the same season, and travel sports for both of those are year round. Kind of natural rivals, but so is football.

 

[BulldogBlitz]

Well, American football foes provide an opportunity for dudes weighing 350 pounds and cannot reliably run from one end of the field to the other every play.

This is the basic of reasons why we still don't bother with futbol.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

Yu

Yup. Imagine Cam Matthews as a goalie.

I can imagine him as a DE coming untouched to the QB.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

Most D1 conferences actually sponsor men's soccer. It's just the Big 12, SEC, and a few minor conferences that don't.

 

[L4Dawg]

It's not that harsh. Go to an MLS game. It looks like a bunch of accountants playing each other. I went to one game back when ATL United won it all. It stood out to me.

I’m a big fan of the sport, but MLS is just awful. it’s probably the equivalent of League Two, at best, in England.

 

[Dawgg]

Title IX

This is the reason. Because football has so many scholarships and no women’s sport has near that many, in order to equal out the scholarships, some men’s sports have to be cut. Soccer is usually that sport. I think only two SEC schools have NCAA men’s soccer programs. They play in other conferences for soccer.

Yeah, remember all those great SEC men’s soccer dynasties before Title IX was passed in 1972?

Me neither. Because those teams never existed.

 

[TaleofTwoDogs]

Simple, it's a boring sport to watch. Fun to play but not so much to watch.

 

[onewoof]

Elite athletes in America play football and basketball. Trace it back to the early days of colleges fielding football teams and the rivalries. Then basketball. Made its way into high schools. Soccer didn't because it's a soft, boring sport. The US never really cared about fielding an elite soccer team for the world cup in the 1900's. It was major league baseball and college football/basketball that were the fun/rival sports. Then the NFL came along and closed the door forever on US soccer being a thing. There's your answer.

 

[mcdawg22]

You are 100% correct on this, but other sports suffer from this too. This is why none of the do-gooders get very far with their podcasts, articles and crusaders about 'development', because at the end of the day, nobody wants to sit around watching losses (especially parents). And I do wonder whether or not it truly matters, if you play enough, the good players rise to the top, no matter how you do it.

It still comes down to popularity in this country. Look at Tanner Tessman......one of the most heralded homegrown guys in the US......brought into FC Dallas, first chance he gets, he gone to Europe.

It’s also about economics. There is this expectation, right or wrong, that talented soccer players have to play club level to develop. Tessman went from Bham to FC Dallas and paid God knows what, although I’m sure scholarships were offered. Travis Hunter on the other hand just had to play for his local 6A public school. Not to mention he also had to go to college to become a pro.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Yeah, remember all those great SEC men’s soccer dynasties before Title IX was passed in 1972?

Me neither. Because those teams never existed.

That was over 50 years ago. Have to keep a little bit of reality here. Title IX is what has prevented soccer from truly growing in the modern era.

If you want to look at the history of soccer around the world, that's a different story.

 

[johnson86-1]

You are 100% correct on this, but other sports suffer from this too. This is why none of the do-gooders get very far with their podcasts, articles and crusaders about 'development', because at the end of the day, nobody wants to sit around watching losses (especially parents). And I do wonder whether or not it truly matters, if you play enough, the good players rise to the top, no matter how you do it.

Good players rise up relative to their competition in the same system. Which is still relatively ****** compared to players that are trained and play in better systems.

It still comes down to popularity in this country. Look at Tanner Tessman......one of the most heralded homegrown guys in the US......brought into FC Dallas, first chance he gets, he gone to Europe.

It's not just popularity. There are countries that have one tenth the population of the US that are routinely more competitive than the USA in soccer. The MLS not being a good league can be explained by lack of popularity, but if we weren't doing development wrong, we still have a large enough population that even with it being the third or fourth most popular youth sport, our top players would be able to be competitive in good leagues overseas and we'd be decent nationally if we were doing a decent job of development.

 

[patdog]

It's not just popularity. There are countries that have one tenth the population of the US that are routinely more competitive than the USA in soccer. The MLS not being a good league can be explained by lack of popularity, but if we weren't doing development wrong, we still have a large enough population that even with it being the third or fourth most popular youth sport, our top players would be able to be competitive in good leagues overseas and we'd be decent nationally if we were doing a decent job of development.

