There are plenty of spaces for US kids at public US public universities. The number of foreign students recruited to play sports is tiny compared to the overall student body, who are largely American. I would also guess that most college sports teams are largely made up of Americans, but soccer happens to be one sports where the rest of the world has a head start of promoting the beautiful game. Arguing that foreign players are hogging university places makes no sense at all and sounds, I'm sorry to say, a bit whiney.
has there been a ranking of the 2017 recruiting classes? Additionally, having a top % recruiting class does not equate to having the best team, chemistry, dedication and coaching all come in to play. You can have the best team on paper (kinda like how our National teams look), but can be beaten consistently by teams that just play better together..
Yes. The top 30 were identified as of December of last year. (See post 69 on this thread.) There obviously have been some changes in the last 4 months, but the over all pecking order has not changed that much. Suffice it to say that UCLA and Stanford remain at the top of the pecking order, with everyone else falling into line behind them. At the moment I have UCLA (even without Pugh, but with Canales added in) scored at 10.87 with Stanford at 10.57...way ahead of all other schools.) I'll be trying to get a little update out next month with a final complete re-do in late August or September when all of the foreign players will be known. (I must admit that without CBG's work available, this will be a much larger undertaking of research. One of the cool things about CBG's format was that the various well known accolades were conveniently grouped which left left only the more nuanced research to be done. This year, it will be back to basics with who knows how much time to do an adequate job.)
Against my better judgement, I am going to respond. 1. Athletics are not the only area of University that actively recruit International students. High Achieving academic international students are a thriving and active part of Engineering, Sciences, Arts etc. In fact most Universities "brag" about the number of countries there University represents. It is a badge of honor. Not a suck on the American government. 2. The number of Internationals really isn't even significant enough to make a dent. Some of these schools have 1000s of students. 1-3 International soccer players isn't going to register. 3. College sports is a business that benefits young females, in particular. Many internationals come because the quality of player, training, facility, competition and schooling is difficult to find in their home country. 4. Coaches are paid to win. To suggest that coaches are somehow morally obligated to recruit a lesser player, simply because of where they were born is some odd combination of ridiculous, discriminatory, uneducated and short-sided. I didn't refute your arguements because they don't make sense. Your poor attempt at Old English, your nonsensical circular arguments and overall
Wow, the Holmes pollution is spreading. Or is it a virus? Just put the bigot on ignore since no one seems willing to ban him. Serious question- What do you think would be the ROI on Mallory Pugh's decision? UCLA degree vs the extra years as a pro? I guess she was a 2016 but every year now more and more women's players will be making this decision. Since she's solidly in the USWNT pool, she would be one of the better paid "Federation" players in the NWSL and so make low 100s I believe. What would she get in Europe? Edit - just found this article about Pugh below. She'll make 200K just from US Soccer under the new CBA. The Wash Spirit have the top allocation slot to take her but they gutted their roster and she doesn't want to play there so someone, like Portland, will have to make them a deal or she could go to Europe but timing is bad. Weird situation. http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2017...-pro-team-uswnt-nwsl-psg-lyon-portland-thorns
I think you're looking in the wrong place. The question isn't what she will make in soccer salary, it's what she'll make from either Nike or Adidas (and other potential sponsors), which will be far beyond her salary. Her counselors apparently have reached the conclusion that the time is now to maximize her returns from sponsorships. Perhaps they see other young sponsorship competitors breathing down her neck.
Speculation says Nike and or Adidas both have Contract offers that will pay her 1 to 1.5 million over 4 years If things go well, you can look a few years down the road and she has the qualities to earn Morgan money with endorsements. This article states Morgan makes more than 3 Million/year http://heavy.com/sports/2015/07/ale...sements-contract-highest-paid-soccer-players/ Id say anything close to those numbers makes this a no brainer
Agree with all this about the sponsors but she can't just be a US player. She's really not that well known yet and we don't have a women's world cup for a couple more years. She's going to have to play somewhere other than US camps and friendlies and that team/location/market will help determine her commercial value. no? And she has to keep performing at a pretty high level to keep that value up. And btw- look at Alex Morgan. She should have the highest endorsement value out there amoung the US Soccer pool.
Talk about being in the riiight place..hehe...at the riiight time. How's your burger? Her skin tone is totally driving it. Steph, Klay...LaVar is not off his rocker, he's brilliant...he just might get the billion if the kids pan out...mixed America is in.
