NASL Files Federal Antitrust Lawsuit Against US Soccer

Discussion in 'MLS: News & Analysis' started by Knave, Sep 19, 2017.

  1. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I wonder if he can point me to articles discussing the 40+ year angst at Orioles fans pissing on Old Glory. And NC State fans. (And probably many teams with red as a primary color.)
     
  2. Gamecock14

    Gamecock14 Member+

    May 27, 2010
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I am in favor of either letting the players split an amount equal to what the coaching staff makes or splitting a share of the revenue like a professional league does.

    ie) Alabama pays it's coaching staff 18 mil a year and there are 85 members on the team. The players (if they get paid equally) would get 211k a year.

    You could make it so people who stay in school get paid more or people who start get paid more. The amount of money available far exceeds what college tuition is now, especially for a public institution.
     
    jayd8888, Len and JasonMa repped this.
  3. Beau Dure

    Beau Dure Member+

    May 31, 2000
    Vienna, VA
    Someone -- maybe Jason Davis, maybe Neil Morris -- was chatting with Dennis Crowley, the co-signer of Silva's pro/rel action at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the owner of the NPSL's Kingston team. (Which includes some interesting experiments in transparency.)

    The question came up -- if we had pro/rel and you won the NPSL, would you be ready to move up?

    The answer was no.

    We've all heard the arguments that zillions of zillionaires will throw scads of money at their local clubs if they have that 1% chance of making it to the top division one day. I don't see it. Crowley isn't exactly poor, and he ain't applying to NISA unless he suddenly re-ran the numbers in a big way.
     
  4. Coyote89

    Coyote89 Member

    Atlanta United
    United States
    May 18, 2017
    Wow, soccer thread morphed into a paying college football players debate. Ok, I'll bite.

    I happen to be one of those contrarians who thinks the LAST thing we shoud do is make college sports more like the pros. About 6-8% of the players that sign with FBS programs each year will make the NFL. The other 92-94% will rely upon their degree to provide for themselves and their families for the rest of their lives. We need a system that is in the best interest of the 92-94%, not the small fraction that will become millionaires via the NFL.

    And that means less emphasis on sports, and more on academics. How about higher admissions standards, ridding the system of academic fraud and steering players into jock majors just to keep them eligible, fewer year-round demands for practice time, film study, and weight training, providing the time needed for players to join campus organizations, to hold internships, or even pursue study abroad in the off-season like other regular students. And we could use a lot more emphasis on player safety. If you want to give the players something "extra" for their effort, do it in a way that doesn't de-emphasize the importance of the classroom rather than just paying them for their participation in sports and continuing to set them up to fail by having them structure their entire lives around their sport when it's their education they will rely upon when their playing career is over.
     
    BalanceUT repped this.
  5. Gamecock14

    Gamecock14 Member+

    May 27, 2010
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    That's good and all for schools that don't make enough revenue, but a the top 60-75 teams bring in more revenue than the "scholarship" is worth. In state tuition + board/room/fees is around 25k to 35k per year in state cost of attendance. A school's athletic department would pay $2,125,000 to $2,975,000 for 85 full scholarships. I use in state because that is what a school classifies an academic merit scholarship even if they are out of state.

    The players "cost" the school 2-3 mil in education. Schools in the top 5-6 conferences make much more than that. My alma mater averaged 60 mil a year in direct football revenue and more in revenue from sponsors who support the entire athletic program. Those sponsors didn't do it because the diving program was top half in the SEC for a year.

    It's even worse at basketball schools where the school's athletic department would pay $375,000 to $525,000 in scholarships while the teams in big conferences make 8-35 million in revenue.

    In an ideal world, your plan would be excellent, but these kids bring in ridiculous amounts of money and often the "cost" of the education is 5-10% of revenue brought in.

    Though, this only applies to the 60-75 power conference schools, maybe more schools if you include the basketball teams. And these are also sports that generate revenue for the school. Womens basketball at schools like Tennessee and UConn generate revenue, but it is not as close in scale to the mens football and basketball.

    We can move this to PM.
     