Nailed it. There’s no excuse for the USA not to always be top 10 in world soccer rankings & contending for major championships. We couldn’t do a better job of hindering young player development if we tried.

 

[johnson86-1]

Nailed it. There’s no excuse for the USA not to always be top 10 in world soccer rankings & contending for major championships. We couldn’t do a better job of hindering young player development if we tried.

With how much our foreign born population has exploded, going to be interesting to see if it happens despite our best efforts to screw it up. I'm pretty sure our local Hispanic kids that have basically no formal training but play a lot of soccer would destroy our local travel ball warriors in small sided games.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Good players rise up relative to their competition in the same system. Which is still relatively ****** compared to players that are trained and play in better systems.

So two things here. One, is the barrier to entry. Two, is the comparison of US development vs. other countries.

As far as the barrier to entry, I think that is less of a factor than many think. If a poor kid shows interest and has athletic ability, they find a way. Now, the middle kids likely get left out, as how much you ultimately pay depends on how good you are. But again, this is also a baseball problem (and other travel sports). Now, one question is, will this ultimately bring down baseball? I don't know, it certainly seems like even poor people can afford, and form, travel teams these days. The wealth boom is pretty crazy.

On the comparison of US to others, you'll have to explain that more, as I don't know about soccer strategy. I'm guessing it's similar to American basketball vs. others. Or golf for that matter. We just pound pound pound, whether it's a dribble drive, or a tee drive. Win by athletic ability, in other words. Same thing with baseball now, bomb homers and velo. What is the best? I don't know, guess it depends on who has the best players.

It's not just popularity. There are countries that have one tenth the population of the US that are routinely more competitive than the USA in soccer. The MLS not being a good league can be explained by lack of popularity, but if we weren't doing development wrong, we still have a large enough population that even with it being the third or fourth most popular youth sport, our top players would be able to be competitive in good leagues overseas and we'd be decent nationally if we were doing a decent job of development.

I see this development argument all the time, and I used to believe in it at the youth levels. But it's like a BB gun at a freight train, ultimately it just turns into an excuse for losing. Most times it's because you have lesser players, so the answer is to get better players. And seems to me that's what we have here in American soccer - lesser players. At least on a big scale.

I'm all about innovating, don't get me wrong, but that only works in certain situations. Take Moneyball for example, the analytics worked for Billy Beane in 2002, but now that everybody is doing it, I doubt it would work for him anymore, with the least talented team. He'd get killed. Same thing with RPOs in football and the passing attack, same with the 3's or layups in basketball.

Kinda long winded, I know, but this stuff is interesting to me. Curious your opinion on that.

 

[Dawgg]

That was over 50 years ago. Have to keep a little bit of reality here. Title IX is what has prevented soccer from truly growing in the modern era.

If you want to look at the history of soccer around the world, that's a different story.

I mean... Title IX is an easy scapegoat for a lot of athletic departments, but there are 212 D1 Men's soccer teams. 121 of those schools also field a football team. 59 are FBS (including 30 Power 4 schools) and 62 are FCS. They're somehow making it work and they're not all big endowment schools either, especially in the FCS.

The men's soccer scholarship limit has been 9.9 for the past few decades. Schools could have added something fairly inexpensive like a women's bowling team or beach volleyball or women's eSports (or Rowing like WVU) and satisfy Title IX. If West Virginia and Kentucky can figure out how to field a team, Alabama and Florida can too. As much as AD's would tell you otherwise, Title IX isn't the main issue.

The fact is that if SEC schools (and their alumni) saw value in men's soccer, they would sponsor it and do whatever is necessary to field a team. Men's college soccer is a non-revenue sport and that's not going to change in the next 10 years if you suddenly eliminated Title IX tomorrow. @patdog and a few others have done a much better job explaining the problems with developmental systems in the US and why throwing the blame at Title IX is really short-sighted.

Also, there's one more thing I would add that has kept men's soccer from taking off in the US:
It's not "ours". We didn't invent it and we didn't take a version of it and bastardize it to the point that it became ours. In America, we tend to gravitate towards the sports we created: American football, basketball, and baseball. You could make the argument that Rugby is more violent and more action packed than an average game of American football, but we didn't invent it, so it's never really caught on as a major sport here. We took elements of it and created the game we call 'football' and it's ours. We didn't invent cricket, but we took elements of cricket and created baseball. We have nobody to blame basketball on but ourselves. We look at all 3 sports as "American", even as they've spread to other countries.

