Before everyone comes in saying, they should abolish the NCAA rules in favor of the FIFA LotG, I am starting this thread in the premise that such a drastic change to college soccer will not happen. I think the LotG would be better too, but I just don't see it happening. Under that presumption, I pose to you, what changes to the college rules would make the college game BETTER? Better is a subjective thing, so there is no right and wrong answer. I will start off with the following: 1. The Number of Players: I would like to see a team roster limited to 22 (one sub for every player). This would not limit the number of overall players a team could keep available, but it would restrict the number of individuals on the bench. Most teams don't make that many subs to begin with, and some DIII school often have 20+ subs on the bench. This is a recipe for problems, and I think it should be regulated. 2. Substitutions Ideally, this would go right to no reentry. But, that is probably too drastic for everyone, but if you think about it, it would stop the game from being a constant sprint attacking the other team. Anyway, there are two possible ways to address this issue, and I feel the current system does not make the game better. The single permitted reentry in the second half only is difficult to manage at best, and confusing. A. Allow free substitutions, but limit each team to a total of 6 subs per period. B. Unlimited subs but no reentry in any period. 3. TV Time-Out Eliminate this from the rules, to only use it during the biggest games of the year is inconsistent at best, and may reward teams for a lack of fitness. 4. The Referee Add the phrase "in the opinion of the referee" as appropriate. 5. Timing Rules (Would prefer the FIFA method, but again, this is unlikely). Grant the referee explicit authority (meaning make the current ruling less vague) to stop the clock for minor instances of delay of the game, without requiring a caution. It would also be stated that serious incidents of delaying the restart of play and repeated acts of delay would trigger the caution under rule 12. Other ideas?
I agree about the substitutions issue. It can be a nightmare, and a coach who accuses the other team, or referee crew of allowing an illegal substitution, even if there was not one, brings the entire game into questions and will create a headache for everyone. There is a lot of built-in gamesmanship in the currect substitution rules. I'm not sure that it is a rule problem as much as an administrative problem. THe NCAA needs to determine who the assignors are, nationwide. If you want to be an assignor, submit your name and qualifications to the NCAA. The NCAA then chooses the assignors, not the conferences. You can only be removed for cause, and those causes must be defined in the rules. YOu do not get to pick your successor. No coach or conference has the authority to determine who their referees will/will not be. Make strict guidelines on the qualifications to referee a certain level match. Put officiating in the hands of the referees, and remove all coaching influence in the selection process. At that point, it will not matter what the rules say, as the referees will be enforcing them rather than pandering to the coaches in an effort to stay off the bad boy list. Until the coaches/conferences are removed from oversight/selection of referees, and writing/rewriting the rules as they see fit that season, then it will not matter what the rules actually say.
College football teams have over a hundred players on the bench. Having 20+ players in the bench is really that much of a problem? Card 'em if they are out of control. I don't really understand people's preference for watching tired players play soccer rather than rested players. Plus, it gives more players the opportunity to play. For most of them, it will be their last opportunity to play a "meaningful" match. Any re-entry is difficult for me to manage, but I assume primary responsibility for this falls to the official scorekeeper. It should not be that difficult a task. It is much more difficult to "keep score" in other sports. Coaches would prefer to have their best players in the game at the end. Soccer might be the only sport which discourages this. Basketball does to, with players fouling out during a game, but coaches go to extreme lengths to sit players who are in foul trouble so they can be on the floor at the end of the game. While inconsistent, it is better to use it only when needed rather than to be consistent and use it for all matches. One can debate the merits of commercialism in sports, but the competition is certainly heavily subsidized by the "revenue" sports. Again, compare soccer's TV time-out to football. There is no comparision. I am not sure why you feel this is needed. In what way would it help? What is vague about the current rules? Repeated acts of delay can already be carded for PI, if not for DR.
Totally disagree. I wouldnt mind seeing more substitution limits, but limiting the roster (especially at the D3 level) is not a positive thing. For the vast majority of players, this is their last time to play meaningful soccer. Don't make kids sit with the fans just because they cant make the 22 man roster. Just being a part of the team (including traveling, warmups, and just sitting together wearing the same uniform) is incredibly meaningful. For the D3 players out there for the love of the game, at least give them the pleasure of sitting on the real bench.
