They need less luck than most. The rules work in their favor and they get more of the better players which helps in a compressed schedule with liberal subs. I'm not sure why you included defense in your list. Shouldn't you include offense and defense As Sun Tzu said "Invincibility lies in the defense. The possibility of victory in the attack."
This has a become a side-bar so my apologies - If there were enough non-athletes available to meet every school's enrollment goals, why have athletics at all?? Plenty of college Presidents and Boards have realized they need athletics. It's a very competitive business and schools use athletes to fill beds and also athletics generally to increase their prestige and "value" to applicants. There's a small private in a town nearby that recently added baseball with no field! It's a 45K private so they spent 200K maybe on coaching, travel, refs, etc, play at the local minor league park, and recruited 40 new baseball players. Another small school coach I know is told he needs to keep 40 kids on the soccer roster and so has to create 20 apps and at least 10 paid and enrolled students every year. At 50K only one full-paid kid just about pays his salary. If this coach could suddenly only play 18 players a game total and only use 3/4 subs per game, it would be pretty bad for business. Point 1 - Not every college is Stanford! With crazy resources and getting every applicant they want. Very many are using athletes to help pay the bills. Point 2 - Share the love! Why limit participation if the coach can rotate more players with open subs and still be competitive? If the ref thinks the subbing is unsporting or gamesmanship, they can just not allow them. Point 3 - If you want your best players available late in the season, why would you want to make them play tons more minutes than you have to? You're up 3-0 at minute 60 and can still only use 3 subs? How does that help the 4th or 5th player you'd like to rest a bit for the next game? Point 4 - College coaches are not required to schedule all 20 games!! Why are the same coaches crying for a full year schedule filling up their twice a week fall schedule? If you want the kids to play less, start by scheduling less games.
I went with the cliche, "defense wins championships." Also, for this contest: http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...soccer-tournament-prediction-contest.2036722/, I picked strong defensive teams and ended up in 2nd place.
Agree that the skills and attitude of the typical aggressive nose-for-the-goal forward can make for an excellent outside defender for players who are willing to move back and can accordingly deal with adjusting their internal drive/need to score. But of course when a forward makes that transition to defense most coaches encourage the player to take the ball up to the final third whenever they have the chance.
I agree with your premise that similar attributes make for good forwards and outside defenders. My philosophy on soccer is that getting in on the attack is one of the primary responsibilities of outside defenders. Having competent attacking outside defenders can make a team very dangerous. Those players are often the best athletes on a team as well. They need to be very comfortable and skilled on the ball while having a lot of speed and endurance to make a lot of runs up and down the flanks. Not only do they need to be able to attack in the final 1/3 with the ball, they also need to attack the final 1/3 off of the ball. A dangerous defender can overwhelm an opposing team and give attackers a numbers advantage. One of my all-time favorite goals was in the 2010 World Cup in the Brazil win over North Korea. Brazilian defender Maicon deftly exploited the right side of the North Korean defense. I put the clip below. It will be interesting to see what Stanford does with all of those forwards. Good players can play almost anywhere on the field. I know coaches that have told me that they recruit the player not based on their position in club soccer. While they may certainly play in that position, coaches often look at a player and see what utility they may have in other postitions as well.
I don't know where to post this concern, but does anyone know what the latest is on Brian (@soccercbg or soccercbg@gmail.com) and his recruiting spreadsheet which has been such a gift to us for the past 8.5 years. He hasn't posted for over a month and a half which is very unusual for him. I am hoping that nothing catastrophic has befallen him and that this cessation or pause in his service is simply a matter of deciding that he simply can't keep the effort up to his high standards any more or that maybe he is taking a well deserved and marvelous vacation somewhere. If he is truly stepping away, then he certainly deserves a HUGE thank you from the 100s of fans of his spreadsheet over the years. (I did try to contact him via email a week ago, but have had no response.)