They're "ours", but we let other people play them. Soccer is the opposite. It's somebody else's that people want us to play here.

I think soccer is still seen as kind of... invasive. It's like universal healthcare. It's a European idea that a lot of people really like, but a lot of people feel is somehow un-American.

 

[johnson86-1]

So two things here. One, is the barrier to entry. Two, is the comparison of US development vs. other countries.

As far as the barrier to entry, I think that is less of a factor than many think. If a poor kid shows interest and has athletic ability, they find a way. Now, the middle kids likely get left out, as how much you ultimately pay depends on how good you are. But again, this is also a baseball problem (and other travel sports). Now, one question is, will this ultimately bring down baseball? I don't know, it certainly seems like even poor people can afford, and form, travel teams these days. The wealth boom is pretty crazy.

The problem travel sports imposes on soccer it not what I would call a typical barrier to entry. It just prevents us from creating a soccer culture that is similar to basketball. If you're a real athlete interested in basketball, you don't really need AAU ball because there is plenty of basketball being played in most neighborhoods. Good players don't primarily come from AAU ball because they are developed that much in AAU ball. They come there because AAU is so prevalent most good players get identified and picked up. If you could wave a magic wand and ban travel soccer tomorrow for under 14, you'd see a much healthier soccer culture and you'd cast a much wider net. In the short term, there might be a slight dip in development, but in a decade, you'd see much better talent playing soccer in the US.

On the comparison of US to others, you'll have to explain that more, as I don't know about soccer strategy. I'm guessing it's similar to American basketball vs. others. Or golf for that matter. We just pound pound pound, whether it's a dribble drive, or a tee drive. Win by athletic ability, in other words. Same thing with baseball now, bomb homers and velo. What is the best? I don't know, guess it depends on who has the best players.

I'm not a huge soccer guy, so take this with a grain of salt, but I would equate US players to basketball teams that can score in transition but can't execute a half court offense. Youth soccer in the US spends way too much time on big fields where good athletes learn early on that the way to score is to dribble past people. Just a ton of opportunity is to develop is wasted with youth teams scoring 8 - 10 goals a game while reinforcing skills and strategy that don't reliably work in good soccer.

I see this development argument all the time, and I used to believe in it at the youth levels. But it's like a BB gun at a freight train, ultimately it just turns into an excuse for losing. Most times it's because you have lesser players, so the answer is to get better players. And seems to me that's what we have here in American soccer - lesser players. At least on a big scale.

It really is just development though. Since the 1990's, the Netherlands have made the round of 16 twice, the quarter twice, the semi-finals twice, and the finals once. They've only failed to qualify twice in that time frame. They have a population of 18 million. Soccer is obviously their most popular sport, but we have four individual states with larger populations than the Netherlands. We are 20 times larger. Even with Soccer being our fourth most popular sport, we should occasionally be competitive if we were doing things right.

I'm all about innovating, don't get me wrong, but that only works in certain situations. Take Moneyball for example, the analytics worked for Billy Beane in 2002, but now that everybody is doing it, I doubt it would work for him anymore, with the least talented team. He'd get killed. Same thing with RPOs in football and the passing attack, same with the 3's or layups in basketball.

Kinda long winded, I know, but this stuff is interesting to me. Curious your opinion on that.

We really don't have to innovate, we just have to copy. The only thing that we just can't copy is the setup lots of european clubs have where they can make money developing players because they essentially sell their rights. We just don't have the culture for that and I'm not even sure contracts that tried to copy them on that would be enforceable.

 

[Dawgzilla2]

The OP is another setup for a Norm Macdonakd Joke.

This just in: it isn't popular because it's soccer.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

The OP is another setup for a Norm Macdonakd Joke.

This just in: it isn't popular because it's soccer.

Considering all opinions, it does appear to be a case of ‘it is what it is’.

I still like to predict which sports will rise or fall in America, though. Very very interesting to see where we as a society will go. So many theories have failed.