Was going to respond to Eddie in total agreement about not only being in the right place at the right time AND the need to play in the right market and continue to improve as the Women's big stage of the World Cup is still a couple of years away ..... then ...... the skin color of the player is brought up by the resident idiot on this board. In a word - ENOUGH! Eddie - I am taking your advice and will finally set my account to ignore posts by this fool; if I was an administrator and was tech savvy this dude would be banned from fouling this normally decent forum.
I have seen her play many times and going to Europe could be lucrative but she is NOT a euro type soccer player. She is a US soccer player. Fast, athletic, highly touted, attractive etc. Unless she can learn fast and get on board she will be coming home ala Rapinoe. Europe is a soccer culture, they are not impressed by what the US thinks a soccer player is. She is not Hamm, certainly not Marta and most definitely not the GOAT Akers. Time will tell. Playing in the US for a few years then going to Europe would probably do her best.
Hey folks - these forums are meant for civil discourse. Even if you feel you are responding to a racist troll, we ask that you not resort to personal attacks. Feel free instead to send me or @Ismitje a note to take a look. Thank you.
so now that the school year is almost complete, and incoming classes are pretty much finalized, there might be a few more transfers, but does anyone have a top 100 recruiting classes for 2017?
See Post 153 above. To do the job with reasonable diligence, it takes some serious time, so I'll try my best to get it out next month and the final version in August/September when we will know all of the players (especially internationals) some of whom will simply show up on rosters without any public foreknowledge.
Gotcha, Thanks for doing this.. sorry that post got lost in a whole mess of racist rants on this forum, which is how I overlooked it... will look forward to seeing the fruits of your labors!
I’ve been working diligently on getting the final 2017 recruiting class rankings out before the official games get under way, and it looks like I can possible finish it up later today (9/16 Wednesday) evening. But before publishing the top 60 (or 70) classes, let me share some interesting byproducts of being so heavily involved over the past three weeks trying to find, collect, and calculate all of the data. The big news is that there is a sea change underway in college soccer recruiting including massive changes in the pool of recruits. Ill post that topic on a new thread. I will comment here from a meta perspective about doing this process and in particular say again how incredibly useful and appreciated cbg’s spreadsheet was for all of those years. Brian’s work allowed me to prepare class rankings with only about 20 to 25 hours of labor. (This current effort will take about 110 hours when I am finished.) The big time saver was that the accuracy and completeness of his data allowed me to accomplish two critical tasks with reasonable effort. First, I could use his data to quickly target the 70 or 80 most likely schools that would eventually include the top 50. So I didn’t have to manually initially rank perhaps 100 or so incoming classes to be sure that I was not excluding a deserving team (and I still fear that I might have!) Secondly, when I then have the pool of recruiting classes in mind to begin the detailed work of examining each player’s strengths, Brian’s data allowed me to move quickly as it contained most of the useful accolades and experience markers of the top 300 or so players and I would only have to dig for data on the unknown below-the-radar players that fill the rosters. Needless to say, I really miss the up to date spreadsheet, and so have to rely on general google searches, bios on the college sites, or on Top Drawer which is both spotty and not as detailed because they, in part, rely on players to send in stuff. (No offense to TDS, as their site works as a business... and that business does not have to please folks like me to be successful!) One would think that the college class announcements or bios of players would do the trick, but that would be far from the case. First, effusive praise of recruits is of the order, and while I can see through much of that and look for facts, the real issues are the obfuscation or the complete lack of useful data. Obfuscation would include not being clear about whether an ID camp was a local, regional, or national one and which organization was conducting it. ...Or claiming All American status without mentioning whether is was Top Drawer’s version, (or just on their AA “watch lists”), NSCAA High School, or NSCAA youth. The various All American accolades mean different things and I weight them accordingly. ...Or many college bios mention experience ODP as if there was only one version. (Was it a camp or a team roster. Was it regional or state? Or was it just a try-out? And how long ago was the experience? And which state also makes a real difference.) Then of course, college bios sometimes leave out really important information -the poster child being Vanderbilt. While a Vandy recruit might have had a National Youth Team camp or two under their belt or regional ODP travel experience, one might never know because the bio only talks briefly about their high school experience and then mentions why it was that they chose Vanderbilt over a list of other schools who lost out on this recruit. (No offense to Vanderbilt, their bios are not designed for research purposes and don’t have to be.) But enough of this blather..... (I just thought I share some of how this all works because there are always questions.) I’ll post the rankings tomorrow evening and will post on a different thread the real interesting information on what is truly changing in a big way.
