re: Does LSU have a men's soccer team?

USA doesn't have a men's soccer team anymore. Killed it about two years ago.

The problems with American Soccer are two fold.

1) As you guys point out there is no where to go. If you are a great athlete it is better to be a 5 Star anything than a Soccer player. There are no scholarship opportunities here for boys. If you are a girl you are golden. My son is a great Youth goalie in Alabama, that an five dollars gets you a cup of Coffee at Starbucks. Anywhere else in the world and he would be a celebrated player with lots of opportunities. not here.

2) Youth Soccer is an expensive suburban sport in this country. It cost 2k plus per season even here in bama. Youth Coaches get paid, tournaments are expensive and their is a lot of money in Youth soccer. Anyone can play Youth baseball and football, it it cost a few hundred bucks and fees are waived every where and coaches rarely get paid, travel is not that bad except for Baseball Allstar teams.

3) To prove my point, on River Monsters last year Jeremy was going on a trip deep into the Amazon hundreds of miles past civilization with no power lights etc guided by local tribes man. These people were living in hunts off the land etc. National geographic shite.

He had to stop one day as the local village that was hosting him had a big soccer match with a neighboring village. They did have shite but they had a soccer field, and a ball and a team. I looked to my son as said "That is why we suck at soccer." Like our Brit Coach says "Everywhere else in the world the best athletes are Soccer Players. (He Said Football of course) Here they are baseball, American football, and basketball, and everything but Soccer here in the states."

We can't even get fields built for the whole freaking city of Mobile, and have almost no poor kids in any league. And yes Title IX is part of it, even the schools with Soccer teams usually only have a few scollys a year and that almost always goes to foreign strikers.

So it is really amazing that we are even competitive at the world level at all.

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Are you just making stuff up?

Look at Texas and OU. Texas has 8 men's sports and 10 women's sports. OU has 9 men's sports and 10 women's sports.

LSU has 8 men's sports and 10 women's sports.

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Someone else already pointed out that I said Big 10, not Big 12, but just give some actually numbers for comparison...

Penn State sponsors 29 teams

Ohio State sponsors 29

Michigan sponsors 27

MSU sponsors 25

etc... Some of the other schools sponsor fewer, but on average, they sponsor more, sometimes with less revenue than LSU has.

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Look at many schools in the Big 10. They have to follow Title IX rules just like everybody else, and their revenue is comparable to that of SEC schools, but they sponsor far more sports for both men and women.

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That is very true. The Big Ten sponsors more men's and women's teams than the SEC and it is about priorities and values. The SEC historically has not had as many sports in mens and women's.

The SEC figures to put more resources into fewer sports like football. So if you want SEC strength in football you can't sponsor as many sports. If the Big Ten had the same number of teams as the SEC in sports the gap wouldn't be that big in football.

A mens soccer team may mean fewer resources for football. There's only so much money to go around the facilities arms race in FB and BB means that more money has to go there than to a soccer field and coach. Do you want the best locker room for FB or the 4th best and a mens soccer team?

Maybe we can add women's badminton ?

I have no clue but I'll sure be glad when this World Cup shite comes to end .

At this point it's beyond annoying.

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I have no clue but I'll sure be glad when this World Cup shite comes to end . At this point it's beyond annoying.

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To some folks. It's a month every four years.

MLB is in full swing, watch that instead. There's like eleventy hundred MLB games per week.

It's soccer. Other than a few days every four years, no one cares.

All of the 5A high schools in my area field men's soccer teams. One of the other issues regarding popularity, at least locally, is when the high schools have their season. Soccer is played in December through March, just like basketball season, outdoors. Most kids would simply rather be inside playing basketball where they have a future.

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Side note: Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the US. I can see this happening before soccer for a lot of schools. It's very popular in the Northeast already.

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It's getting pretty big in Texas too.

That's correct. KIDS play it and then they move on to Football, Basketball, or Baseball when they get a little older.

As for the High Schools which play Soccer. Nobody attends the games but parents or relatives for the most part. That's because nobody cares. Soccer is a money loser in college and is a money loser in High School as well.

We have been hearing crap like "Soccer is the sport of the future" for decades now and it is no more partr of the American culture now than it was back 20 or 30 years ago. Every 4 years or so when the World Cup comes along all the Soccer fans start the same old diatribe we have been hearing forever. It's really lame.

Sure let's have LSU form a damn soccer team and go play South Carolina or Georgia or Florida or Mizzouri and see what numbers those games draw. There will be no crowds and even you Soccer fans will hardly turn out and then LSU will be stuck with paying a coach and losing millions on yet another sport which can't pay for itself.

This is the damn truth and if it hurts that's just too damn bad.