I know that the SEC is a football / basketball / baseball conference, but it seems to me that the schools there could make a big impression on college soccer if they were to field teams. At the moment, only the University of South Carolina and the University of Kentucky have teams. USC is having a good year and is deep into the polls. My thinking is that schools like Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, etc. could field awesome teams. The states of FL and GA often field excellent teams that make to regional and national levels at the youth level. Even a school like Vandy that has a hard time competing in the major sports within the conference could use soccer as a way to field a decent athletic team. Many other schools known for education ahead of athletics around the country have done so. Any opions out there? Any known reasons for not having more teams in the SEC?
stand corected... negtouch, thanks for the correction. My apologies to the Commodores. I looked at their schedule, and they don't play any other SEC teams - curious. I also looked at the SEC site, and soccer is listed under "Olympic Sports". Didn't the Auburn women's program initiate womens' college soccer through title nine, or was that just within the SEC?
This has been talked about for a couple years on BS. All those SEC schools are football schools, and because of Title IX, they will never start men's soccer programs.
SEC football & futbol there are many schools in conferences that have strong football programs that also field competitive men's soccer programs - Notre Dame, Maryland, UCLA, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wake Forest, Penn State, Virginia, Clemson are in the top 30 soccer-wise and have football programs most of us have heard of. Title ix doesn't seem to get in the way there. Besides, we're talking about the SEC where no athletic program seems to suffer from budget constraints. Sorry if I seem dumb on this subject, and I know that really not much can be done by us on BS, but I think the missed opportunities here are high for the SEC as a conference and the youth that could advance to some really fine schools.
The SEC requires all member schools to have at least 2 more women sports than men sports. This is due to the leagues "committment to equality" or some such reason. So when someone says that the league on cares about football/men's basketball, ect, they can say "look at all the womens teams we have." For member schools to add men's soccer they would have to have a major realigment of the athletic dept. However, they almost all have women's soccer team.
At least in Alabama, it would take Auburn and Alabama a long time to catch up with UAB. They are one of the dominant soccer powers in the South.
I would absolutely love to see Auburn field a men's team, but with the lack of attention it gets from the rest of the SEC, I don't see us seemingly going it alone. Though if it happens in the next couple of years I could always walk on, since 5'8" 150 just doesn't cut it for football