White paper proposes sweeping changes to Division 1 college soccer

A regionalized two-tiered divisional structure and full academic year calendar are among the changes proposed for Division 1 college soccer in a white paper released by the U.S. Soccer Federation last week.

“College soccer has had a massive impact in developing generations of players, coaches, and leaders across the sport, but with the game evolving rapidly on both the men’s and women’s side of the game we need to proactively determine changes that will have a positive impact,” commented Cindy Parlow Cone, President of U.S. Soccer.

“This isn’t about rewriting college soccer, it’s about renewing it,” remarked JT Batson, currently CEO of U.S. Soccer. “The goal is simple: keep what’s great, improve what’s not, and make sure the system works for today’s student-athletes and tomorrow’s game.”

The committee cited three “must have” outcomes of the proposal’s changes to college soccer, and they are as follows:

1. It must be financially beneficial to institutions
2. It must be better for the academic, physical, and mental well-being of student athletes
3. It must enhance the identification and development of elite players for professional and/or National Team careers immediately

The white paper’s recommendations included multiple suggestions regarding the player pool of NCAA soccer, including less participation from players over the age of 23, reducing costs for player’s families, and tightening the window that players can transfer within. The most significant suggestions come later in the paper, discussing the structure and calendar of college soccer.

The NextGen College Soccer Committee recommended that men’s college soccer “moves expeditiously to a regionalized, two-tier competitive structure and a full academic year calendar.” The proposed calendar would kick off in September and conclude in April with a two-month break in the winter, similar to the German Bundesliga. An even more notable suggestion is the proposed divisional format. NGCS suggests the entirety of Division I soccer should be sorted into 4 overarching geographic “clusters” with around 50 teams in each.

This organizational format looks less like NCAA Football, which includes conferences expanding across the nation, and instead looks more like the four regions of the United States Adult Soccer Association (USASA), the governing body for amateur soccer in the United States.

The divisional makeup of each 50+ university “cluster” would include 2 top-level divisions with 9 teams each, making up the more competitive “regional” division. The remainder of the universities would then be divided into four “local” divisions of 8-10 teams each.

The regional format makes much more sense for college soccer programs. For example, recent shakeups in college soccer conference structure have led to the University of Delaware joining the Summit League for men’s soccer. For conference matchups, which used to be against local rivals, Delaware has instead been scheduled to travel to Denver, Kansas City, and Tulsa. Temple’s programs, which play in the American Athletic, have frequent conference road trips to Texas, Florida, North Carolina and other southern states.

While traveling long distances consistently might be worth the paycheck for Power 4 football conferences, these long trips cause costs to balloon for NCAA soccer programs. The regionalization of divisions will help college soccer programs save a great deal of money. The smaller divisions in conjunction with the expanded calendar will allow for the regular season schedule to consist of “home and away” matches in which every team plays every opponent twice, making for a perfectly balanced schedule. Mimicking the format of the top European soccer leagues, polls won’t be needed to decide divisional rankings and postseason berths.

The calendar will also allow for greater rest between matches. Many college soccer programs play games twice a week on a consistent basis, often playing three matches in ten days. The new proposal states that teams should not play more than three matches across any 14-day period, allowing for more rest for players and potentially limiting injuries.

In this format, the national tournament would take a shape similar to college basketball’s March Madness, with a pool of 64 teams. 16 teams would qualify from each cluster, including the top three from each “regional” division and the top finisher from each “local” division. Finally, a play-in round consisting of both “regional” and “local” divisions would decide 6 more berths to the national championship.

NGCS suggested that the tiers are not rigid and “would need to be objectively re-determined after each season to ensure that major changes in a program’s performance and ambition were reflected”, noting that competitive balance must be restored year after year.

“This could occur either through on-field performance similar to promotion/relegation or off-field analysis by a committee that objectively considers many factors.”

The committee left this suggestion open- ended for the time being. The suggestions for women’s college soccer look drastically different from the men’s game.

Instead of expanding the regular season to span the academic calendar, NGCS suggests the women’s game begins two weeks earlier, kicking off in late July instead of mid-August. NGCS also proposes a separate spring competition for “certain elite programs” for NCAA teams, run in conjunction with U.S. Soccer. NCAA women’s soccer is the primary source of senior national team talent for U.S. Soccer, while NCAA men’s soccer contributes far less than they once did since the emergence of MLS Next Pro and USL Championship, which provide alternate pathways for young, amateur players to reach the professional ranks. College still remains the primary avenue for women’s players, as 85% of NWSL players come from the college ranks.

The spring tournament could present an opportunity for USSF to become more involved in player development within NCAA, potentially setting up a “global U23 soccer event” during the spring semester.

The committee claims that the next year will be spent discussing the recommendations with stakeholders as well as coaches and players, and have targeted the 2026-27 academic year as the start date to implement their suggested changes.

While the committee’s ideas are fully fleshed out, many hurdles remain. To start, current conferences will be broken up across multiple clusters and divisions. Teams in power conferences that are separated from its geographical center, such as SMU, may lose out on their strong ACC competition with the regionalized approach. There are also only 18 spots in the higher “regional” divisions per regional cluster. This will cause some universities to settle for the lower divisional placement, missing out on higher competition.

Once the schools, coaches, and players are convinced, the challenge will remain convincing the NCAA to make the suggested changes. Currently, NCAA sports are divided into fall, winter, or spring sports. Spring soccer schedules exist, but they are considered friendly tournaments, not official NCAA matches. If NCAA accepts the full academic year scheduling proposal, it may open a can of worms with other college sports; if soccer can play a year-long schedule, why can’t baseball or basketball expand their schedules as well? This may be too drastic of a change for NCAA to accept. Additionally, the proposed spring women’s soccer tournament potentially organized by USSF would remove NCAA’s product from their own hands—something that NCAA may not be enthusiastic about.

For now, NGCS’ suggestions remain only that. The clock is now on for NCAA to listen to U.S. Soccer and NGCS and work with them to find solutions to the current problems within college soccer. The landscape of player development in the United States is changing rapidly, and college soccer needs to adapt. Whether NCAA will accept these suggestions or not is to be determined.