University of Vermont win D1 Mens Soccer Champs. Who knew people from Vermont were Good at Soccer?

What shocks me is the small attendance of the games. Cornell for example made NCAA tournament in soccer. They only got 475 fans for their home playoff game.

The Cornell hockey team regularly plays at capacity of 4,200 a game. Why does soccer only get 1/10th of that?

The attendance for last night's game was just over 6,000.

Only UK and USC have men’s soccer programs in the SEC. The ACC has traditionally been near the top in terms of soccer conferences. 7 of the top 17 ranked teams were in the ACC. Clemson won in 2021 and 2023. Last year 7 ACC teams finished in the top 25. Clemson, Duke, UNC, UVA, Wake are usually ranked high.

College soccer is more like college tennis, not because the best go pro, but because teams are built with international players. Almost 40% of rosters are international players in D1 soccer (tennis is 60%, XC 8%, track 9%). A lot of the international “freshman” coming in have already played a couple years at international academies and enter as 20-21 year olds. It’s much easier to build a program quickly by getting newcomers who are ready to play, unlike 18 year old US freshmen. That’s why you’ll see every now and again a relatively non-power school pop up on the radar, but it’s still dominated by the big well-known schools or schools that are traditionally good at soccer.

Marshall has been a top 10-15 school for quite sometime and routinely has the majority of their roster made up of foreign born athletes.

My oldest son played for Marshall a few years ago. He holds dual citizenship and grew up outside of the USA. We moved back to the USA (not anywhere near West Virginia where Marshall is located) when he was 16. It's a very good soccer program. Academics are ok. He graduated in business and is doing very well. Two other players on his team went on to Med school and Dental school.

If you want more community investment in a team, it helps to have more players with a connection to the community. You don’t get that with teams full of mercenaries. BYU XC likely gets a ton of support from their community because they have a ton of Utah kids on their roster.

The Cornell hockey team regularly plays at capacity of 4,200 a game. Why does soccer only get 1/10th of that?

Because it is really boring to watch, especially in person with no announcer & hella cold outside.

it's imprecise to suggest there's SEC men's soccer. there isn't. UK and USC play sun belt for men's soccer.

implying the soccer stinks is wrong. typically there is some school that's a men's powerhouse at the sport in each southern or western state, just not who you would usually expect due to the title IX quirk. example, SMU and trinity have it but not UT; UAB has it but not "bama" proper; mines and colorado college but not boulder.

if you have hermann award winners, all-americans, and title contender lower division teams, hints you could easily support strong d1s but are simply being denied them by title IX. particularly if your state's select system supports several competitive women's d1s.

it's a little bizarre because lower divisions doing this it's a combo of low-rent and yet pseudo-professionally recruited. teams doing van travel and mcd's/subway to a fairly localized schedule unless postseason, but recruited globally, brits, spaniards, caribbean, brazilians, etc.

my experience NAIA and juco were doing this decades ago, that it's spread upwards to d1 more recently. it used to be a decent chunk but has exploded where it's like half of a lot of teams.

and NAIA, lindsey wilson has 1 american on the whole roster.

i personally have no issue with unlimited walkons of this nature -- and played with a few foreign guys in d3 -- but question handing out scholarships to a bunch of foreign players, particularly at state schools. to me what's getting lost is at some level this is supposed to be representing the college.

that's my beef on what you're saying on vermont and marshall's makeup, is, are they, say, handing out partial rides to the germans, or did they walk on. if they paid their way, more power to them. if we recruited them waving scholarships, that starts to be more like a paid soccer team. this has trickle down effects......ok, if vermont has maybe half a roster domestic, and you're not bright enough for middlebury.......you start to run out of in state options quickly. and meanwhile they may be paying scholarships to have that outcome.