The State of the College Game Address

Discussion in 'College & Amateur Soccer' started by LuvDaBears, Nov 3, 2003.

  1. Sandon Mibut

    Sandon Mibut Member+

    Feb 13, 2001
    This is a good thread and I applaud LDB for starting it.

    At the same time, I echo those who call for specifics.

    A few thoughts... first off, there are some very good coaches in the college game.

    Bobby Clark of Notre Dame is one of the best coaches in America, at any level, pro, youth, college or national team. He's also great with kids and loves teaching.

    Tom Fitzgerald is a good coach. I know Crew fans will laugh or scowl, but he really knows what he's doing in terms of coaching tactics and developing players. Yeah, he has a lot of advantages at UCLA but he won at Tampa and he didn't have a lot of advantages there, I'm sure.

    For years, Karl Kresmer has done a great job developing players at FIU. And, he wins, too.

    Schellas Hyndmann should probably have more NCAA titles than he does - zero - but year-in, year-out his teams make a commitment to playing posession soccer, a rarity in the college game. He wins a lot of games - just not the Big One's, and players get better when they go there.

    Dan Donnigan at SLU and Cam Rast at Santa Clara are two of the better young coaches in the game, former outstanding players who know what it takes to make it to the pro level and don't stand in their players way when it comes to getting there and who know how to develop and win.

    I could go on, but the point should be made. And you know what? I'm sure at everyone of these programs, and at every program that is lucky enough to have a good college coach, there are players, fans and parents who are bitching about the coach.

    Just as there are more starting spots than scholarships available, there are more good players on the team than starting spots available. Someone is ALWAYS gonna get the shaft. That's the nature of sports.

    Do coaches player favorites? You betcha. Does it sometimes mean better players sit while players who aren't as good as them play? Yes, sometimes it does.

    Is that restricted to college soccer? Hell no.

    Bora loved Mike Sorber and started him in a World Cup even though there were better players out there. Steve Sampson LOVED Mike Burns. (How many of you still have a bruise from banging your head on the wall about that?) and played him over more deserving players. Bruce Arena, the greatest American soccer coach ever, was loyal to a fault to Jeff Agoos and it damn near cost Arena his place in history.

    Bob Bradley is a great MLS coach but he has favorites. Think it's a coincidence his best friend's son is on the team?

    Frank Yallop, Sigi Schmid, Dave Sarachan... these guys all have favorites and there are players on their teams bitching they aren't getting a fair shot and are being benched in favor of an inferior player.

    It's the nature of the beast. And, if you don't want to deal with this kind of subjectivity, play golf or run marathons.

    I think a lot of times, players and their parents have unrealistic expecations or don't perform due dilligenc when they commit to a program. Everyone wants as much financial aid (grants, scholys, etc..) as they can get, everyone wants to play at as big a program as they can, and everyone wants to start when they get there.

    But supply far outnumbers demand. And there are gonna be losers and unhappy kids and parents.

    And, the coaches aren't all the nice guys they act like in your livingroom. But, if you don't say "no sh!t" to that comment, you are probably going into this process with too much naivete.

    Coaches "say" a lot of things in the recruiting process, just like I "said" a lot of things in college to get laid or to get my parents to give me a car and just like I "say" a lot of things to my wife so that can we can avoid doing lawnwork now so I can watch MLS instead.

    Coaches want as many top players as they can get. If Sasho or Fitz or BGG or Yeags or Clark or Elmar or Schellas could land every player on the U17 team but would have to make promises he couldn't keep during the recruiting process to do it, he would.

    And, he would try to get each of those players with as little scholarship money as possible and if they all still came and he had some money left over, great, he'd then take his scholarship money and try and get ANOTHER player.

    The parents and their families need to be realistic about expecations going into the process.

    Now, having said all that, that doesn't and shouldn't take the coaches off the hook, nor does it mean that they don't do sleazy things or screw over players or play favorites or whatever. I'm sure all this happens in college soccer... and college hoops and college football and college baseball... and, again, you get the point.

    Yeah, the college game would benefit from a general upgrade in the quality of coaching and it sure as hell would benefit from an upgrade in the level of care and commitment it gets from athletic directors and alumni. But, until there is more money in college soccer, none of that is going to happen.

    Where I agree with LDB is that that's just how most of the college coaches want it. They are doing pretty well between their college salaries, shoe deals and camp money and the last thing they want is to suddenly have the AD breathing down their necks to win more games and get more players to the pros.

    Basically, they have no accountability. None. Have a losing season despite having the best facilities and conference and tradition in (recent) college soccer? No worries? Shaft a bunch of players midseason while your losing far more than you should? Who cares? Don't draw or get on TV? Doesn't matter, you weren't expected to create revenue anyway and the alumni don't give a rat's ass, anyway.

    If this were to change, I think we would see a better caliber of college coaches but this is a double-edged sword as the pressure on the coaches would only increase and the lies to the players would increase and the "treating them as commodities" would only increase.

    Yeah, maybe the coach would then be forced to play the best players and not play favorites as much, but, as we've already shown, coaches at higher levels play favorites too and they still have pressure to win.

    So, be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.
     
  2. LuvDaBears

    LuvDaBears New Member

    Sep 4, 2002
    USA
    There are obvious reasons I haven't got into specifics on this thread. However, stay posted in the future.

    Sandon mentions the recruiting process, and parents and players not doing enough homework. Some of that is very true, but for most players, the recruiting window of opportunity is small, and there isn't oodles of time to spend on it given high school, ODP, etc. And unfortunately, many players and parents believe the college coach is being honest during recruiting. They find out later is all b___sh__.

    Stay tuned...I'll give you specifics in the near future.
     
