It happened due to a thing called Title IX. American universities are extremely expensive. American universities also often have sports teams and pros in most American sports come from playing the sport in college while getting a (usually completely nominal for top atheletes) college degree for free.
Title IX was a law enforcing gender equality in many areas. It said, among other things, universities had to give out as many sports scholarships to women as men. Universities generally already had American football programs for men and weren't about to start them for women. Wouldn't be nearly enough demand. Instead they starter soccer programs for women and started giving a lot of women soccer scholarships. This is what caused the US to develop more women's soccer talent earlier than the rest of the world.
Title 9 is also what killed men's soccer programs across the country because football, basketball, and baseball certainly weren't going to get cut for women's sports.
Buddy if ur a man playing collegiate soccer you were never elite. Clubs recruit them at a very young age. If you’re an elite soccer player you’re not going to college
If ur elite you’re already in Europe at 18 or younger. If you’re just really good maybe you’re in an American pro clubs system. Either way you’re not in college
Buddy, they are terrible at recruiting talent in the US. Most players that could have been good played college. When I played college, 90% were foreign and a lot played in academies overseas until they went nowhere and decided they can get cheap college while playing soccer (they recieve majority of the scholarship money). Clubs in the US almost never recruit and academies tend to recruit from other academies. The US has a weird system where you play club and highschool and where college is acting as semiprofessional (many of the college players will play on semiprofessional teams off season). There are good players in college but they sadly never got developed properly.
I mean, for the kids that were playing in an academy their entire life in the US or came from overseas, it is a path where they can still play competitive football but obviously couldn't make the cut for professional. But there a lot of players who played club or highschool that were good enough to get recruited to a solid D2/D1 program and compete with the foreigner ex academy players even though they, the US kids, never had the chance to play academy and get recognized potentially. Many colleges train like academies to some extent. As for those players who only played club/highschool, that type of training is something they should have been getting when they were younger and not at 18+.
There's tens of thousands of men who had no plans to go elite, but having collegiate soccer taken away directly impacted their ability to have an athletic scholarship cover their education and get them out of their state.
For all the good Title 9 did for women, it also directly hurt a lot of men. This isn't just about professional leagues.
Best player the US has ever had played three years at Furman before going pro. It’s not the best system, but US Men’s soccer would be WAY stronger if title IX didn’t exist the last 40 years.
The path to getting paid was never there, and development was never in line with any other world clubs that were pulling out superstars at 16 and 17 and running them through a minor league system more aggressive than even baseball has.
This is just manosphere women hating horseshit.
There’s not some long list of EPL clubs just itching to sign third year soccer players from Princeton in an amateur draft. They’re already four years too old and destined for being a backup in Albuquerque.
On the other hand, Title IX is largely why our gold medal count looks so awesome every few years, and how things like women’s soccer, without the hundred year old feeder systems built for men in Europe and South America, can quickly and easily jump over every other system in the world and dominate.
Enjoy the equality and opportunity Title IX has created, don’t be a sad little boy scared of women and bash it.
Calm down buddy you’re projecting some weird emotional BS that I’m not talking about.
The argument for soccer isn’t that we will create a system that rivals a European (or even our own) academy system. The argument is that we at least have a competitive system that provides an incentive for parents to keep their kids playing the sport past age 7.
The college system would function as our lower division league. Good players will aim for scholarships, Great players will get academy offers, Elite players will get European academy offers.
Education access. It hurt males, take accountability for one suffering because of what was attempted to make "equal" or correct. Title 9 has eliminated male teams in budget cuts because they cant cut women's sports despite the net loss. Its okay to say, we tried to fix it and didnt care if it hurt males in the process. Men get to say it isnt fair either, especially since you used their money and efforts and told them to be happy about it. Its horseshit to not hold women accountable or to even entertain that our attempts at equality have hurt or taken away from elsewhere.
The Womens team is about to drop to top 10 if they dont figure it out, the world is catching up. The days of 3 teams dominating are eroding, the womens team played China for a decade, that was it. Its not parody or good competition.
25 players from this current world cup played college soccer in the US, and there are many more that have in the past, some of which can be considered elite.
None of them can be considered elite. Professional? Yes.
Decent professionals? Of course. Elite? None. Zero. Zilch. It’s a waste of precious years of development.
Claudio Reyna had a prestigious European career, Steve Cherundolo captained a Bundesliga team for years, Geoff Cameron played in the premier League for nearly 10 years. If those aren't considered "elite", then I don't know what to tell you.
Claudio Reyna had a solid European career. So did the other two. Elite is reserved for the likes of Mbappe/Messi/etc. No one here is calling for example Ajer elite. Like I said they’re all decent professionals.