    El Chico Carmona and Len repped this.
  6. Paul Berry

    Paul Berry Member+

    Notts County and NYCFC
    United States
    Apr 18, 2015
    Nr Kingston NY
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Clubs don't pay for youth soccer training outside of their academy system. Soccer is just more ingrained in Europe, and geography helps.
     
    Bill Archer repped this.
  7. scoachd1

    scoachd1 Member+

    Jun 2, 2004
    Southern California
    Agreed. The carrot of college sports has resulted in youth sports running amok. The travel team craze seemed to start with soccer which was ripe for picking because so few parents had a clue. Baseball started with keeping post season "all-star" teams together and then it started growing from there. Now it seems to have infected virtually everything. Football was largely exempt but now they have these passing leagues.

    Part of the problem is our recreational youth sports system is so heavily aged based. As a result of this vacuum, travel team entrepreneur's have filled the void. The ironic part is that when many kids reach the college finish line, they and their parents find out its not cracked up to be what they thought it would. Many kids in D1 would probably go play in D3 schools if they had it to do all over again. Many others end up going out of state and paying more money to marginal colleges because they could get on a team where a large number won't really play.
     
  8. scoachd1

    scoachd1 Member+

    Jun 2, 2004
    Southern California
    My kids played baseball, basketball and soccer. Most of the free baseball and basketball coaches I saw were better than most of the paid soccer coaches I saw. At some point, with older, elite (I don't mean in name, but top 1%) level players, you need skilled coaches. But a couple of knowledgeable coaches to teach volunteer coaches is all you need in a well structured league the could effectively train a large number of pre-teens.

    Basketball is the #2 participation sport played by over a billion people and the US dominates with using almost exclusively volunteer coaches. In SoCal there is a shadow Hispanic scene that runs parallel to club soccer. What happens is that all the better club teams grab onto the Hispanic players who learned to play with volunteer coaches in local leagues so they can win games and attract parents with money that equate winning with good coaching. It is also why coaching girls teams tends to be more profitable than coaching boys soccer locally as Hispanics had been less interested in investing in girls soccer (this has been changing a bit).

    The overwhelming majority of the travel is completely unnecessary unless you live in a remote area or are an older player playing at elite levels. You want higher level competition play up a half year. Most US youth sports teams prior to U16 are a complete joke. Much of it is simply an arms race to find the oldest most mature kids for your team. This is certainly the way ODP and the youth national soccer teams were run and why we'd to really well until the majority of kids from other countries finished puberty and our ephemeral maturity advantage from picking travel team from such large pools of players disappeared.
     
  9. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The reason any zillionaires throw money at soccer clubs at all, anywhere, is that owning a top-division club carries a lot of prestige. (Hoffenheim is the exception that proves the rule -- I can't think of a single other zillionaire motivated mainly by love for his club rather than personal prestige.) But ultimately that comes from the fact that soccer is the most popular sport in those countries. There is very little prestige in owning a MLS team. If pro/rel were to start today, there still wouldn't be a lot of incentive to throw money at an amateur club. Not when you could throw the money at, say, buying a NHL team instead. It'd be cheaper, you'd have more social cachet, and you'd get it sooner.
     
  10. The Franchise

    The Franchise Member+

    Nov 13, 2014
    Bakersfield, CA
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    For that matter, half the NHL lacks cachet. Maybe more.
     
    jaykoz3 repped this.
  11. whiteonrice04

    whiteonrice04 Member+

    Sep 8, 2006
    #436 whiteonrice04, Oct 3, 2017
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2017
    You have be be careful when talking about "revenue" and using the word "make".
    Revenue is the total amount of money coming in. Profit would be a better gauge. Running those programs isn't free and costs the schools millions upon millions. From maintaining facilities, paying coaching and athletic staff, travel, hotels, meals, medical expenses, recruiting, scholarships and equipment. It adds up. Yes, many of them have millions left over but some don't. I have read articles that dive into the facts and state many more programs are losing money than you would guess. They also often use the profit from their primary sports program to fund the other programs.
    I am not necessarily arguing. I am just saying that looking at revenue numbers is not what you should be doing. That is very misleading.