  3. Karl K

    Karl K Member

    Oct 25, 1999
    Suburban Chicago
    Just a couple of additonal comments to expand on Sandon's thoughtful post -- and the generally high level of discussion on this thread.

    As someone who has been a pretty-close observer of elite-level soccer over the last few years, I think a lot of parents don't execute the necessary due diligence, not because they don't want to, but because they really don't know how to. All of us in this little obsessed community have been immersed in this stuff for a while, and we know the score, pretty much, but most folks do not because, to use the phrase not in vogue today, they are not "subject matter experts."

    Tell you a story. I had a conversation a couple of years back with a team manager from a club in Michigan, a good club. Team manager, she should know the scoop, right? Her kid at the time was a U16. So she tells me she had talks with Jerry Yeagley, the kid had gone to his camp, done pretty well, and was considering Indiana.

    "That sound great," I said. "Your kid must be the best U16 player in Michigan."

    Silence...and then a blanched look.

    "I don't know about that, but he did great at his camp."

    I didn't have the heart to continue this conversation.

    Besides the naivete, there's a failure to fully grasp the implication that once you move into college soccer you are moving out of what I would call the "12-month talent band" in to the "48 month talent band." You're not just competing at your own age level, you're competing at age levels above you, and and as you proceed thorugh college, age levels BELOW you. Don't think those younger kids can be better than you? Watch some Freddy Adu clips.

    In any field, it's tough to make fully informed choices. Complete information, real KNOWLEDGE of any situation, requires understanding of context. Few have that knowledge.

    To me, the biggest problem with top-level college soccer is not the level of play, and not even the coaches. It's that there is an approach to player personnel selection at the top programs that has a "professional" quality to it, while the programs themselves are not now, and unlikely to ever be given NCAA rules, "professional" in nature.

    By professional in talent selection process I mean the process of treating every player as a fungible resource, to be wooed, lured, trained, played, replaced, and then discarded as the prevailing circumstances dictate. And let's face, even the best coaches do it. Some are upfront about it; others are not.

    I have zero problem with the professional approach to developing players if the it's done by real professionals. Everyone goes into the process knowing it is as Darwinian and as objectively meritocratic as flawed humans can make it. If you're Jonathan Spector, you know the score; you know making the first team is possible, but has long odds attached to it. You know a few, a very few, make it.

    Everyone goes in with eyes wide open, and presumably no illusions.

    If Division I college soccer were to have the structure of a pre-professional soccer program -- year round play, a 35-game season, daily training -- then the "context" will have changed and the player-as-fungible-resource model would be fine by me.

    As it is now, it's so betwixt-and-between it's hard to know what it is, other than frenetic part-time U18/U21 soccer. This disconnect between the "professional" talent selection approach and the actual product that is produced is to me the most troubling aspect of college soccer, NOT the level of play. The level of play strikes me as about what it to be expected from a bunch a variably talented U18/U21 players, playing a ridiculously compressed schedule over a just a highly sub-optimal percentage of the year.

    In other words, an "unprofessional" (as opposed to "non-professional") context.
     
  4. JohnW

    JohnW Member

    Apr 27, 2001
    St. Paul
    One of the best comments so far, in my opinion.

    A further point:

    I think sometimes we watch college soccer and make the comparison in our minds to college basketball or college football--both of which truly do serve as minor leagues.

    With the almost infinitely smaller amounts of money available to support soccer on campus, there just aren't the resources available to make college soccer into the pre-professional program of the other sports.

    Second, often there is the assumption that colleges aren't doing their job by developing players for pro careers or national team duty. This isn't what college athletics was created for.

    Finally, there's this idea that if the best players skip college and go directly to the pros that this is somehow a bad thing or will hurt college soccer. In one sense, it might because there will be less talent on the field. In another sense, it's just another step in the evolution of the sport in this country (similar to what we see in basketball and have had with baseball for a long time).
     
  5. recsoc

    recsoc Member

    Oct 4, 2003
    Are we in the near future yet?
    Dying to hear some details....
     
  6. truthandlife

    truthandlife Member

    Jul 28, 2003
    Club:
    Houston Dynamo
    LDB is right on

    LDB, thank you for your honest assessment of college soccer. I know the knives will be out on you but as you state, "We need to cure this ill, and we need to clean house in the coaching ranks."

    I don't think all college soccer coaches are bad coaches but the unfortunate thing about college soccer is it never changes. I played in a D1 program 10 years ago and it was the same then as it is now. There are the same recycled coaches that are coaching today and they were 10 years ago. It is one of the best jobs in America (power, decent money but not great, and a lot of downtime). The style of play has not changed at all if you can believe it.

    These coaches are only accountable to the AD's of the school and not accountable to the level of soccer they are producing on the field. The AD's have no clue about how each college program is developing each player but the player usually regresses after his 4 years is up.

    There are exceptions out there but the only way we are going to get a decent National team and a decent homegrown MLS is to fix what is going on with college soccer and that starts with the coaches.
     
  7. FIXXXER

    FIXXXER New Member

    Feb 16, 2001
    Hotlanta, GA
    Once again, I hope that you don't think this is limited to college soccer. It is 100 times worse in the "money" sports like Men's Basketball and Football. If a college kid/parents do their homework, interview current players, take a visit, etc. then they should be able to get a pretty good feel for things....
     
  8. KinleyDog

    KinleyDog New Member

    Aug 20, 2003
    i think the dirth of bad coaches in college is a by-product of the system that controls them - the ncaa. it's rules are archaic and the fact that the ncaa makes millions off student-athletes, while not paying them their worth, is against all values of capitalism.

    if the club system and regional network of leagues were more established in this country, with relegation and advancement, then you would see much more passionate soccer - both from the players and fans.

    the college system with its communist-like control leads to the same athletically as it does politically - mediocrity at all levels.
     

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