As a huge college gridiron fan, and a March Madness junkie as well, well stated amigo. Does anyone recall years back when BYU came up with the idea of taking their club soccer team, men's this is, and set them up in the old USL set up. SO basically your school has a team, but completely separate from NCAA rules and regulations. I.e you have no past pro limitations and your team will play under FIFA rules and still it is your colors and name on display for any students and fans to rally around. If drastic cuts are on the way, just have many schools tell their AD's "no worries" we will just take our team to the USL. Play in the Open Cup eventually?!? The loss in men's soccer scholarship money is true, but should not be the backbreaker for the players that play in college like it would be for gridiron and hoops players who the majority have no way of paying for big time college tuition, much less play a sport and pay up at the same time having no job. You play on the club team and you can play, work and turn pro or move pros in and out as the coach wants.
It wad a bit different for us (BYU Class of 82), because we were a club team at the time, not NCAA. The PDL franchise cost $50K, gping NCAA with scholarships would have cost over $1 million a year. I think we qualified for the Open Cup once and the PDL playoffs at least once. Edit: the move to PDL came well after my career in Provo was done.