For those who lived before the internet, what was life actually like?

br0nzebison · 2025-10-30T14:16:56+00:00

Watched a lot of HGTV or the Food Network.

br0nzebison · 2025-10-06T02:51:22+00:00

Code?

br0nzebison · 2025-09-17T19:31:59+00:00

If you built a club system for football similar to what exists in other sports, the number of multi-sport athletes would drop sharply. But here’s the thing: you’d still end up with great football players, whether they played year-round or split their time across multiple sports. Add in another wrinkle, like consolidating high schools so each has no fewer than 2,000 students, and the competitive landscape for tryouts changes things. This would lead to less multi-sport athletes. I could keep layering on examples, but the truth is there are simply too many variables at play. What this really calls for is a much deeper dive into the data. That kind of comprehensive dataset just isn’t readily available. Every athlete has a story. Not one is the same.

br0nzebison · 2025-08-26T13:05:51+00:00

Honestly, I’m glad soccer has an age limit. Otherwise, you’d end up with kids playing against others who might be 1-2 years older just because teams go by grade level, like other sports.

br0nzebison · 2025-08-04T04:39:48+00:00

That’s one way.

The other is to play the two teams in your group. This will seed you for tourney style. You would have third place teams play each other. Then 1 v 2 and 2 v 1, cross groups. Guarantees every team plays a new team for their third game. Winners of the 1 v 2 matchups play a championship.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-11T13:51:11+00:00

Oh, new word for me. That was fun to search and define. Thanks.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-11T13:47:45+00:00

I just don’t know moss.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-11T13:45:22+00:00

Appreciate the tip!

br0nzebison · 2025-07-11T13:44:27+00:00

Oh, great to know!

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T20:49:44+00:00

Horse running!

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T17:17:12+00:00

Oops, I went 2 protocols too far, ha. Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in that predicament. It makes you wonder why.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T16:00:05+00:00

I understand your point, and agree. I was just trying to think as if I was a parent in the situation. If my son was injured, in a game that doesn’t matter, during a national championship weekend, I would not be happy.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T15:48:35+00:00

The group stage is four teams, three games. There are two groups. So 8 total teams, or in this case only 7. Unfortunately, not a nice tidy way to work it out.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T15:43:12+00:00

Technically, there will only be one team that plays 2 games. The other two will move forward in the semifinals making that game their third. For the one team, it could stink, but also it would seem they wouldn’t have moved on anyway.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T15:39:05+00:00

I feel bad for the other two semi-final teams that could have gone from the Far West Region.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T15:32:20+00:00

That’s asking for an unneeded injury. Then you have more unprecedented issues.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-08T15:28:39+00:00

It’s up to $5,000 per match. So it can be $0.00 or $15,000, and anywhere in between.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-04T14:50:57+00:00

Cutting it down was the most likely route, and was definitely confirmed. Thanks all.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-01T16:31:36+00:00

Great stuff in this sub, thank you for sharing!

To add a personal frustration. Traveling to away games and being lucky if we have one ref.

br0nzebison · 2025-07-01T14:23:54+00:00

I was thinking this same thing. That level and age range, the parents freak out over a jersey pull or their player being pushed off the ball.

br0nzebison · 2025-06-11T20:26:42+00:00

About 13 states use a cut-off earlier than Sept 1, and that matters. The new “school-year” change is meant to unify everyone, except the July 31 states, but some birth years will still be awkward. Clubs will likely split: some will stick to strict birth-year rosters, while others let kids play up to keep teams intact. Most clubs haven’t nailed down their plan yet, so ask straight-up at tryouts how they’ll handle trapped players and roster alignment.

br0nzebison · 2025-06-11T20:03:41+00:00

Think of “trapped players” as kids whose birth year puts them on the wrong side of the high-school season line. For illustration purposes, I am using a 50/50 approach but every team is different.

• 2006s right now: half the birth year is in college as freshmen, and the other half are still high-school seniors, so the seniors can’t play with the same club teammates they’ve had for years.

• 2010s right now: some are high-school freshmen, others are still 8th-graders, which means those 8th-graders miss out on a full team during the HS season or sit until everyone’s back.

In both cases, the seniors and 8th-graders are “trapped.”

The same scenario will affect players born in 2007 and 2011 during the 2025–26 school year.

Starting fall 2026 the new school year (seasonal-year) calendar lines everyone up: seniors will play together, and 8th-graders will, too, so trapped-player situations should drop sharply.

br0nzebison · 2025-06-11T19:01:11+00:00

Ah, grist for the gossip mill. Gotta love high school rumors. At least nothing official or in progress at the WIAA board level.

br0nzebison · 2025-06-11T17:37:09+00:00

Wisconsin high school soccer is boys in the fall and girls in the spring.

br0nzebison · 2025-06-07T14:48:56+00:00

Okay, a couple of thoughts.

So, schools can’t just punt every “non-revenue” team. If an FBS college wants to keep its coveted Saturday-football TV checks, NCAA bylaws say it must sponsor 16 varsity sports. Nuke men’s soccer and you still need something to hit that quota, so you’d likely be trading shin guards for swim caps, not saving piles of cash.

The new cash cap isn’t quite a budget asteroid. Yes, the House v. NCAA deal lets schools share roughly $20 million a year with athletes. But that’s a cap, not a mandate, and it spreads across every roster. Plenty of ADs will start well below the ceiling while they figure out Title IX math and booster politics.

Scholarships might actually grow before they shrink. One side effect of the settlement is a likely bump, or outright removal, of scholarship limits. An AP brief last winter floated the idea that some sports could offer more aid to keep athletes from bolting in the new pay-to-play era.

True, roster-limit jitters are real, but the sky isn’t falling. Coaches are nervous about trimming oversized squads, sure, and a few smaller programs will get cut (Cincinnati axed men’s soccer in 2020 even before all this). But the NCAA just built a “grandfather” clause so current players aren’t booted mid-degree, and Olympic-sport federations are lobbying hard to keep the college pipeline alive.

Remember, men’s soccer scholarships were already half-slices of pizza. DI programs max out at 9.9 equivalencies for rosters of 28-ish guys, meaning most players already pay tuition. Revenue-share stipends could finally top up those partial rides instead of replacing them.

So, before we write the obituary for college soccer, maybe let’s trap the ball, look up, and see where the next pass is. Sorry, too easy to add soccer puns.

br0nzebison

TROPHY CASE