Good news for fans of CBG and his recruiting spreadsheet. I just heard back from him last evening and he is OK....just has been completely swamped by a very busy time at his day job which presently is including a lot of travel. He intends to get back to the spreadsheet as soon as he can but is concerned that he might have fallen so far behind by the time he will be able to free up time in a few more weeks that it is uncertain as to the right direction to go. So we'll all have to wait to see what happens. He has provided a wonderful service for long so we'll all cross our fingers, but I'm sure we all understand.
I agree completely, CBG's has provided a great service to DI women's soccer, spending huge amounts of time and great care, far beyond what most can imagine.
I just figured that his kids had graduated high school and had moved on to the college game. I couldn't imagine wanting to maintain the database in the first place let alone not having a kid playing. Perhaps he does - I'm not sure. I have appreciated having the data in the past but never quite,understood his motivation for taking the time to do it. Just a hobby, I guess.
Looking forward to seeing the recruits update list coming back. Appreciate all the work soccercng does for this. In the meantime I have tried to keep up with commits through TopDrawer. I see that they have a transfer tracker as well and lists 62 transfers. Only a few of which are other divisions to Division I; its mostly D1 to D1 transfers. Perhaps this is for another thread, but is that a number that is relatively comparable to years' past? And would like to know which programs typically are known for having transfers every year. Florida, Florida State, and Penn State seem to have people leave every year and perhaps that is the cutthroat culture that exists at those programs.
I'm totally new to this forum, and have a daughter who is hoping to attend a D1 school. Florida has been high on her list so I was hoping that SoccerTrustee or someone else could explain about the cutthroat soccer culture that might exist there. I know that it is subjective to each player's experience (what's cutthroat for one player is competitiveness to another) but it would be enormously helpful to get an honest picture if possible.
Getting an "honest" picture from the outside may be problematic. It seems to me that you might have to talk to a sample of players or parents who have kids at the schools your daughter is interested in. You're absolutely correct that characterization of a program's culture boils down to how each player/parent perceives it. ("cut throat" versus "wonderfully highly competitive") The transfer out metric in many cases is the result of over recruiting. Florida has been known in recent years to sign large classes which then guarantee that there will be lots of transfers out, or they'd end up having a roster of 50 or more which means that half of the team would not dress for games. And then in the highly competitive top programs the nature of the campus and school itself plays a role. Stanford, for for example (although some verbally committed players end up going elsewhere late in the process), has relatively few transfers out. Enjoying being at a world class school and campus keeps the players there, even if all of those former youth national team players and All-Americans don't get much playing time. Finding the right college experience for your kid is about a lot more than soccer.
That's really helpful and much appreciated. We're definitely talking to lots of people, although the "subjectivity thing" makes it tricky to sift fact from opinion. I had been looking at roster size and Florida's was huge this season. The number of 2017 recruits is pretty small, though, so maybe they are trying to address the problem. Lots for me to learn!
I know for a fact that one of the transfers from Florida, Alyssa Baumbick, is not a result of the "cutthroat" atmosphere of the program. She was injured around the time of the first match and was not able to play the remainder of the season. She only played 18 minutes of her freshman year in that first match (though that garbage online source known as Top Drawer Soccer has her playing in another game later in the season. That didn't happen). Alyssa is from the Cleveland area and has transferred to Ohio State. She will have 4 years of eligibility remaining. Alyssa has NT experience and would have had no problem getting minutes at Florida. She is a big loss for the Gators and a major pickup for the Buckeyes. Every situation is unique and kids transfer for a wide variety of reasons - want to be closer to home, don't like the school, don't like teammates, don't like coach, not getting enough playing time, social issues, etc. We can't judge every situation as an outsider and know that it is due to a cutthroat culture. This comment is not aimed at you, Soccerhunter. It is in response to SoccerTrustee's comment of "Florida, Florida State, and Penn State seem to have people leave every year and perhaps that is the cutthroat culture that exists at those programs."