    I think if they were ever going to pay the college athletes it would have to be set up as some sort of trust fund and they would get paid when they graduated. Obviously they should still be paid in that scenario if they are injured. That would definitely cut down on as many leaving school early. Then maybe you would have scandals of schools flunking athletes on purpose so they didn't have to pay them. Not sure the best method but I think if they ever get paid it should be after they're done at the school.
     
    The Franchise repped this.
  12. ElNaranja

    ElNaranja Member+

    Houston Dynamo
    United States
    Jul 16, 2017
    Schools might have more money if they stopped paying NFL level wages for coaches and technical staff. But thatd require a group effort so no dice there likely.
     
  13. billf

    billf Member+

    May 22, 2001
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Golf and Tennis are also far more expensive and we are cranking out male golfers and female tennis players by the boatload too. College golf is also becoming so good that players are pro ready and highly competitive in the low mid 20s instead of the low to mid 30s. Hardly a revenue generating sport to boot.
     
    Bill Archer repped this.
  14. Coyote89

    Coyote89 Member

    Atlanta United
    United States
    May 18, 2017
    We're getting into the weeds here but just keep two things in mind...

    • The "revenue" programs (generally football and men's basketball) pay for all 20 of the non-revenue programs. So, it's not just a matter of the 85 players on football scholarship. You need to cover the scholarships, travel expense, coaching salaries, facilities, etc for 20+ sports in most cases. As a result, every athletic program outside the Power 5 is subsidized by the school (usually at least $20 million per year) and nearly half of the athletic programs within the Power 5 lose money as well.

    • 92-94% of these kids will never make the NFL (or NBA) and they need to take academics seriously while in college. They need to graduate, with a real degree in a real major, and it would certainly help if they had some job-related experience like any other college grad. Yet we have a system where all of the focus and rewards are on the sport they play and that only gets worse when you start paying them (over and above their scholarship) because there's even more risk and reward tied to their sport rather than their classwork.
     
    JasonMa repped this.
  15. billf

    billf Member+

    May 22, 2001
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The funny thing about this is that the salary floor for an NHL team is about the same as the top five MLS teams spend on payroll combined so its still orders of magnitude bigger. This brings up another one, the US is producing lots more top level hockey players today from all over the country despite the sport being so expensive.
     
    When Saturday Comes repped this.
  16. Bill Archer

    Bill Archer BigSoccer Supporter

    Mar 19, 2002
    Washington, NC
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Good point.

    College baseball also deserves a mention, since it's the rare kid who gets drafted as an 18 year old. But baseball is another sport where the upstream coaching is usually very very good. Youth baseball coaches, even down as low as T Ball, machine pitch and/or coach pitch, tend to be ex-high level players with a wealth of knowledge. And when you get to American Legion or Babe Ruth or Pony, you're not that far off from professional level coaching.

    Football is the sport that gets me though; the ONLY way to get into the pros is via college, and the ONLY way to get on a college team is to play high school football and FWIW now even junior high school is common.

    Which means that, for all intents and purposes, the average NFL draftee has had at least 8 and probably 10 years of high level instruction, uniforms, stadiums, travel and all the rest of it AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Their parents aren't footing the bill (there are some exceptions), the schools are. The NFL is then gifted with thousands of superbly trained athletes to choose from every year and it hasn't cost them a dime.

    I have yet to hear anyone suggest that the NFL or MLB or the NBA ought to pass along payment to these kids youth coaches and high schools, but somehow it's a crime that Clint Dempsey's U-10 coach isn't driving a Merc courtesy of MLS.

    I'll add one other thing, and that has to do with the quality ofyouth soccer coaching, which is universally maligned as nothing but a bunch of stupid fathers who know nothing.

    For many years I lived in a town called Newark, in Licking County Ohio. Population around 49,000. It's the 20th largest town in Ohio, but it's by far the biggest town in the county. A backwater by any stretch.

