Excellent points made.

I would highlight that college soccer and Hispanics do not mix for the right and the wrong reasons.

The right reasons in that the level of play is generally awful. Its a style of play that emphacizes fitness, speed and athleticism over imagination, dribbling and passing skills. It makes for a great aerobic workout –if you happen to be playing— and for a boring ping-pong, tennis like bouncing of the ball back and forth sort of soccer.

The wrong reasons are that, unfortunately, there are only a handful of American Latino players participating and this in turn is because American Latinos have the highest high school dropout rates, thus most do not make it to college at all.

Social solution. American Latinos have to find a way to help their children do well in primary and secondary school and get them motivated to attend college, the good soccer players can then qualify for soccer scholarships.

Soccer solution. Ditch college soccer as the main source of MLS youth talent. Have all MLS clubs, finallly, fully develop their own developmental youth teams. Make a comprehensive effort to reach out and identify American Latino youth talent in the barrios and mostly urban dwellings most American Latinos live. Provide financial assistance to those that need it.

As to Hispanic media attention to college. Olvidalo! They are nice kids, but come on, the playing style if unwatchable.

“Play and let play” is the Brazilian way. For those of you who do not what I mean, I will be glad to write more extensively about this on another occassion. This is the only way to play the game, anything else is a soccer sin.

Best.

Woodside Patriot
NYC

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The reason the football model is the way it is, in my opinion, is that when gridiron football was born in this country, it was as a collegiate sport. In fact, most recently portrayed in the movie “Leatherheads”; in football's early days, the professional organization was kind of a joke compared to college football; and really stayed that way until the 50's — argued by some, after the “Greatest Game Ever Played”, the first overtime NFL championship was contested between Baltimore and New York.

But only in the last handful of decades has the professional version of the sport become the biggest spectator event in all the land. Similar story with basketball. It was invented as a college intramural activity in Kansas. The NBA had a quicker rise than the NFL did, but lately it seems that the biggest basketball games in college are more of a draw than the NBA — think March Madness versus the NBA Finals…

For baseball, college baseball is not even really on the map. Where can you find it on TV? You really can't. Unless the College World Series is on. And even then, it doesn't look like a huge sellout event — though not nearly as bad as the miserable failure that was the promotion of the College Cup (were there maybe 10 people there???)

So there isn't a full-on “U.S. system” across the board. I think every sport is different, and I'd throw NCAA soccer on the forgotten dogpile that includes NCAA baseball and NCAA hockey.

Excellent points. While the NFL and NBA can rely on universities to develop players, it just won't work with soccer

Thank you for pointing out the flaws of the system. So many soccer commentators and pundits make excuse for NCAA soccer and become apologists for it like this silly article titled “Colleges still an important pipeline to the pros” http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=6…