Didn't florida bring in something like 20 players, give or take, last year? Maybe it not quite 20 but I remember it being a ridiculous number for one class. How many of them will get meaningful playing time? Maybe half, I'm guessing.
Florida has a roster of 39 kids. Which is an absurd number. In their Sweet 16 game against Auburn, the most important game of the year and where they need the most depth given the point of the season, they played 17 players. I don't grasp the need for programs to have more than 25 players or so. Last year their freshman class was 13 players. They have done this for years. This year they have 4 kids transferring out based on the TDS list. That's a very high number, there would be concern if there were 4 transfers over 3-4 years,much less for just one year (one transfer is Baumbick that PlaySimple gave details on). I don't understand how they get away with it. Wouldn't the AD have some concern of a huge roster and multiple kids leaving each year? I guess not since it happens consistently and that is why I labeled them as having a cutthroat culture. Look at their rosters year to year and see how many kids aren't back, especially freshmen that don't come back for their sophomore year. I do see they have 6 kids coming in this year so perhaps they may change their approach. As I posted yesterday I see Penn State now has an international player transfer out. They too have gotten a reputation in recent years based on their transfer numbers.
While I have no specific knowledge on the transfers from FSU and UF I would like to add some Florida education culture info. With The FL Medallion Scholars program, students with high quality scores can earn 75-100% of tuition for in-state universities. Basically, if you can get in to UF, the state will cover the majority of your tuition. It's the greatest upper-middle class tax break ever invented! So, many girls just want to go to UF and since they are going for free (or nearly free) will be on the soccer team. One girl from our club was like this - she just wanted to be on the team. From what I've heard, Becky does a good job of explaining to them their role. I am guessing that some want a different experience (whether soccer-wise or college in general) and transfer out. UF is a huge school. Mark at FSU seems to have a different approach. He recruits a much smaller number of players, brings in the best internationals he can find, and then decides who gets to play. If he doesn't see you contributing, he (again, from what I've heard) counsels you out and helps you find a new place. It seems to me that FSU is more "cut-throat." And I'm an FSU alum! But it's hard to argue with the best program in the country over the last 5-8 years and the number of professional players developed while there.
Nearly all of FSU's international players are professional, or quasi-professional, before the get to Tallahassee, are they not!? That's why his teams have been good. He's basically recruiting young pro players--some if not many of whom are a year older than the U.S. freshman counterparts.
CBG will be the one to determine that. He has recently been so busy with his real job, that he just ran out of the time it took to keep the spreadsheet up. As some of us have surmised over the years, his labor of love has always taken more time than most of us could imagine investing week after week as a wonderful service to the WoSo community. When he communicated with me he indicated that since it had fallen so far behind, he did not know how practical it would be to resurrect it when he might find time to get back to it. I think that everyone who has used his spreadsheet over the years has been amazed at its quality. He reached out as necessary to vet information coming in so as to avoid so many of the bloopers that (for example) sneak into TDS data and his format was wonderfully user friendly and complete (especially as compared to the pros at TDS..... Hmmm, maybe TDS should offer Brian a fat salary and benefits to clean up and manage their database.....) If CBG does get back in the saddle and resurrects his spreadsheet, I will be amazed (and delighted). But having spent so much time and effort for nearly a decade putting out such a quality product, none of us should be surprised that such a good thing may have to come to an end. I, for one, can only thank him profusely, acknowledge his dedication and effort over the years, and wish him well.
So we have no place to go now for a solid commitment list--except TopDrawer, but one has to subscribe to get their best info, yes? I like to follow collegiate soccer but not enough to pay for a site--call me cheap. SoccerWire also keeps a list, now that I think about it--just not as good. We miss you, CBG!
I was under the impression coaches themselves used that spreadsheet. How do they know who's "hands off"? I was thinking the NCAA should be paying for it or any clearinghouse but then remembered that technically, they have nothing to do with verbals.