2023 D3 Men's Soccer National Perspective

[jknezek]

So why not allow the Matt McDonald's of the world make some money on his amazing skills. I would probably be more interested in sponsoring Matt and his college career than paying for a subscription pay for view.

Under the current rules you probably can. Tell him you'll give him $50 a month if he signs 3 pictures a month. Write and sign a contract under those terms and if he is over 18, and signs it back, he controls his NIL. I don't believe the school can stop him at this point from signing that contract with you personally, though I believe the school can choose to remove any player who does so from playing a sport so long as they are consistent in their reasoning. There are plenty of NIL lawyers running around right now that could tell you how to set up a cooperative to take in donations and write a NIL contract for a player. They probably will cost you more than it's worth, but it is my understanding that nothing is stopping alumni, boosters, local businesses in D3 from doing the same thing they are doing in D1.

HOWEVER, just like in D1, the school cannot be involved in the contract. I believe they are allowed to advise, or set up departments to advise, the student athletes, but they cannot benefit directly nor compensate the student directly. So FloSports can't pay a school, and the school then trickle some of that money down to the athlete. That is not how NIL work right now.

[jknezek]

And yes, this sounds very much like a "test the waters" deal FloSports made to see if a model works. It probably is not intended to make them much money, if any, just to build out a product to showcase to other D3/D2 conferences and say "we can make this work" and then try and get terms that will make money going forward.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Maybe a FloSportsGoFundMeD3soccerPlayer page?? Why not.  FYI, its all taxable. Gov't has not problem with NIL deals as it is all taxable. 

College should not as well and the amateurism is pretty much crap for many years. The commish said out loud it at one point, but/for sports kids will not go to their colleges. (FYI, this particularly true for men which are substantially fewer than women in colleges now) They are making money off the student athletes whether it through FloSports or their tuition $$.

We could say "Amazing Goal, Amer Lukovic, keep it up" and $5 donation. Why not?? Why can't student athletes have side hustles?? I have absolutely no problem with that. If a student athlete does not want to participate then that is up to s/he.

[SierraFD3soccer]

FYI, totally understand the separation from the college and that the FLOSports money is not intended to somehow trickle down to student athletes. This just got me thinking.

[Another Mom]

Tangent: Liquid IV has NIL arrangements with d3 soccer players. They get a lot of free product for one social media post a month.

They are more focused on number of followers, and image,  than soccer skill.

[Kuiper]

I have to assume that the Flo Sports deal comes with a lot more advertising from major companies rather than say the local pizza chain so I am not sure that cutting out the middle-man moves the pay day needle, but I have not paid to watch a Landmark broadcast so I have no idea.

I will be providing some clarity on this shortly......

SC.

Well, I went for the midfield shot that I would have sworn would have gone wide right, but somehow it sailed over the Keeper and went in to the goal.  Sent an email to the Commissioner of the Pay Per View .... Landmark Conference, Katie Boldvich.  It was awesome.  I learned a ton about something I really had no knowledge of.  I was going to break into two episodes but it violates a cardinal rule of mine.... why edit twice when you can edit once.

Anyhow, hope you enjoy as much as I had talking.

SC.

A SimpleCoach to Coach Interview with Katie Boldvich, Commissioner of the Landmark Conference

I haven't gotten a chance to listen to the whole thing yet (the other side of the "why edit twice' thing!), but this is great for Simple Coach and a great get for the show.  My off-the-cuff estimate was obviously based on too long a period for the payments and if it really is $30K annually in actual $ for three years, that is meaningful money for a small athletic department.  My previous critique still stands that this really is driven by people other than the teams/coaches themselves in the sense that they are the ones who have to deal with the fallout (if any) from prospective recruits and disgruntled alums and the possible loss of exposure for their team's games, but I could see why a university would grab that kind of money if they don't have much of an endowment or annual giving fund for athletics.  I'm not sure it's good for anyone in the long run, especially on a platform like FloSports rather than ESPN+, but very few people have the job stability to focus only on the long-run and ignore short-term achievements. 

[PaulNewman]

Didn't get watch any, but Cortland beating Oneonta 3-0 is a statement win...looks all 3 goals scored in 2nd half with last 2 coming fairly late.  Cortland looking good both for SUNYAC and Pool C.

And credit to @camosfan for iirc was the first poster to give a shout out for Kean....who spotted Rowan a goal and then scored 3 to win 3-1 despite Rowan having a sizeable stats edge.  Kean now 7-0-4 and may be closing in on a Pool C.

In the Monen Bell rivalry game, DePauw shares the Bell with Wabash 3-3 in Crawfordsville.

