Here it is. Nine coaches. “It is time to act boldly to bring our playing and practice season model into the 21st century!”Myself and the eight national championship coaches unanimously urge adopting this proposal outlined in this letter to the NCAA D1 Council as we gear up for the April 2020 vote. pic.twitter.com/vz0JoW5Bi5— Sasho Cirovski (@SashoCirovski) October 15, 2019 Also, the women's coaches tried to get behind it. Started Twitter, haven't said anything since December 20, 2019. Good way to build excitement. The women's account actually has more than 2x the followers that the men's account has. Sounds like there's so much excitement and backing.
All is a possibility, but maybe even less likely than a "21st Century Model." How long has it been since anyone has decided to shake up the NCAA from within? We have seen how many issues have arisen because of the EA Sports games and player-likenesses. Imagine if a conference came out and said, "well, we are leaving NCAA governing and going on our own for this sport." NCAA and its members would hate. They'd fight it until the end. Additionally, how much would this affect how scholarship and sponsored sport numbers within athletic departments are counted? Universities and athletic departments aren't really known to do much in terms of positive change (or any change?).
Well, if you're a college coach, it would certainly help if the son of your new school president had played for you and won a national title before going pro! And if that president convinces other presidents... Just sayin'... College soccer has never had a potential ally tied to the sport quite like Darryl Pines.
Wash Post article on the President Pines soccer connection: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/02/13/donovan-pines-umd-president-darryll-pines/
Oh, not so long ago there was clamoring that Oliver Luck would change the scene. Short tenure now has him in XFL. Not so sure it’s anything more than lip-service.
Why wouldn't coaches be for it? I think they'd all love to coach a more formal, more "professional" style team with a 9-10 month player contact period of instruction and control instead of a short August-October season with a much smaller number of teams playing through November and usually four making it to December, plus a very short Spring "season". While they watch their players being pulled at by MLS and USL clubs and their academies. The onset of mandatory MLS academy systems coupled with the MLS Homegrown rule has really tapped out the relevance of NCAA soccer, and the coaches are rightfully concerned. College soccer is quickly becoming more like college baseball than college football and basketball. The late developing and unearthed gems will still come out of the college game - just like baseball, but the vast majority of the players destined to play pro will skip the college game moving forward.
Change is coming, and I think some in the NCAA know that if they try to hold the line where it is now, they'll lose everything. Just last week I got a press release from the ACC where the Presidents or Athletic Directors signed onto some sort of "transfer" policy. It didn't explain what it was, but I'm guessing there's a lot of pressure to allow any college athlete the ability to transfer to another school one time without any penalty or need to sit out for a year. Given the ability of coaches to move freely from school to school, that would seem to be an effort to remove a "student athletes' rights" issue from the table as it's obvious that reform is coming.
Not sure BYU actually did that, they had a club team that played PDL (now USL League Two). They now are just a regular club team. If they had a men’s varsity team, I have never known about it.
Out of curiosity are these coaches going beyond their administrations by declaring these ambitions online? Or are they able to do this because their administrators support this cause? Is the general consensus that this may not happen because it doesn’t have support from the administrative level? Seems to have overwhelming support on both the men’s and women’s side from a coaches standpoint.
Probably because their program could be cut? Maybe because they like the ease of college coaching lifestyle right now, I mean they truly only have "hard" work for 2.5 months. A calendar change would really change the recruiting schedule as well. Maybe this is a better reason to change! There would be less incentive for these major clubs and for-profit entities to do these scam "showcases" and "tournaments." If coaches can't be at them and spend 4-5 days wooing parents, players, and clubs, then why host them? If anyone has had a chance to look at some of the DI soccer budgets, they aren't favorable to the programs. It would be easy to see why Valpo and New Mexico happen. Any change in schedule, those decisions are easier to make.
Where is this overwhelming support shown? I know it's only Twitter, but the women's account has 525 followers, hasn't tweeted since December 20. The men's account has 225 followers and hasn't tweeted in nearly a month. This support and activism is not really all that supportive or active.
Sasho should be applauded for his hard work and vision and bringing this issue to a vote. The odds were against him, but he persisted. Trying to improve the sport for the coaches, athletes and fans has great potential upside. If the proposal is not approved, nothing has been lost and Sasho still has my respect.