    For years I worked with the local youth soccer association, NASA. I coached a lot of teams, refereed a lot of games and worked a lot of Bingo nights where we raised the money that kept it going.

    (As you might guess, I had issues with them and they with me and they were not exactly teary eyed when they learned I was moving, but that's another story)

    Here is a summary page showing the experience of the coaching staff at this two-mule hick town:

    http://www.newarkareasoccer.org/Default.aspx?tabid=927427

    Most of them them have UEFA licenses and/or FA coaching credentials. All of them have coached in Europe in professional club youth systems.

    We're not talking a big city here. This is nowheresville, USA.

    Point being, yes, these guys are getting paid, and yes, they're likely worth it.

    Good youth coaching is everywhere, contrary to what a lot of people who know literally nothing will tell you. You still get some joke coaches in Saturday morning sandbox leagues, but even that is trending upward as ex-college players with extensive youth experience have kids are having kids and settling intoadult leadership roles.

    American soccer fans need to stop complaining that coaching is the problem or that paying for it is the problem. It's neither.

    And as I have said many, many, many times here and elsewhere: if you can't name a kid who has real talent but can't get onto a team because of money (and you can't) then you ought to shut up because you're talking out your ass.

    And if you DO know a kid with real talent and skill who can't afford soccer, please send me his name and location and I guarantee you that I can have him on a good club team in 72 hours, at no charge.
     
  17. billf

    billf Member+

    May 22, 2001
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I volunteer as a youth coach as well. I am certainly not a no nothing dad but I'm also not Mourinho. Our club pays a coach with a USSF A license to help us. He in turn provides us with trainers to supplement what we do. Those trainers are also similarly credentialed. Its not free. We pay for the fields, uniforms, lights, etc. It runs about $400 a year per player. I've also refereed at a level 90% of referees will never achieve. Neither coaching nor refereeing is easy but a path to help kids enjoy the game is open and available to anyone, especially those who think they can do better.
     
  18. BalanceUT

    BalanceUT RSL and THFC!

    Oct 8, 2006
    Appalachia
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It's what kept me from repping the otherwise excellent post.
     
  19. Darkwing McQuack

    Darkwing McQuack BigSoccer Supporter

    Nov 11, 2011
    Morrisville, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  20. dredgfan

    dredgfan Member+

    MLS
    Nov 5, 2004
    Denver or NOLA
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Sadly, I was that kid. And you offer wasn't available. There are plenty of these kids in the Shreveport area.
     
  21. Yoshou

    Yoshou Fan of the CCL Champ

    May 12, 2009
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Related.. According to SocTakes, the lawsuit vote was 6 for (Cosmos, Miami, Puerto Rico, Jacksonville, San Diego, and California), 1 unknown (Indy), NCFC abstained due to his position on USSF’s board, SanFran wasn’t asked to vote because of their financial situation, Edmonton wasn’t asked to vote because they are in discussion with CPL.

    https://www.soctakes.com/2017/10/03/how-each-nasl-team-voted-ussf-lawsuit/
     
    The Franchise and Gamecock14 repped this.
  22. Darkwing McQuack

    Darkwing McQuack BigSoccer Supporter

    Nov 11, 2011
    Morrisville, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It appears NASL may have purposely blocked teams that where going vote no in order to get a majority yes vote. Also, not entirely sure how 2 teams that don’t exist are allowed to vote. NASL are doing themselves no favors in this lawsuit.
     
    JasonMa, RafaLarios, Bill Archer and 2 others repped this.
  23. When Saturday Comes

    Apr 9, 2012
    Calgary
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I wonder if OC and San Diego have already paid their expansion fee. It's the only way them voting makes any sense.
     
    The Franchise repped this.
  24. Yoshou

    Yoshou Fan of the CCL Champ

    May 12, 2009
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I’m not sure that is the case. Only 2 clubs were prohibited from voting and neither is likely to be with the league long term. Additionally, even if we assume that Indy was a no vote and SanFran and Edmonton would have voted no it still would have been 6 for and 3 against..
     