76th minute CNU and Roanoke are deadlocked 1-1.

[PaulNewman]

And CNU goes up 2-1 in 80th minute.

[CNU85]

And CNU goes up 2-1 in 80th minute.

I was at the game. I saw (and heard) some serious sportsmanship issues on the sideline. Coaches. Parents. A couple of players. Red card. Coach warnings. It was sad to see. It got so bad, one player said something to the assistant ref and the ref replied, "you got a goal kick. Now go away". After one goal, the goalie was screaming at his defense. The next goal, he was yelling at the assistant ref. I guess he's never been legitimately scored upon. F bombs on the sideline by a coach and some players that I heard from across the field on opposite side. I heard that the administrative rep had to get in his coach's face telling him his behavior was unacceptable and to calm down.

I witnessed a ton of coachable moments. How to keep pressing when things are seemingly going the wrong way. Instead I saw people looking for excuses. Seems to be more of the norm lately.

[Kuiper]

There's a topic on the NESCAC thread about fouls and cards that got me thinking about whether there are regional differences in these things.  My hypothesis was that teams play different styles in different parts of the country and they have different referees and referring norms/standards, both of which might affect how many fouls are called and cards are given.  So I looked through a set of regionally diverse conferences for the top two teams in fouls/cards per game to compare based on 2022 data (some kind of average or median would be better for comparing conferences, but I'm really not trying to compare conferences).  Since it concerns so many teams, I put this in the National Perspectives thread rather than the NESCAC thread.

Not sure I learned a ton from this exercise, but I have some conclusions at the end.

NESCAC

Fouls:  Amherst 353 (16.05/game); Middlebury 253 (14.06/g)
Yellow cards:  Amherst 55 (2.5/g); Middlebury 35 (1.94/g)

Liberty

Fouls:  RIT 240 (13.33/g); Skidmore 235 (12.37/g) [11.24 conf avg]
Yellows:  Hobart 37 (2.06/g); Skidmore 33 (1.74/g) 1.45 conf avg]

Centennial

Fouls:  Dickinson 247 (13.72/g); Muhlenberg 273 (13.00/g)
Yellows:  Muhlenberg 40 (1.90/g); McDaniel 32 (1.88/g)

SCIAC

Fouls:  Occidental 247 (14.53/g); Chapman 280 (14.00/g)
Yellows:  Chapman 45 (2.25/g); Occidental 32 (1.88/g)

CCIW

Fouls:  Augustana 192 (12.00/g); North Park 250 (11.90/g)
Yellows:  North Park 37 (1.76/g); North Central 36 (1.64/g)

UAA

Fouls:  Brandeis 208 (13.00/g); CMU 189 (11.12/g)
Yellows:  NYU 28 (1.75/g); Rochester 28 (1.75/g)

MIAC

Fouls:  Gustavus Adolphus 287 (12.48/g); Bethel 225 (11.25/g)
Yellows:  Gustavus Adolphus 41 (1.78/g); Saint John's and St. Scholastica 37 (2.06/g)

NCAC

Fouls:  OWU 295 (14.75/g); Kenyon 294 (13.36/g)
Yellows:  OWU 50 (2.5/g); Kenyon 43 (1.95/g)

NWC

Fouls:  Willamette 275 (13.10/g); George Fox 254 (12.70/g)
Yellows:  Puget Sound 38 (2.11/g); Whitman 38 (1.73/g)

ODAC

Fouls:  Guilford 204 (11.33/g); Virginia Wesleyan 226 (11.30/g)
Yellows:  Virginia Wesleyan 48 (2.4/g); Hampden-Sydney 45 (2.37/g)

ASC

Fouls:  UT Dallas 211 (11.11/g); Mary Hardin-Baylor 193 (10.72/g)
Yellows:  MHB 42 (2.33/g); UTD 37 (1.95/g)

Conclusions:

1.  Amherst was called for a lot of fouls in 2022.  16.05 fouls per game was the highest by a wide margin.  They also received a lot of yellow cards.  55 is the highest I could find anywhere, but the 2.5 per game average was matched by Ohio Wesleyan and others were close (e.g., Va Wesleyan).  Amherst is such an outlier on fouls that I looked up the 2023 numbers to see if things were different thus far this year.  Not really.  Amherst currently has 150 fouls (15.00/g) and 32 Yellows (3.20/g), both of which would be the highest by a wide margin in 2022 as well. By the way, it's possible that Amherst is being treated unjustly in receiving all of these fouls/cards.  Maybe Amherst's outlier numbers in both categories could be because their reputation (and perhaps coach/player chirping about it or referee experience with the fouls in prior years) is influencing referees to call more fouls against them.

