LOL. Faculty members being the pillars of academic excellence that they are, it's a bit of "...if we can't educate our basketball players, the least we can do is to make our soccer players think they're in the Ivy League".
Wow. This is complex. It might work out if outside competition rules are relaxed so that college soccer players could play in other leagues in the spring, but according to this article that won't happen until 2013 at the earliest. The least they could do is tie those two changes together--if spring season is cancelled, give players the right to play elsewhere. If not, they're just choking off the path from college soccer to professional opportunities. Excellent article and must reading for anyone involved with college soccer. We better find out what's happening and get organized! Occupy NCAA!
This might not be great for college soccer but I'm not convinced this rule change would be bad for American soccer.
I bet this is a bull*hit scapegoating of the faculty. I don't buy for one second that faculty are upset about the academic performance of soccer players, volleyball players, women's lacrosse players and cross country runners. I'd bet money that the faculty were complaining about basketball and football players and the NCAA was like: "well, those are our cash cows, we're not going to do anything to tick them off, let's cut these other programs that cost us money and then blame it on the faculty's dissatisfaction with the academic committment of 'athletes'". This is awful for college soccer and especially terrible for the late bloomers who don't have pro options coming out of high school.
This is a case of the NCAA showing their hand in regards to soccer. They do not care about it. Whether its utter disdain or just ignorance, they cannot be bothered to show the sport any respect. Lacrosse has more clout for ********s sake. I wonder how many of the NCAAs decision makers even know that MLS exists. Not many likely.
I thought Eisenmenger did a great job with her column. The great majority of men's soccer players pay a lot of money to attend their chosen college, and they perform better than the average student. They don't deserve this s***.
I agree, it was well written, and very informative. I agree with a previous poster, as well as the writer when they mention it's not the athletes from the sports in question that are a concern academically. How about Football player and basketball players put their academics first like college soccer players and the other sports listed, or they can't keep their scholarships. That might be a better step in the right direction.
Anybody who has spent any time in a D1 training facility understands that the vast majority of D1 football and basketball players (and baseball, too, fer cryin' out loud) have no business in a place that calls itself a "university". They are freakin' morons. It is laughable, ludicrous, and an abomination. I recall the old ('70s) ACC Honor Roll...a half dozen football players, majoring in underwater basket weaving, and the rest of the page dedicated to swimmers, track, soccer, etc. - in real majors, no less. How the notion of the university became so conflated with that of the professional sports training ground is a sorry tale indeed.....
Anyone that's ever heard John Harkes, Marcelo Balboa and Paul Caligiuri speak shouldn't get all high-and-mighty about the academic superiority of college soccer players. Plenty of soccer players have gotten into colleges more because of their athletic ability than academic acumen. Not nearly as much as in revenue sports, but still plenty.
This isn't an expectation of the norm, but here at Maryland, RS-SO quarterback Danny O'Brien is about to graduate in three years.
No doubt. Still, the APR for D1 Men's soccer is 967, vs 945 for basketball, and an almost identical 943 for football. That translates to an approximate graduation rate of 79% for soccer, and 63% for b'ball/football. In general, far and away the most practical benefit of a sport like soccer is for the leverage it offers a student athlete to 1) get into an institution he might not otherwise have access to, and 2) defray (possibly significantly) the substantial cost of the education.
I won't argue the exceptions - every rule has them - but folks are surprised when a revenue athlete can put together two compound sentences in a row. And they are surprised when a non-revenue athlete can't. Is there there is an actual debate here? I know of a team that recruited the NJ player of the year in 1979, and he was ... lacking ... in academic skills. But he was a joke *among the team*, and he lasted (thanks to the shenanigans allowed by NCAA) 1.7 semesters, and was gone. A complete farce, but in total, the story tells the tale. markb
...and I'm curious about the majors that contribute to the APR. Sort out the actual university-worthy majors from underwater basket weaving, and I bet the story is far more compelling. markb
This is BS.... If it was about academics, the first sports to cut down on would be basketball and football in my opinion. This goes to show how much NCAA cares about the sport. It's bc of people like this soccer is the way it is in this country.
Let's just put it this way...Recreation Management is a degree that'll go a long way in assuring that you'll never have to pay any Federal income taxes.
http://www.examiner.com/soccer-in-n...-eliminate-all-division-1-international-tours Good news - Looks like the NCAA will not do away with the Spring season and also no schedule reduction for at least the next year. Bad news - NCAA moves to elimate all sports Divison 1 international tours IMHO, the spring season is more important than an international tour, but do hate to lse it.