  25. scoachd1

    scoachd1 Member+

    Jun 2, 2004
    Southern California
    Well if US soccer wants to get the taxpayers to pay for MLS development they might want to tell kids its OK to play HS soccer. Btw- my kid had some very good coaching as a youth including sessions run by guys who went on to be head or assistant MLS coaches. But with the possible exception of his first couple of years playing AYSO, the biggest period of development was probably his first year of HS soccer. He wasn't alone, Harkes seems to have survived HS alright.

    Now you bring up a good point the US is a big country so what is happening in the noweheresville where you gained your expertise doesn't necessarily mean its happening elsewhere. US is a big place and most of my personal experience is limited to a 50 mile radius from that National team fields at the Home depot center and clubs that send players to play there along with a number of local Hispanic leagues and AYSO. Teams that not only played in tournaments like Dallas Cup Surf Cup or Youth nationals, but could actually win them.

    Now I certainly didn't coach a Landon Donovan but did spend a season sharing a field with a coach who he's given credit to for his success as a pro. Played a bit of low level soccer abroad, was very well regarded locally and clearly was a Coerver devote but I'm not sure coaches in other countries would agree that teens should be spending 90% of their non-scrimmage time working on dribbling skills in small spaces. If hear one more coach telling players to "keep it" when they should be exploding into space on a country attack my head will explode.

    A guy who said he coached at the same club I did (think it was probably the opposite two days I did) sent his son to play in Europe (I think he might be getting time in a top division there) because the coaching in their academy vs our academy system was "like night and day." Unlike you, I'm sure this guy has no idea what he was talking about. Another dad (might have coached or maybe a team manager) whose son I think plays in Mexico sent his son to down south because he felt the development environment was much better - though in fairness probably had more to do with a better developed ladder between teams than the coaching as I think his coach was probably one of the very best youth coaches in the country at that level at the time.

    But it doesn't sound like Texas was all that good either. A fellow I coached against whose son I think might be playing Professionally in Mexico, moved to Texas and encouraged me to do the same (he didn't know I wasn't doing it for the money). I don't think he had any formal education or high level coaching education but he claimed Texas was a wide open market with a ton of opportunity soccer coaches. I had other friends tell me stories issues with town soccer in the Northeast, Minnesota.and a slightly different version of the same in Norcal so I'm not sure that my personal experience was all that unique.

    Then there was another low level foreign player who started coaching girls soccer so he could get a job (notice a pattern) and worked his way up to I think DAcademy coach of the year in his conference. Now in fairness the guy was either a devote of Arrigo Sacchi or learned from someone who was because his teams played fantastic defense and were incredibly difficult to break down. Unfortunately that is mostly what he knew how to coach and his understanding things like physiological things like work loads was next to nothing, For example he must have hear weight lifting will bulk players up, so he didn't want bigger players doing weight training.

    But enough with the anecdote how about some real data from Parchman's article, The high cost of American coaching where he writes "According to FIFA, about 6 million Germans are active, registered soccer players at one level or another in the country. Their ratio for UEFA A coaches to the whole looks more like the American ratio for F licensed coaches." And I would add, that is nothing compared to Iceland which has close to 1000 UEFA B to UEFA pro licensed coaches for a population of under 350K people (not players). I'm guessing getting a licensed coach is not all that expensive nor would it have to be if US soccer had different priorities.

    Of course having a coaching license doesn't make a great coach nor does the lack of one preclude someone from being a good and all coaching licenses are not the same. For example I think I took a D from two guys that ran one of the worst local clubs I had come across. One instructor was a community college coach and was pretty solid instructor for the level he was teaching. The other guy was, you guessed it, another low level foreign player whose great bit of personal insight was how would try to have his teammates play a 50/50 ball near they guy he was marking early in the game so he could give them a good kick and slow them down for the rest of the game.
    .
    Point being of course there are some good coaches and over all the quality is improving - especially with MLS sending coaches overseas to get a real education. But anyone that understands the game at any level realizes how bad much of the coaching in this country is and how unnecessarily expensive the sport is to play in this country for so many kids.
     
    Bill Archer repped this.

Share This Page