2.  There may be some regional variations in fouls.  For example, the lowest top average fouls are for teams in the south and southwest (ASC and ODAC), which are both in the low 11's (the CCIW is in that range for the most part too).  By contrast, the highest top average fouls are for teams in the Northeast, Ohio, and Southern California (NESCAC, NCAC, and SCIAC), which are in the 14s up to the Amherst 16.  Most other conferences' top fouling teams are in the 12s and 13s.

That's not enough to establish that different regional styles of play or referee interpretation/applications of the rules affect fouls/cards though.  One possible additional/alternative explanation is that these teams play in conferences with more top teams and/or more teams closely bunched together in quality. The theory is that this would result in more physical play and more closely refereed games.  Teams that have a lot of blowouts presumably commit fewer fouls.  That wouldn't explain why Amherst has dramatically more fouls or cards per game than Tufts, Bowdoin, or Williams, though, or why Occidental has dramatically more fouls per game and Chapman has significantly more cards per game than Redlands or Cal Lutheran.  If there were close, physical, games you would expected that it would produce fouls for both sides in these matches.  That suggests it might be a function of style of play as well.  Testing style of play would probably require doing a multi-year analysis of teams who have kept the same coaches over the years, which could be the next project.

[Another Mom]

Serpone has implied that their players of color get carded at a higher rate than white players, and since he has such a diverse team this is one partial/possible explanation for their high numbers. I may be slightly misremembering exactly what he said, but I distinctly remember him saying someone (a student?) did  this analysis.

[Kuiper]

Serpone has implied that their players of color get carded at a higher rate than white players, and since he has such a diverse team this is one partial/possible explanation for their high numbers. I may be slightly misremembering exactly what he said, but I distinctly remember him saying someone (a student?) did  this analysis.

I didn't do a fine-grained analysis for who gets the yellow cards (and their race), but I wouldn't doubt that differences in referee standards/norms includes outright racism or implicit bias.  Based on a cursory glance at Amherst's roster and the individual card-earners, it doesn't obviously appear to me that players of color got carded at a higher rate than white players in 2022.  Nor does it appear to be obviously true for Middlebury.  But, as I said, I wouldn't doubt that referee bias exists.   You would probably want to do the analysis on a card per minute basis for all players and all schools (at least in the conference) since I would expect biased referees to be biased against players of color on other teams too. You might also want to control for position since some players may be carded more or less than the standard for the position, which may be a better gauge than looking at an average for the team generally. 

[SierraFD3soccer]

Serpone needs to back that up,  otherwise that is just pure conjecture. Can't just say something like that, especially with the style of play Amherst has, without evidence. Otherwise, that's not fair. Also, is this one referee team, multiple an assignor or just an excuse/conspiracy?

[paclassic89]

It was from this article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/sports/college-sports-diversity-amherst.html   

[College Soccer Observer]

There's a topic on the NESCAC thread about fouls and cards that got me thinking about whether there are regional differences in these things.  My hypothesis was that teams play different styles in different parts of the country and they have different referees and referring norms/standards, both of which might affect how many fouls are called and cards are given.  So I looked through a set of regionally diverse conferences for the top two teams in fouls/cards per game to compare based on 2022 data (some kind of average or median would be better for comparing conferences, but I'm really not trying to compare conferences).  Since it concerns so many teams, I put this in the National Perspectives thread rather than the NESCAC thread.

Not sure I learned a ton from this exercise, but I have some conclusions at the end.

NESCAC

Fouls:  Amherst 353 (16.05/game); Middlebury 253 (14.06/g)
Yellow cards:  Amherst 55 (2.5/g); Middlebury 35 (1.94/g)

Liberty

Fouls:  RIT 240 (13.33/g); Skidmore 235 (12.37/g) [11.24 conf avg]
Yellows:  Hobart 37 (2.06/g); Skidmore 33 (1.74/g) 1.45 conf avg]

Centennial

Fouls:  Dickinson 247 (13.72/g); Muhlenberg 273 (13.00/g)
Yellows:  Muhlenberg 40 (1.90/g); McDaniel 32 (1.88/g)

SCIAC

Fouls:  Occidental 247 (14.53/g); Chapman 280 (14.00/g)
Yellows:  Chapman 45 (2.25/g); Occidental 32 (1.88/g)

CCIW

Fouls:  Augustana 192 (12.00/g); North Park 250 (11.90/g)
Yellows:  North Park 37 (1.76/g); North Central 36 (1.64/g)

