Is There a Trend Towards Parity?

This will literally never happen. The only realistic way this could happen is if a brand-new program was started with a full slate of 14 scholarships, and even then there are big problems (see below). Otherwise, where is this money coming from? Are you just letting players graduate and then not awarding any scholarships for several years, during which time your team will be terrible and you will probably be fired?

Even if you DID have 14 full rides to award in one year (say, at a brand-new, fully funded program), recruiting happens 2-3 years in advance, so you'd be recruiting 2016 or 17 grads (as all the good 14s and 15s and many 16s are already committed). What happens in 2014 and 2015? You lose, a lot, and even when you do have money, top players don't want to go to your program.

Finally - nobody gets all the players they want. Not UNC, not UVa, not Notre Dame, nobody. You might get 3 or 4 of your top choices IF everything went right. What do you do with the rest of the money? You end up with second and third choices, likely not worth the crazy no-scholarship years you suffered through.

You get points for creative thinking though! Sorry to spoil it.

 

I think folks are forgetting there are all sorts of other ways to get students an education free or virtually so besides athletic scholarships.

Academic money is first, of course. At many schools, you get a reduction in fees according to your academic performance. It is no mystery that athletes at those school tend to do well.

Some schools with big endowments can give ALL students virtually free tuitions, usually based on need, but the standards are pretty generous ( upper middle income) Stanford and most of the Ivys fall into this group. (The Ivys give no athletic scholarships). Even schools with much lower endowments give grants in aid to a pretty large percentage of students under a variety of programs. A partial scholarship might be all that is needed for most students to get them through college for free.

Several states have programs that reclassify out of state athletes as in state for tuition purposes. The Florida, California, Oregon, Washington, and until recently, N. Carolina systems do or did this. I haven't checked other states. This can be an up to 80% reduction in tuition. The Florida law on this is curiously written in that once you gain in state residency by virtue of being an athlete, it appears you don't lose it if you quit the team.

New York of course has the Regents scholarship and Cornell scholarships, which you get by scoring high on a test.

In California, by state law, players who have been to the Chula Vista training center are eligible for free tuition at cal system schools.. ( are there any top soccer players who haven't been there?)

And there are grants from foundations for things like diversity that aren't athletic money, but can be shown to have been disproportionally directed to athletes ( Robertson grants to Duke and UNC are an example)

Pell grants also have seen disproportional allocation in some states.

Lastly, the incentive might be other than financial. Athletes get reduced entry requirements through what are called "special enrollment" at Cal system schools including UCLA and Cal, the only hard requirement in the listed online position paper for enrollment of athletes is that the NCAA considers them eligible, and that a coach can't jeopardize the team with NCAA probation. Freedom of information requests in the past have shown that between 85 and 94% of all athletes at Cal and UCLA were special enrollments. The UCLA special enrollment program for non-athletes is around 3%, the last time I checked. Other studies have shown that virtually no BCS programs are exempt from some kind of special enrollment program for athletes, and not just in the revenue sports.

So the 14 scholarship limit, which can be allocated as partials, can be only a suplement to round out the total package a school can offer an athlete at many schools.


So the concept of getting the super class with your 14 scholarships probably isn't necessary to get a great class. And I agree with Enzo the P that nobody gets whoever they want any more.

 

One more I forgot is that in most states families of service or diplomatic corps are eligible for in state tuition rates.

 

Good perspectives above. On the money argument, the schools that go after instate kids (name a school or conference, and almost all but the private schools do it to stretch recruiting budgets) need to be a little more honest with recruits...because it still seems that the out of state kids on scholarship /foreign recruits get preference in getting field time or into the line up. I kind of think of it this way.....instate kids are taken for granted...out of state/foreign kids cost the coaches money, so it is self-fulfilling..they need to prove they made a good purchase. I was thinking a couple years back when Univ of FL had a HUGE roster, and the fall out was really bad for instate kids after Freshman year. Kindof wonder what the recruiting promises looked like. For some though, it was a way to get into the university, for others, hopes and dreams of busting into the starting lineup shattered. In essence, an athletic scholarship would help players understand their value to the program.

So, going back up to your points...the private schools certainly have more "on squad parity", where some of the public universities will have a range. A good program will be able to have a really good set of 20 - 24 players that can all get on the field, wouldn't be a lull in a schools record and they will rise to the top. If the sport starts to limit rosters, coaches will have to be more selective across their rosters, and not just fill in spots on the last four or five players they need with who is a willing and free player, and watch the parity among the top 100 programs really kick up.

 

For the past 5 years or so I've been trying to wrap my head as to best express what "parity" really looks like. As an overall cogent discussion of the topic I see posts from 30 to 50 in this thread (above) are pretty much state of the art. In re-reading these posts there is some really good thinking and good analysis regarding a definition of parity. (What a smart bunch of posters!)

Another definition is the emotional content of the move toward parity. I think that posts 178 - 184 on the 2014 UNC thread are examples of what part of advancing parity looks like too. Here we we see the angst of fans who are used to supporting a winning team dealing with the advance of parity.