There are now 12 head coaches in D-I men's soccer who have won an NCAA title. Besides those nine, you have Steve Sampson (curiously absent from that list - I wonder if they forgot about him or if he decline to participate), Elmar Bolowich, who has returned to college coaching, and Brian Wiese, who just won his first NCAA title in December. I wonder if those three will add their signatures.
I'm following now ... here are the twitter links if anyone else is interested ... Men's: https://twitter.com/21stCMSoccer Women's: https://twitter.com/21stModel
It’s also important to note, there’s little (if any) collaboration on this between the two. That’s sad. But, expected really.
Don't want to shift the subject entirely, but in this case the women's game is likely relevant to the discussion, and it's not clear why the women would want to make any dramatic changes. The women's college programs seem to have a working pipeline, from high school to college to pro soccer, with a modest but healthy mix of foreign students, and decent opportunities for our young women to play in foreign pro leagues or our own. It's the men's college game that has been suffering, and for so many reasons that it's hard to imagine an expanded season - alone - will be the solution.
Muuss at Wake has also been an outspoken advocate on the issue and would assume we will see his support behind the initiative as well.
Well it all depends on what you're trying to solve, and what problems you're willing to foist on others to solve them. If you're trying to solve the "relevance" problem, good luck. That ship has sailed. The pro game has matured to the point that the elite youth talent will increasingly move into the pro system bypassing college soccer altogether. If you're trying solve the "grind" that a constrained 2 1/2-3 month college season contains, I personally think an incremental process would quickly achieve most of the stated aims (but not the unstated ones). There is no reason whatsoever that college soccer should continue playing up to 20 minutes of sudden victory overtime when teams can still play two games within 40 hours (and at the D3 the levels, the College Cup is played on consecutive days!). Speaking of which, let's just bite the bullet and pay to have the College Cup be at worst Thursday-Sunday or Friday-Monday. Give those kids an extra day at the end of the season to recover from the semifinals. Let's be honest here. College players aren't just college players. Most of them play for PDL/NPSL type summer clubs, the elite ones regularly part of MLS/USL academy systems. College coaches want to be the players' "coach" - that's not going to happen, they are the players' "college coach", and that's not going to change without huge changes in the way the NCAA approaches college soccer, and I don't see that happening.
Relevance is a different issue, but college soccer will always be relevant to the extent it is part of the reason young boys (and girls) take soccer seriously. If college soccer disappeared, that would greatly damage the sport, not because college is a pipeline to the pros or MNT, but because its existence supports the existence of the DA's and elite youth clubs. Agree that expanding the season won't solve the absurdity of playing the semifinals Friday evening and the final on Sunday afternoon. I don't think Sasho and company will get all of their requested changes, but I'll be surprised if no changes are made - perhaps incrementally as you suggest. Anyway, I applaud his effort.
Never suggested it would go away. I think the future of college soccer is the same space the college baseball (and softball - without a viable pro league) exist in. College baseball and softball have good followings, the ratings for college softball on TV are ones that MLS should be jealous of. But college baseball doesn't get many blue chip prospects, but plenty of players do develop in the college game. I think that's what we're seeing with soccer. And there's nothing wrong with that.
So you mean over 1/2 of the best American players in the league will come from college like baseball? 70% of the best pitchers are college players since 18 year old arms are too unpredictable. College baseball may not get many blue chip prospects but they sure do produce most of the top American players.
In regards to "collegesoccer's" question above, obviously one significant difference between soccer and baseball is that only a handful of nations actually play any serious baseball, while serious soccer is played in far more nations all around the world. Thus the competition for pro slots for American players coming out of college seemingly is somewhat more difficult. Along these lines, I've seen stats stating that about 27 percent of MLB players are foreign born, whereas around 50 percent of MLS players are foreign born.
I thought I'd look to see these stats and such for baseball. It's been awhile since I've paid any attention to the sport. 27% are foreign born -- https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...seball-players-are-foreign-born/#5585eea97712 24 of 64 All Stars in 2019 began their careers playing NCAA baseball - https://www.ncaa.com/news/baseball/...re-2019-mlb-all-stars-played-college-baseball
Yeah, I definitely think comparisons to college baseball are misguided. Way too many pro prospects play college baseball. College hockey is a better comparison.