2017 DIVISION 1 RECRUITING CLASS RANKINGS Below are posted my best shot at the top women's recruiting classes for 2017 in Division I soccer. As always, two things are true: the usual suspects are at the top of the list and there are also some surprises in the list. As briefly noted in the above post (and expanded in my "Changes" post in the new thread), the data is so robust that I went ahead and have posted the top 60 classes instead of the top 50. The quality of #60 this year is an easy match for the #50 class in years past. A quick review of highlights. The top tier is occupied by the twin west coast recruiting giants, Stanford and UCLA. As they were in 2014, 2015, (and would have been in 2016 if I had known that Mallory Pugh would not be playing for UCLA after all) Stanford once again in 2017 has signed the #1 class in the nation. The Palo Alto Pipeline remains in fine shape and serves of purpose of delivering the best prospects to the Cardinal soccer pitch. And this year, it scooped up transfer U20 captain Samantha Hiatt to cement their top perch. And I didn't even give Catarina Macario a top individual ranking. I could have, but she is a special case in my numerically driven system as she has not been tested in the USYNT cauldron, even though everything I read says that she would dominate there too. But tier one is also occupied by UCLA and the whole point of posting the rankings in tiers is that the teams in the same tier are supposed to be, practically speaking, indistinguishable from each other if they were observed on a playing field together. The Bruins also have a stupendous team as good as any in the last 5 years. (But no one will ever likely beat their breath taking amalgamation of talent in 2011.) So for this year, a class that includes, for starters, the likes of Ashley Sanchez, Marley Canales, and Kennedy Faulknor, and then goes on to include 9 other great players including Karina Rodriguez and Vivianna Villacorta is fairly virtually tied for the number one spot. Tier II is led in 2017 by perennial powerhouse Florida State, and includes other familiar names such as UNC, USC, Virginia, Cal, Penn State, Duke, and Michigan. These schools are all closely matched in the strength of the top talent they have recruited. At FSU, Mark has per usual topped his class with thee top-flight internationals in Gloria Villalobos (Costa Rica), Gabby Carle (Canada), and Anna Patton (England), but this time he has backed up these three sure fire starters with 8 other fine players headed by keeper Brooke Bollinger, and midfielder Angeline Daly for one of his strongest classes ever. 13 schools are grouped into tier III, and 8 of them are there by virtue of picking up top foreign national team players. Its the coming trend! The poster child would be Florida Gulf Coast which parlayed 5 foreign players into their highest ever ranked recruiting class. Tier IV shows solid recruiting classes with some names that, within the last 5 years have been associated with top performances such as West Virginia, Notre Dame, Rutgers, BYU, and Boston College. And Tier V is stronger than ever with a mix of well known soccer schools and some up-and-coming newcomers. I will remind fans that the system is designed to possibly (if I ever would have the time and energy) carve the whole of Division I women's soccer teams (335 or so) into ten tiers of recruiting class strengths. In theory, tier X would be the lowest strength and would involve perhaps 80 or 90 schools, tier IX would be next with about 70 schools. As the pyramid gets higher, the top 5 tiers should represent only about the top 50 to 60 schools or about the top 20% of the Division I colleges playing women's soccer. This is to say that it is not shame but a splendid achievement to be in tier V -- the top 20% of all of the competition. As always, do let me know if you spot obvious errors. (I am human and often do this work when I am very tired....) Oh, a reminder, these classes include any known transfers as well as the incoming freshmen. Cheers! THE TOP 60 TIER I 10.80 STANFORD 10.72 UCLA TIER II 9.67 FLORIDA STATE 9.65 NORTH CAROLINA 9.35 USC 8.98 VIRGINIA 8.92 CALIFORNIA 8.70 PENN STATE 8.70 DUKE 8.49 MICHIGAN TIER III 8.25 SANTA CLARA 8.22 OHIO STATE 8.05 LOUISVILLE 7.96 CONNECTICUT 7.94 SYRACUSE 7.93 TEXAS 7.87 FLORIDA GULF COAST 7.83 TCU 7.82 LSU 7.80 TEXAS A&M 7.80 OREGON 7.77 FLORIDA 7.72 WAKE FOREST TIER IV 7.49 WEST VIRGINIA 7.45 COLORADO 7.44 RUTGERS 7.40 TENNESSEE 7.39 TEXAS TECH 7.35 ARKANSAS 7.32 CLEMSON 7.27 BYU 7.13 BOSTON COLLEGE 7.12 SOUTH FLORIDA 7.05 NOTRE DAME 7.05 KENT STATE 7.05 ARIZONA STATE 7.03 SOUTH CAROLINA TIER V 6.97 AUBURN 6.89 BUTLER 6.88 VANDERBILT 6.84 UC IRVINE 6.77 UC DAVIS 6.77 PITTSBURGH 6.77 MISSOURI 6.68 NORTH CAROLINA STATE 6.59 LONG BEACH STATE 6.55 WISCONSIN 6.55 PORTLAND 6.55 BAYLOR 6.44 UC SANTA BARBARA 6.39 PEPPERDINE 6.36 INDIANA 6.30 OKLAHOMA STATE 6.27 GEORGIA 6.25 ST. MARY'S 6.24 ILLINOIS 6.22 GEORGETOWN 6.15 PRINCETON 6.12 VIRGINIA TECH 6.12 ALABAMA