Like I said, there is not right or wrong answer. But I have seen some schools carry 35 players, many of whom never get up, unless of course there is an event which pisses them off, then they act up or cause problems. With only 3 refs on the field and not one of those spots tuned into the benches directly, it really presents a risk that is unnecessary. Only in scholastic competitions do we see these never ending bench sizes, all club soccer and professional soccer is limited in the number of available bench players. It's not like having 22 players available at the game is significantly detracting from the player pool, as in most cases the coach doesn't even get that deep into the bench. So really the only argument to keeping the extra players is to make them feel better about themselves, but practically speaking, their presence is unnecessary.
For $. There is a benefit to getting these games on TV, and the "cost" of that is the TV timeout. The TO makes TV more interested because they can be more effective in selling ad time, which they have to do for them to pay to televise the game (or perhaps to pay more). Do I like the TOs? No. I guess I see them as a necessary evil to advance the game.
I feel like soccer has grown to a point where it is understood that about 50 minute blocks of time are set aside to show a game. Perhaps not, but I feel like if it was out of the rules, it would not affect TV from picking it up.
This should a restriction on the game-day eligible-to-play roster rather than the overall roster. Treat it like hockey, which allows a fixed number of skaters and goaltenders eligible to play in any particular contest out of an overall roster of unlimited size. I'm not sure, though, that this is really needed if substitution rules are also changed. Rather, leaving the gameday roster unlimited with more restrictions on substitutions is likely to eliminate any practical advantage to a larger roster while still allowing back-end players to see the field during blow-outs. (As it is, I highly doubt that either ND team, women or men, ever used more than 16 or 17 players in tightly-contested games, and for the most part would only have gone above that number in blow-outs later in the second half.)
Endurance tests aren't all that exciting to watch. If the team's best players aren't fit and have to sub out, they aren't helping the team much when they are on the bench. For some reason Americans are known as athletic and fit. What they lack is skill. I suppose you could duplicate the scorekeeper's function if you felt it might come in handy, at the cost of a small delay to the proceedings. Yeah, but basketball and football already have free substitution, and baseball is hardly an endurance test, except for the pitcher. You don't understand why television airs commercials to help pay for the costs of production? Well, "trifling" is no longer in the FIFA rule book either. Trifling isn't about whether or not the fouled team wants the foul called, unless there is advantage the team would certainly WANT the foul to be called. Contrary to the ATR, I argue that a trifling foul isn't actually a foul at all. If contact affects play only slightly, it should be considered an annoyance or some such, but not a foul. The decision of the referee is whether or not the annoyance has rises to the level of a foul (fits the technical description of a foul AND meaningfully affects play). If FIFA took ITOOTR out of the LOTG, to save space if for no other reason, would it change anything? NO. However, I would agree that if for some reason FIFA wanted every "trifling foul" called, it could do so without making one change to the LOTG. This is because the NCAA rules are not vague at all, but are quite clear. The clock is not to be stopped for verbal warnings, or for subsitutions (except in the last five minutes when only the winning team substitutes). However, the clock is stopped for every caution in NCAA (time is not necessarily added in FIFA) and after every goal is scored (time is not necessarily added in FIFA).
And yet all we saw of the NCAA playoffs were the final three matches, one of which was taped-delayed until immediately preceding the final and the another of which involved two Eastern Time Zone teams with an 11pm EST start! These games wouldn't be shown at all but to pacify fans of non-revenue college sports. But I bet I'll be able to catch teams 61-68 battle each other out live in the "First Four" come March Madness. I can't wait.
This is what I meant. I don't care about the size of your player pool during practices, just to reduce the number of non-participating "participants" (mostly at home games).
Agree with that. It's a necessary evil. The exposure of getting games on ESPN is more than worth a 2 minute delay. Besides, injuries which last 2 minutes happen almost every game anyway. 'Flow' is a bit overrated in my opinion.