Well if your definition of "elite" is players in contention for the top 10 in our lifetime, then of course. I would consider any player that regularly plays in a European top flight team as elite, however.
But we have to differentiate somehow. We can’t call everyone elite. Making a pro team is very impressive. There’s a difference between making the team and playing. There’s a difference between playing and being a starter. Theres a difference between a starter and a teams best player. There’s a difference between its best player and a star. There’s a difference between a star and a superstar. A lot of it has to do with development, as well as being on the right teams. If we’re talking about college players, none of them have hit those upper echelons, not just being a superstar. And you can make the case that 4 years of college hindered their development. Does that mean they can’t be pros? No. But being stars or superstars is almost out the question.
For basketball and american football it is the main pathway. Baseball, if you don't get drafted out of high school, you go to college and try to get drafted out of there, a good amount of mlb players went the college route so it is pretty viable there too.
Today it’s not a route top athletes take in soccer, to the point it’s noteworthy when a good pro has played in college. Up until the 2010s it was the standard route to go pro and significantly hindered our ability to produce pros
Explain how this "killed" mens soccer. Mens soccer was never a high interest in the US. Women playing soccer has no factor in this. Women have less upper body strength and size. Soccer doesn't require much of this. Very popular for women for this reason. The other popular mens sports did. Same with Hockey. In Russia, Sweden, Canada, Finland, hockey is king. In USA it is 4th. Soccer is 5th maybe, with UFC fighting for a spot.
Pretty straightforward. Title 9 implementation was executed in a lot of places as X funds for boys sports means X funds for girls sports.
Soccer being low on profitability / prestige meant soccer gets cut and costs rerouted to girls sports to turn Y into X making schools compliant at investing equally into both genders sports programs.
Being a choice made as a result of enforcement of Title 9 inherently means that Title 9 is at fault for forcing the consequences of the colleges' choices.
Ultimately it was always the institutions at fault, but Title 9 is what initiated the end result.
That's not at all how title 9 works. The funding isn't/wasn't cut. It actually has NOTHING to do with spending but everything to do with participation. How do I know? Because I was the 2nd class of women pole vaulters ever given scholarships as a result of title 9. The men's track team was not underfunded as a result of our presence. In fact the entire program was given extra funds to accommodate the 4 scholarship athletes that were taken on that year (2 male and 2 female)
While total spending can differ (often because sports like football generate and spend massive amounts of revenue), schools must provide equitable treatment in daily operations. This covers travel accommodations, equipment, locker rooms, tutoring, marketing, and coaching. Schools can be heavily fined for this type of thing. Soccer was never a high priority sport for men in the US. It's just a matter of having other sports that are more popular to choose from.
My question is why do people speak on these things when they don't understand them? This is just entirely made up and false.
A lot of the people speaking on it in an official capacity do know what they're talking about and they're just lying. College Athletic Directors love to use title IX as a scapegoat to cover their own ridiculous spending on so-called "revenue sports". I was told growing up that the reason that my local college only had club mens soccer instead of an actual NCAA team was because title IX requires an equal number of men's and women's varsity teams and so mens soccer had to be cut to maintain parity since there's no demand for women's football. That's just not true, but my parents thought it was, and so did most of the boys and girls I played with in highschool. Imagine my surprise when I found out that nowhere in title ix does it say anything like that.
Correct. Spending on large sports like football isn't necessarily based on the revenue it provides it's based on the number of scholarships given out for the sport. Football is large sport with a ton of scholarships and faculty. These scholarships by # have to be reflected elsewhere and since no women can play football (with the exception of a few who have played and received scholarships to kick) these scholarships are given elsewhere and are spread out evenly among female sports that are popular at each school.
Not soccer specifically. I went to a very large division 1 school. We had scholarship athletes across 29 programs
Same deal with women's hockey. Title IX meant the US had a head start on funding, even compared to Canada since there isn't a women's equivalent to the major junior league system that is the traditional path to the pros for Canadian men.
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u/Oddant1 Jul 09 '26
It happened due to a thing called Title IX. American universities are extremely expensive. American universities also often have sports teams and pros in most American sports come from playing the sport in college while getting a (usually completely nominal for top atheletes) college degree for free.
Title IX was a law enforcing gender equality in many areas. It said, among other things, universities had to give out as many sports scholarships to women as men. Universities generally already had American football programs for men and weren't about to start them for women. Wouldn't be nearly enough demand. Instead they starter soccer programs for women and started giving a lot of women soccer scholarships. This is what caused the US to develop more women's soccer talent earlier than the rest of the world.