Thanks this is great stuff. I believe the YNT "scouts" do a poor job at ID in the pre college years. Therefore, my opinion of the ceiling of some of these highly ranked kids and projections on how they will perform in college is different than the USSF. I have seen many top ranked kids play in person and on very unsuccessful YNTs. One of my favorite college players is Savannah Mckaskill. She didn't even play forward until she hit SC. Was a centerback as late as U17. Region 3 ODP when it was a little stronger than it is now but no YNT call ups. Of interest From TDS: 2012 D Savannah McCaskill, Carolina Elite Soccer Academy U17 A versatile center back, McCaskill is one of the best players on her team, and is strong enough to cope with her defensive responsibilities. She’s good on the ball, which allows her to pop up and play in a central midfield role
Soccerhunter appreciate your work as always! I know you have a consistent system and it gives us all a chance to see which programs are bringing in top talent. I like to compare your rankings TopDrawerSoccer and I put much more stock in your list and rankings system. For instance you have Ohio State's very strong class at 15 and TD doesn't even have them on their top 40 or an honorable mention. Same thing goes for Florida Gulf Coast, no mention on TD. Two east coast programs you recognized are UConn at 14 and Syracuse at 15, yet TD has the Huskies at honorable mention and the Orangewomen at 35. They don't do research as they should and I appreciate all you put into it.
Thanks for the good words. I think that there may be two differences between what I do and TDS does (although I could be mistaken.) The big difference is that I decided to add transfers to the class rankings. (You may remembers a few years ago when I made this change as I then discussed the logic of doing so. Simply put, most transfers will have three or two years to play for their new team so they will definitely have a potential impact. Freshmen coming in are not proven and may have less of an impact than a transfer who has been already tested in the college environment.) So if TDS and others who rank recruiting classes to not include transfers, their numbers will be different than mine. Additionally, I try to be diligent about looking at all of the players in the incoming class INCLUDING those who seem to have no accolades. It often turns out that some of these players have unreported histories and are quite skilled and experienced. I am not sure if others who rate classes are doing this research. (On the other hand, I am also aware that I must be missing some data when I can not find it as I dig around the internet that other raters might have found or be privy to.) So these are the reasons that we may get different scores.
Im not sure if this question has been answered elsewhere, but I can't seem to find an answer to my particular dilemma. I'd be really grateful for advice. My daughter has a verbal agreement with a university, which was agreed a year ago. We feel incredibly lucky to have the offer, which is a full-ride to a school that is very good (but not top) academically, and very good (but not top) in soccer (in the top 10 on the NCAA list). Just a little about her...she plays for the national team and a top club, and is in 11th grade now. Because we live overseas, she hasn't been seen by any other schools, and is now wondering if she should have tried to approach the schools with the very top soccer programs (UNC, UCLA, Stanford). My question is: if she contacted the top programs, would that put her verbal agreement at risk, and is it "snakey" (i.e. in bad faith) to look around when she's already accepted an offer? Do other kids keep looking around after they've accepted an offer? Needless to say, we don't want to do anything to jeopardize her offer.
That shows poor morals and I would advise against it. Think how irate you would be if you found out the school your daughter committed to had been shopping around for a better player. If you commit somewhere stay with it.