Some conferences (for instance the Big West) already have a restriction on number of players you can dress for conference games, so there is some precedent at the NCAA level for this. http://www.bigwest.org/code_book/2009/msoccer.pdf - the relevant rule is 12.23. Only 20 players may be on a game day roster. Bear in mind that one of the main points of the NCAA is participation, which is part of the reason for the massive roster sizes and substitution rules. Also, even at the D-I level, the vast majority of players do not get a full scholarship (I believe each team is allowed 9.9 scholarships, these are broken up so that more than 9 players can get at least some money), and many programs are not fully funded. The best solution to this issue (in my opinion) would be to limit the game day roster to between 20 and 25 (22 strikes me as a good number, a sub for everyone on the field), and either eliminate reentry and have unlimited subs, or allow a limited number of players (say 5 or 6) to be subs, and have reentry. As for TV timeouts...not all networks use them, and the ones that do tend to be the ones that show college soccer because they have to in order to get other sports (my understanding is that ESPN has a contract with the NCAA to show its championships - so it HAS to show soccer, and volleyball, and you name it, in order to show baseball and basketball). I don't think you'd be turning networks away if you eliminated them - in fact, if you are going to eliminate TV timeouts, now is the time to do it, because there are so few games that have them. If soccer expands (and it is expanding), more games will get on TV, and it will be harder to change the rule if there is more money on the side of keeping it.
What PV doesnt understand is the game we are developing in this country with our highest amateurs is so unlike every other country in the entire world. I watched every single minute of the semi final and final and was absolutely appalled at the lack of passing and team work. Everything offensive was one v. one running and was not very pretty. I watched the EPL the next morning, and I knew right there we could never compete on the world's stage with the way we are developing our college players. It's touch, pass, move, pass, and not a lot of 1 v. 1 play in the big leagues. So, if the first 30 minutes of the match is helter skelter like Spurs-Chelsea was Sunday, then that means Spurs better be ready to play some late defense when they are exhausted. But, in our game, it's helter skelter for 90 minutes. Not a pretty site to be honest with you.
Some of the rules I would change: Assault on a referee goes from a 3 game suspension to the rest of the season, and if the season has less than 7 games then it goes over into the next season. The second offense is a ban for life from the NCAA in ANY SPORT. Lower the YC accumulation from 5 cards to 3 cards and then suspension for the next match. Then every 2 cards after that is suspension for the next match. Remove the stupid rule that goalies need to wear different colored socks than everyone else on the pitch. Dumb.
How often are referee's assaulted that you feel this is needed? That is not the rule. They can wear the same color as their teammates if they want. They just can't wear the same color as their opponents, which is also true for field players.
We had a referee assaulted twice by the same player over a season. In the first instance he was pushed after being cautioned. In the second match he was spat upon after a hard tackle.
All College Cup matches were shown live. Both semis were shown live on ESPNU with the second game being simulcast on espn2. The first game was also replayed on espn2 immediately before the final.
My bad. I thought ESPNU was limited access, because Comcast never carried it. It turns out I've had it for over a year and didn't know it. I never made it to channel 708!
the DOC for alabama youth soccer told the parents at ODP that about 10 US collegiate soccer players go on to play in the MLS per year. in a good year. so, it's not too strong to say that collegiate soccer does not prepare players for the next level at all. maybe that's not important. but if it is, then players in college should play in a way that resembles the professional sport as much as possible, and if not, at least resemble how the rest of the world plays at the young adult level. so, i'd be in favor of 6 subs, no reentry for NCAA, and roster limits as others have already suggested.
NCAA is not, and should not, be a farm system for the pros. How many college teams are there? And how many total players in the MLS? To suggest that the way the sport is played in college should be changed to accommodate the next level, IMHO, is utter nonsense. There is already too much "professionalism" in college sports (particularly the money sports, football and basketball). Nonetheless, on a substantive basis, I lean towards agreeing that there should be more limited substitution to make the game better, and more like the "real" game. IMO, the fact that it may help the less than 1% of players that may play a competitive game after college is merely a pleasant side effect.