The USSF White Paper? The beginning of change or lots more of nothing?

Thanks Sandon. I quickly scanned the "report".

Let me summarize for NCAA men.
4 clusters across the country (West, Midwest, South East and North East) composed of approx 50 teams
In each cluster,

• 2 regional divisions of 9 teams each.
• The remaining teams would be divided into 4 local divisions of about 9 teams.
• Note. Each of the clusters and regional/local divisions may not be exactly equal because of geographic school numbers.

Going to a year round schedule.

Elimination of conference except where they geographically fit into the new organization. Then, they could have conference champions. I'm thinking maybe MAAC, BS or WCC....

64 National team tournament, Each cluster would send 16 teams.
Elimination of RPI.

An odd statement about mid-year professional migration restriction. Seems like a college fantasy wish.

Assertion that reduction of cost (by minimizing travel) by going to cluster.

 

Positive soccer revenue only exists for what 10-20 pro clubs?

Not sure this truly would solve anything, they can’t even fix it with the billionaires at the top of the pro realm.

No one wants to address what would help it on the college side: cut costs.

 

fully agree. Ray Reid was a full bore asshole.

I think UMD's Sasho got his voice heard with the UMD Pres Daryll Pines (father of former player Donovan Pines). Both of the Pines parents can be seen at soccer games even after Donny graduated....

I also agree with Sandon's analysis that this won't necessarily save the sport given the limiting general funds, athletic funds for NIL and constrained student activity fees.

 

ESPN write-up: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/46615055/us-soccer-stretch-men-ncaa-season-full-academic-year

I think there is a decent chance soccer moves to a "year-round" schedule.

Unfortunately, I doubt D1 will be reorganized into 4 regions with internal pro-rel. The conferences have too much power. However, there are only 2 major conferences in men's soccer (ACC & BIG10). Those are the biggest barriers to a reorganization because they have large media deals that require content. It's not hard to imagine work-arounds that would still provide soccer content despite killing the conference schedule. However, the easy answer is for the conferences and rights holders to just say no, and I don't think any of these actors feel enough urgency to do any hard work for men's soccer.

 

Another barrier to the reorganization is the geographic distribution of D1 men's soccer programs. Specifically, there aren't enough programs in the West and programs in the Plains are spread too thin to achieve USSoccer's goal of geographic continuity with only 4 regions.

Thus, I'd advocate for 5 regions: West, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Great Lakes (see chart below).

-The West would have 33 teams arranged into 1 upper (1A) division with 13 teams and two lower divisions (1AA) with 10 teams each.
-All other regions would have 43-46 teams with 1 upper division of 13 teams and 3 lower divisions with 10-11 teams each.

For the NCAA tournament, the top 10 teams in each upper division go to the tournament (50 teams). The winner of each lower division advance to the tournament (14 teams; 64 total)

For pro/rel, the top team in each lower division promotes, and the bottom 3 teams (2 for the West) in each upper division are relegated.

 

The above chart includes rankings/records CAO 30OCT25.

Looking at my regions I have the following thoughts:

West: UCLA, and Denver make the top division due to SOS (Denver's schedule is crazy). However, I would be fully supportive of UCLA getting dropped for Utah Valley…really they probably should be dropped, but typing this explanation is more fun than copy-and-pasting a bunch of Excel cells.
Southeast: By far the most competitive top division. There are 15 teams in the Southeast that are in the top ~40 or so of NCAA D1 men's soccer. North Florida and Wake were my odd-men out, but there are also several other teams that could be top division teams in another geographic grouping.
Northeast: Eww, just Eww. This has the bulk of the teams from the two worst conferences (NEC & MAAC) and it really shows. Clearly there are a few great teams, but it's a stretch to find 13 good teams. You could probably sub Fordham, UMASS, BU or St Johns for some of the top division teams, but you're just subbing mid for mid. The respectability of the Northeast's top division really relies on some mid Big East teams continuing to be decent.
Mid-Atlantic: You could sub Bucknell, Lehigh, Mason or VCU for American (or even Liberty, but I'm giving them credit for a good record). However, generally speaking there is a huge drop-off between the top and lower divisions here. The Virginia group of schools constitutes by far the weakest lower-division conference, with 6 teams sitting on 2 or fewer wins.
Great Lakes: This is the most interesting region for me. Advanced metrics suggest a lot of the top teams aren't as good as their records, and you have a lot of blue-bloods / major conference teams that are suffering down years, potentially relegating them to the lower divisions. This probably should be the most competitive grouping, and there could be some grueling promotion fights if a few teams improve in the next few years.

 

The thing is, he really believes this

Sasho Cirovski at tonight’s Merrill College Povich Symposium: pic.twitter.com/KTGsZhLwmm

— Aidan Currie (@aidan_currie_) December 4, 2025

 

… it looks like 20 years of work by college coaches finally paid off…. 2-Semester plan approved by NCAA

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2026/5/13...mester-playing-season-for-di-mens-soccer.aspx

 

I fear this will mean the end for alot of men's soccer programs - fallout that benefits the haves a lot more than the have nots

 

This is it. I imagine minimum 10 programs cut in first 12-18 months from now.

No doubt it could be much more than that.

 

It would be nice to see NCAA members bring back the ability to re-classify programs in a different division to maintain programs. I’m in favor of that.

 

It should be noted that be approved by the oversight committee doesn't mean this is completely finalized (despite the way articles are written). The D1 cabinet will vote on it late June

 

Hopefully they will start a Division 1A for the Ivies, Patriot, MAAC, NEC, etc. I can't see the Ivies going 2-semester.

 

I wonder if coaches at schools like this would even stick around? It doesnt really fit the facility resources they have or the academic profile of those types of schools. Just a thought

 

I'm going to go ahead and squash a rumor before it moves over from X and Reddit.

This isn't a case of major conference schools forcing a change down the throats of small schools.

Only 4 of the 15 members on the NCAA D1 Men's Soccer Oversight Committee are from major "autonomous" conferences.

 

Sandon - Is it really only an issue for those schools have Lax and Soccer?

I spoke to a University president about year long soccer. As you point out above, the resource constraint (trainers, SID, marketing) will increase expenses. There is a general cash crunch for many universities.

I don't portend to know how this will all shake out. I like the idea of 2 semester soccer, but I surmise that this will make seeing more teams even more difficult because schools will schedule for either Friday/Saturday but probably fewer midweek matches...

 

From an outsider, this is amusing. We hear all the moaning from sports other than football and basketball about budgets being cut and sacrifices of programs and budgets so the schools can pay their football players. And then this happens where there can be no doubt that the teams who will play under this model will have their expenses multiplied. It's almost like government...

 

Canisius has a facility with soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and softball.

Might have some logistical nightmares there.