Past high success breeds high fan expectations which are difficult to deal with when inevitably life moves on in different directions. When this happens, we fans get real testy and make whiny noises or lash out. This, it seems to me, is also an earmark of parity advancing.


[[We humans like images or analogies for understanding ... While parity does not mean that one or a few teams dominate a large pool year after year, it also does not mean that there should be complete homogeneity. Parity is not when all teams have .500 records like a bowl of cold pudding. It's more like a pot of pudding on the stove bubbling away. Competitive heat is being applied to the bottom and a few early adopter teams bubble up with a big splash from time to time while others make a fairly consistent stream of smaller bubbles. But as the pot gets bigger, wider, and deeper one can see that there are more big bubbles all over the pot and from a distance it all seems homogeneous after all. Fans, on the other hand, are very tightly focused on their own bubble source and don't fully realize that there are larger forces operating, especially if the competitive heat starts to diminish under their bubble. Whining and finger pointing begin.]]

(geesh... this analogy sure broke down fast...but like a loyal fan I stuck with it to the end!)

 

Great "hard data"!

Editorial comment?!? Your data sure looks pretty air tight.

First Graph:
Over 34 years, the national champions have kept their opponents steady at about a half goal per game while themselves showing a steady decrease in goals scored per game (from about 4.7 to 2) If this isn't seen as obvious evidence of increasing parity, I don't know what will.

Second Graph:
With the data base far larger than the national champions, there is an equally powerful indication that parity is advancing. One goal deciding games are steadily increasing over 34 years while games decided by 3 goals are decreasing.

Not that this evidence will eliminate the arguments for those who feel that parity is not yet here for WoSo, but the advance of parity is not longer in the realm of speculative theorizing.

Thanks for for continuing with all of this good work!!

 

I disagree, to an extent. You've got relative parity in NCAA men's basketball. By that I mean that, in my opinion, teams in the ranking/RPI range of, say, 15 to 40 are quite a bit better and more competitive than they would have been 20 or 25 years ago--and this is why one sees a pretty broad range of Final Four teams. However, the usual suspects are still winning the national titles--Louisville, Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Connecticut--all traditional powers. Connecticut is "new" traditional power in the sense that its first national title came in the early aughts, I think, but it has won 3 championships overall.

Likewise, I think that what we are seeing in women's soccer is the second-tier teams--those in the 21-50 range (RPI, rating, whatever) are most definitely getting better. I think you are seeing Southern schools--and in particular SEC schools--getting better and better, and I think the SEC is already becoming pretty formidable--and maybe the Big12 too. Alabama, a middling soccer program since forever (including last year), just beat florida state. Auburn and South Carolina came very close to getting to the College Cup last year, losing tight elite eight games. Signs of parity. It is a bit harder to achieve parity in soccer than in basketball, IMO, because there are only 5 starters in basketball--and if you can recruit even two excellent players, you stand a chance of having a very strong team. In soccer, with 11 starters, you need half a dozen or more very good players to compete at a high level--and that is harder to achieve. But I certainly think there are more good players entering the collegiate ranks than ever before--many from elite travel club teams and seemingly a growing number from overseas--and the talent is spreading out. The top programs are still dominant when it comes to landing the elite players, but in the, say, 3-star range, I'd suggest that the talent is spreading.

 

I would just add that the liberal substitution rules benefit the established programs ... because of the compressed season/frequency of games and the fact that those teams can rotate players in/out and they just have more of the better players so the level doesn't drop as much. As you say, teams need about half a dozen excellent players (at least 1 in each line up the spine) --- but those players will be forced to play big minutes. The platooning can wear them down during any individual game and certainly the less recovery time between games.

Identifying the truly "elite players" would be become more obvious with limited subs and more time between games....when the starting XI plus a few subs are competing against each other. The talent is definitely spreading as Anson Dorrance has pointed out as well.

 

coastal/southerly P5 (SEC/ACC grass/P10) > interior/northerly P5 (ACC rubber/Bigs 10 and 12) > non-P5. Follows the "elite" club money and density. Always will be. Not much fun.

 

I would expect there to be a very high correlation between goal differential or goal ratio (goals scored divided by goals allowed) and very favorable won/loss record (or pts per game). And the National Champion a high % of the time would be a team which ranked very highly in goal ratio or in the top 10. Reflects strength or balance both offensively and defensively. The most historically dominant NBA teams win by large average margins. I would expect the same in soccer.

 

Definitely fun and strong data! Just to play devil's advocate, though, I wonder if the downward trend is a shift in strategy more than a shift in parity... I'm sure both are at play, of course, but if blowouts are going away due simply to a defensive shift, then the GF statistic could fall even if the W/L ratio doesn't move much - that is, the games *look* closer, but the teams you'd expect to win are still controlling the games enough to keep their PPG intact. The fact that the GA statistic has barely moved is definitely an interesting thing to keep in mind in that sense. (As I said earlier, though, just playing devil's advocate - I'm of course just splitting hairs, since you could easily also argue that a team with the same players using a different defense strategy still counts as a "better team", meaning the defensive shift alone still counts as increasing parity.)

 

This isn't even a valid debate.
Parity began years ago, and continues to compound its rate of return more & more over time.

 

2016 USC was a dog who turned into Cinderella late