College sports. The NBA and the NFL, two of the most sought-after professional sports in the United States outsource the scouting and training of young talent to college athletics programs. And because the vast majority of professionals are recruited out of college the competition for professional placement continues four years longer than it would if there were no college sports.
The very best athletes play basketball and football in college, but only a tiny percentage of them will make it as professionals. If professionals were recruited out of high school then those that don’t make it would find out four years earlier than they do now. Many of them would look to other sports where they still have chances. Better athletes would go into soccer at earlier ages.
As long as college athletics programs serve as the unofficial farm teams for professional basketball and football, many top athletes won’t have enough incentive to try soccer as a career until it is already too late for them.
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May 22, 2012 at 12:08 am
Lones Smith
My high school in Ottawa had a periodically great football team. The year before I arrived, our cleverly-named “Ohm defense” led to a city championship. My senior year, our QB was awesome, and ended up starting for the #1 collegiate team in Canada — British Columbia. But I seem to recall that his scholarship was of the order $1K or $2K, i.e. smaller than many academic scholarships.
To wit, if the lure of collegiate sports programs were the main reason for USA soccer suckitude, then Canada should be producing soccer players at the six times the rate of Denmark.
My alternative thesis based on my one totally awesome data point: like Canadians, Americans do not idolize professional soccer players, do not have water cooler soccer talk, and largely are ignorant of the professional soccer scene.
Go Fire!
… thinking you might not know the allusion 🙂
May 22, 2012 at 12:28 am
Kindred Winecoff
College soccer is huge in the US. Much bigger than professional soccer. (And if that isn’t strictly true today it was until recently, and these things take time to work themselves through the pipeline.) In fact, one of the biggest reoccurring complaints from US national team coaches is that soccer players in the US go through the traditional sports route — select high school teams, then college, then pros — rather than the European “soccer academy” route. By the time the get to the pro squads they’re already 21 or 22 and their best development ages are behind them. In Europe they’re in the academies since middle or high school, being trained by professionals and playing in youth (and then reserve) teams in a professional environment. By the time they’re 21 or 22 everyone already knows what their ceiling is. They’ve made it or not.
The disadvantage is that American soccer players only play competitively 6 or 8 months of the year at most, and against lower-level competition, while their international counterparts play 10-12 months/year against the best and brightest.
Many kids who are good athletes play soccer when they are young. The top talent specializes into other sports in high school because there’s more money in them. There’s a preferential attachment mechanism at work. Feedback, network externalities, etc.
May 22, 2012 at 3:41 am
DRDR
The obvious explanation is that economic opportunities are better for athletes in basketball/football/baseball in the U.S. than in soccer. As Kindred said, no one just starts trying soccer in high school and becomes great at it. Also, notice that the U.S. is very good internationally at women’s soccer, because women don’t have any economic incentive to focus on a tiny handful of sports like men do.
Now taking a longer view of history, the U.S. wasn’t just underachieving but almost nonexistent in international soccer until 1994, with no World Cup appearances from 1950-1990. You can’t possibly attribute all that to college being the NBA & NFL farm system, since these leagues didn’t matter in the early 20th century. But it is true that college football was the biggest U.S. sport in the early 20th century, long before the NFL mattered. Also look at the relative importance of high school football in comparison to high school soccer. Students went into these sports because local glory was attainable, not because they all dreamed of playing at a higher level.
May 22, 2012 at 10:57 am
Anonymous
In short…. crowding out
May 22, 2012 at 11:48 am
Miraj Patel
Even if those athletes found out 4 years earlier, the transition from bball/football to soccer would be far from seemless. Also, soccer is still pretty big at a lot of schools. Not really convinced of this one…
May 22, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Ivan
The NYT Magazine had a nice analysis of the differences between soccer in the US and elsewhere, which I found quite convincing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.htm
An excerpt:
“How the U.S. develops its most promising young players is not just different from what the Netherlands and most elite soccer nations do — on fundamental levels, it is diametrically opposed. Americans like to put together teams, even at the Pee Wee level, that are meant to win. The best soccer-playing nations build individual players, ones with superior technical skills who later come together on teams the U.S. struggles to beat.
[…]
Americans place a higher value on competition than on practice, so the balance between games and practice in the U.S. is skewed when compared with the rest of the world. It’s not unusual for a teenager in the U.S. to play 100 or more games in a season, for two or three different teams, leaving little time for training and little energy for it in the infrequent moments it occurs. A result is that the development of our best players is stunted. They tend to be fast and passionate but underskilled and lacking in savvy compared with players elsewhere.”
May 23, 2012 at 7:34 am
naz
The assumption that a player will switch to soccer once basketball/football places are full is a dodgy one. Surely there is a factor of loving/enjoying a particular sport to be considered here, particularly if we’re talking about doing well at said sport.
May 28, 2012 at 6:02 pm
rh99
What makes you think the US underachieves?