re: Dan Wetzel blames "Travel Ball" for the lack of development of US Soccer

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They're both probably coed.

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Coed wrestling? Hmmmm…………sounds like something I may look into.

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No, I'm seeing this from a macro and college doesn't fit in it as something that would keep people in the game.

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I disagree

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No, I'm seeing this from a macro and college doesn't fit in it as something that would keep people in the game. We already have a multi division league model in the US. Division 1 is MLS, Division 2 is USL which has introduced relegation and Division 3 with MLS Next Pro and USL League 1. We also have Semi pro with USL League 2, NPSL and UPSL. The model is already there, but definitely not efficient. I don't see how college fits in realistically going forward, even as a player motivation incentive.

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People WATCH college sports. Kids watch. Opportunities would be real to play college sports for kids. All of that expands interest in the game and would theoretically benefit the sport from a macro view.

Put another way, it would potentially artificially increase interest in soccer by riding the backs of something we actually have here in the US that no other nation does...a Collegiate Sports system that people care about.

In many ways, soccer is built on top of culture. What is more built into US culture than collegiate sports?

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There's just no motivation or really any benefit with an alliance between schools and academies

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Hard to say if that's true. It's probably a topic that would need to be discussed in a separate thread.

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The pro teams benefit in no way being affiliated with a college.

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agree

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College could benefit with a player pool, but players that could go to college have better options

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disagree.

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College is even more of non-factor than ever before

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not sure what you mean by this.

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A more aligned national club infrastructure with USL, MLS and the semi-pros coming together for a more unified model which could opportunity for continued involvement in a way that college could never deliver even for lower tier players.

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You are barking up the same tree you've been barking up forever. All of that could be improved from today's reality. It will not move the needle at all with respect to the overall interest in the game and will not attract a larger pool.

Another structural issue that I have not seen mentioned is simply differences in our systems of government. Even as big and powerful as our federal government has become in the past several decades, we are still more decentralized than the vast majority of nations, especially when it comes to sport. We don't have a national "Ministry of Sport" or similar federal department overseeing and directing development from the top down and bottom up like most very successful soccer countries do.

I have a high school son who is pretty good at soccer. It truly is a money making scheme. When he was young, his rec team was great, 3 years undefeated. The academies pulled my son and 4 other kids from the team to try out. They were better than most of the kids there. They started talking to us about the club fees, travel, etc. It was insane. We all declined.

It is fun to watch these same kids who are on these club teams going all over playing for "championships", get outplayed by a bunch of kids who didn't have the money to pay for it. If some of those "poor" kids had been sponsored or able to join without the insane fees, they would have much more talent in the system.

Some are very special and great talents, but they aren't started soon enough and trained like they should. It is all about the almighty dollar.

Even in high school you see the favoritism for club kids. We got lucky that our coach plays talent over status.

Kid we know was multiple time all state and played overseas for a year in Europe at an academy there and can't get a sniff of any interest here because of lack of funds. He's getting a ton of interest from overseas again and will likely go back there. Another kid from same school who is talented, but not on same level as kid above is now playing in an academy in TX because family is wealthy.

This is why a reason it isn't growing like it should.

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Our best athletes arent going to play soccer because they wont get extremely wealthy playing soccer.

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Well thats the dumbest take I’ve heard about soccer in a while. The highest paid athlete in the world is a soccer player and 3 of the top 10 are soccer players. shite, Christian Pulisic is a mid-level player in Europe and he’s made $27.5M in the last year.

ETA: our best players don’t play soccer because soccer is still seen as feminine in the US compared to football, baseball, basketball and hockey and dudes don’t want to be called gay.

I like soccer now, but that’s only because I got into playing the fifa video game in college and I realized it wasn’t as gay as I thought when I was growing up.

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I disagree

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Fair enough. I get where you're coming from, my opinion is different. I see college soccer a less relevant every day with the continued development of the leagues and their feeder systems from both a fan a player standpoint.

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People WATCH college sports. Kids watch. Opportunities would be real to play college sports for kids. All of that expands interest in the game and would theoretically benefit the sport from a macro view.

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People watch some college sports, but not most of them. College soccer isn't one of the those sports and likely will never be.

Just as an example, the College World Series Tournament averaged 695,000 viewers, that up 29% from the previous year The CWS averaged 1.5 million viewers per game. That's a pretty small audience for a very popular sport. Yet it's 15x the audience size for the college soccer title game.

The Mens soccer title game only had 150,000 viewers and that was on ESPN2. 606,000 people watched the USL finals, a secondary pro league final. There was massively more interest in a minor league title game than the NCAA title game. The USL Championship that was even on the CBS Sports network with much less reach than ESPN.

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In many ways, soccer is built on top of culture. What is more built into US culture than collegiate sports?

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Agree. That said, college soccer has been played since the 1950's and been on TV for a long time and doesn't get any viewership and people generally don't care. This isn't a new collegiate sport and culture hasn't grown up around it. There's no real affinity for it even at the schools which have won loads of titles. Clemson won two titles recently and most would never even know.

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College is even more of non-factor than ever before


not sure what you mean by this.

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It means with the build out of the leagues from youth to academy through U16, U18, U23 to the senior teams across multiple leagues, there is real infrastructure in place that hasn't existed before here at this scale. That includes visibility, marketing, player development and playing opportunities. College soccer sits well outside of that infrastructure on every level rendering it less and less relevant as the soccer leagues here mature. It no longer features the best players or best pathway for opportunities anymore. It's been left behind. It's a non-factor in the landscape.

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You are barking up the same tree you've been barking up forever. All of that could be improved from today's reality. It will not move the needle at all with respect to the overall interest in the game and will not attract a larger pool.

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Forever? I've made two posts about this. College soccer is much more limited than anything at a club scale. People have ignored college soccer for years and it hasn't had any effect on growing the game. The clubs, with all their flaws, have grown the game, expanded the pool of players massively and have developed semi-pro and pro pathways. College soccer hasn't ever moved the needle and with NIL is looking at an even more bleak future. Several D1 programs have shut down since 2020 and they've cut roster size down to 28 as well. It's currently shrinking from an opportunity standpoint.

End of the day, I see where you're coming from and I actually wish you were right. I just don't see college soccer growing the game even if they got extremely creative from an infrastructure standpoint.

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Soccer has officially overtaken baseball as a favorite sport among young Americans.

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Maybe at youth level but once they hit 13 or so, nah

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If you are an elite, world class athlete in the US you are not going to waste your talents on soccer.

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There is an endless amount of elite, world class athletes that didn't make it into the NFL and NBA because they didn't have the physical attributes needed to make a team.

Those athletes would have been better served using their abilities playing soccer than chasing an impossible dream.


Those are the athletes that the US should focus on acquiring. And part of that is convincing them and their guardians/support group that soccer is the best way to achieve success.



A few talking points to use are:

!) The average NFL career is 3.5 years. The average professional soccer career is 8-10.

2) The median NFL Salary is $860,000. That's the minimum for a player on the active roster. The fact that it's the median wage let's you know that the majority of NFL players are not making millions per year. Practice squads are paid weekly. No guarantee for a second paycheck.

3)Opportunity to get paid for playing a sport: Football is limited to 32 chances to find a paycheck each year.

Soccer has approximately 4,400 professional teams.



Which sport do you think offers the better chance to get a paycheck?

We joke about travel baseball but travel soccer is absurd

Very expensive

Travel ball coaches are even worse. Act like its game 7 of the WS.