UCF joins the Sunbelt for Soccer

[ZoomZoom]

Men’s soccer is played in the fall, usually on Friday nights or Saturdays. Therein is the biggest hurdle in the south, direct competition with football.

[Policarp]

1st step I'd take.. Make the focus on arranging NIL $ and be aggressive with academic scholarships for players vs school athletic scholarships......as a non athletic scholarship sport you shouldn't have to counter with adding non revenue women's sports additions or dropping other men's scholarship programs.

[CajunGrad16]

I would love to have a men's soccer program.

What men's program do we drop or what women's program(s) do we add and where does the money come from for the new offerings?

The easiest women’s sport to add would probably be women’s golf

[CAJUNJUDO]

With a USL2 league team based in Lafayette it could potentially attract better talent. Can players play for both a university and a semi-pro team now that NIL is not controllable?

[BigGreenTruck]

1) Don’t need to pay good programs to come to Lafayette with this strength of league.
2) Most sports don’t have 1k in attendance, so I’m not sure why we’re throwing around that number.
3) The product not being good is just an assumption.
4) No reason why we can’t add women’s golf (which has a big undercurrent of support already) and/or Beach Volleyball, another very popular sport here. Cost would be minimal. And yes, we could stand to lose a men’s sport or two.
5) I have no expectations because we aren’t, to my knowledge, pursing SBC membership at this time.
6) While the budget concerns are legit, this state just got an ass load of fed dollars and is about to make a grip on these academic advancements. Also enrollment is up. Also the athletic department is about to get a huge boost in momentum once the football stadium is announced and Marlin is fired. I think we’ll be in good shape.

What we can’t do is do what we’ve always done and be reactive. We need to be proactive on this.

1)Yes you do or you could be like FAU last year. FAU hired their coach the same year Marshall got Chris Grassie, The thing is his 1st 4 years he was 17-39-4. Come 2021 FAU started out 6-1-3 and they thought they were decent. Then they had #5 Marshall come to town and lost 3-0 and then lost the next 5 in a row. You can't play 4-6 ranked teams in conference and then play nobodies out.

2)Marshall avged 1300 last year in a stadium that holds 1006. We also had 2474 for Kentucky, 1742 for Akron and 3,033 for WVU.

3)Most schools including DI schools don't take soccer seriously. The avg DI coach makes less than 50K a year at 48.5K. Only 26 schools pay more than 100K, Marshall's Chris Grassie is the highest paid coach at 375,750.

Marshall used to be one of those schools that had soccer just there. From 1994-2012 Marshall played on a soccer field pushed up against Joan C Edwards stadium with maybe 100 temp seats during the season.

Also the last thing the Sun Belt needs is 3-4 programs decide they want to sponsor men's soccer. It would go from the Sun Belt fighting the Big East for the 2nd best conference year in and year out and the ACC on occasion as the best conference to praying to hopefully get 2 in the NCAA. It would be like adding FIU, New Mexico State, UMass and UConn to Sun Belt football.

[ZoomZoom]

1)Yes you do or you could be like FAU last year. FAU hired their coach the same year Marshall got Chris Grassie, The thing is his 1st 4 years he was 17-39-4. Come 2021 FAU started out 6-1-3 and they thought they were decent. Then they had #5 Marshall come to town and lost 3-0 and then lost the next 5 in a row. You can't play 4-6 ranked teams in conference and then play nobodies out.

2)Marshall avged 1300 last year in a stadium that holds 1006. We also had 2474 for Kentucky, 1742 for Akron and 3,033 for WVU.

3)Most schools including DI schools don't take soccer seriously. The avg DI coach makes less than 50K a year at 48.5K. Only 26 schools pay more than 100K, Marshall's Chris Grassie is the highest paid coach at 375,750.

Marshall used to be one of those schools that had soccer just there. From 1994-2012 Marshall played on a soccer field pushed up against Joan C Edwards stadium with maybe 100 temp seats during the season.

Also the last thing the Sun Belt needs is 3-4 programs decide they want to sponsor men's soccer. It would go from the Sun Belt fighting the Big East for the 2nd best conference year in and year out and the ACC on occasion as the best conference to praying to hopefully get 2 in the NCAA. It would be like adding FIU, New Mexico State, UMass and UConn to Sun Belt football.

Seems FAU figured the Herd out in the C-DOA Tournament. The SEC with all that money will probably one day do like they did with softball, get tired of losing to the “little guys” and invest.

Enjoy the moment in the sun, really, enjoy it.

Great attendance numbers, abet inflated with 3 biggies, the year after a NC. Closing out ‘21 with 3 losses including a one and done in the NCAAs and C-DOA Tournaments makes ‘22 attendance numbers something to watch.

https://herdzone.com/sports/mens-soccer/schedule/2021

[RaginDave]

Seems FAU figured the Herd out in the C-DOA Tournament. The SEC with all that money will probably one day do like they did with softball, get tired of losing to the “little guys” and invest.

Enjoy the moment in the sun, really, enjoy it.

Great attendance numbers, abet inflated with 3 biggies, the year after a NC. Closing out ‘21 with 3 losses including a one and done in the NCAAs and C-DOA Tournaments makes ‘22 attendance numbers something to watch.

https://herdzone.com/sports/mens-soccer/schedule/2021

I like C-DOA, but I think C-UStA-b is better

[RedTails]

Also the last thing the Sun Belt needs is 3-4 programs decide they want to sponsor men's soccer. It would go from the Sun Belt fighting the Big East for the 2nd best conference year in and year out and the ACC on occasion as the best conference to praying to hopefully get 2 in the NCAA. It would be like adding FIU, New Mexico State, UMass and UConn to Sun Belt football.

I appreciate the insight, but a more apt analogy would be: It would be like adding Marshall to Sun Belt baseball. Sometimes you have to add a fledgling conference-mate to a sport in hopes of bringing them up to your level.

[Cajunrunner]

Yeah, it is an opportunity to spend ungodly amounts of money that we don’t have on a sport that might draw 1,000 fans on a good night.

I’m a huge soccer fan, but unless there’s someone willing to put up an 8 figure check to start the program, I think we need to accept that soccer is just not in the cards. And frankly, I’d rather see that 8 figure check go to football/baseball/basketball.

Agree. If we have excess dollars, I want football and baseball getting that.

We already have limited resources to pull from to try to continue keeping football on its current level of competitiveness. Don’t want to start watering that down.

[CajunMarineBBK]

If I am not mistaken if you add a mens sport you must do the same for the women so more money.

[JamesTheJeweler]

I'd rather put that money in football and diamond sports

[ManAboutTown]

Agree. If we have excess dollars, I want football and baseball getting that.

We already have limited resources to pull from to try to continue keeping football on its current level of competitiveness. Don’t want to start watering that down.

We’re not winning a national championship in football unless they change the way the playoff is formatted.

There is a route to a Natty in soccer. See Marshall. At the end of the day, people will support a winner.