UAA

Fouls:  Brandeis 208 (13.00/g); CMU 189 (11.12/g)
Yellows:  NYU 28 (1.75/g); Rochester 28 (1.75/g)

MIAC

Fouls:  Gustavus Adolphus 287 (12.48/g); Bethel 225 (11.25/g)
Yellows:  Gustavus Adolphus 41 (1.78/g); Saint John's and St. Scholastica 37 (2.06/g)

NCAC

Fouls:  OWU 295 (14.75/g); Kenyon 294 (13.36/g)
Yellows:  OWU 50 (2.5/g); Kenyon 43 (1.95/g)

NWC

Fouls:  Willamette 275 (13.10/g); George Fox 254 (12.70/g)
Yellows:  Puget Sound 38 (2.11/g); Whitman 38 (1.73/g)

ODAC

Fouls:  Guilford 204 (11.33/g); Virginia Wesleyan 226 (11.30/g)
Yellows:  Virginia Wesleyan 48 (2.4/g); Hampden-Sydney 45 (2.37/g)

ASC

Fouls:  UT Dallas 211 (11.11/g); Mary Hardin-Baylor 193 (10.72/g)
Yellows:  MHB 42 (2.33/g); UTD 37 (1.95/g)

Conclusions:

1.  Amherst was called for a lot of fouls in 2022.  16.05 fouls per game was the highest by a wide margin.  They also received a lot of yellow cards.  55 is the highest I could find anywhere, but the 2.5 per game average was matched by Ohio Wesleyan and others were close (e.g., Va Wesleyan).  Amherst is such an outlier on fouls that I looked up the 2023 numbers to see if things were different thus far this year.  Not really.  Amherst currently has 150 fouls (15.00/g) and 32 Yellows (3.20/g), both of which would be the highest by a wide margin in 2022 as well. By the way, it's possible that Amherst is being treated unjustly in receiving all of these fouls/cards.  Maybe Amherst's outlier numbers in both categories could be because their reputation (and perhaps coach/player chirping about it or referee experience with the fouls in prior years) is influencing referees to call more fouls against them.

2.  There may be some regional variations in fouls.  For example, the lowest top average fouls are for teams in the south and southwest (ASC and ODAC), which are both in the low 11's (the CCIW is in that range for the most part too).  By contrast, the highest top average fouls are for teams in the Northeast, Ohio, and Southern California (NESCAC, NCAC, and SCIAC), which are in the 14s up to the Amherst 16.  Most other conferences' top fouling teams are in the 12s and 13s.

That's not enough to establish that different regional styles of play or referee interpretation/applications of the rules affect fouls/cards though.  One possible additional/alternative explanation is that these teams play in conferences with more top teams and/or more teams closely bunched together in quality. The theory is that this would result in more physical play and more closely refereed games.  Teams that have a lot of blowouts presumably commit fewer fouls.  That wouldn't explain why Amherst has dramatically more fouls or cards per game than Tufts, Bowdoin, or Williams, though, or why Occidental has dramatically more fouls per game and Chapman has significantly more cards per game than Redlands or Cal Lutheran.  If there were close, physical, games you would expected that it would produce fouls for both sides in these matches.  That suggests it might be a function of style of play as well.  Testing style of play would probably require doing a multi-year analysis of teams who have kept the same coaches over the years, which could be the next project.

Several years ago I did an analysis of yellow cards per game and total red cards for different conferences.  All data is from the 2019 season.

Conference   Yellows/game   Reds         Conference   Yellows/game   Reds
NESCAC      1.04         2         Centennial      1.28         11
NEWMAC      1.03         3         Capitol      1.4         5
SUNYAC      1.36         14         CCIW      1.51         11
NJAC         1.45         46         UAA         1.24         10
SLIAC      1.32         5         NCAC      1.12         12

Conclusions:  Officiating in New England (NESCAC and NEWMAC) was more of a "no blood, no card approach".  The NY/NJ area (SUNYAC and NJAC), on the other hand, had more red cards than the rest of the other conferences combined.  The Midwest (NCAC, CCIW, and SLIAC)  and Mid Atlantic (Capitol and Centennial) were in the middle.  The UAA, as a conference that covers much of the eastern US, was about average.

Some other thoughts about officiating.  Years ago, it was common for games for a school to be assigned by the local chapter of NISOA.  Now, almost all conferences have a conference assignor.  The same individual, for example, assigns all NESCAC games.  This leads to styles of officiating across conferences.  There are some geographic outliers as a result of travel limitations and costs.  Within the NESCAC, for example, the Massachusetts and Connecticut schools have easier access to a much larger pool of qualified referees than do Middlebury and the Maine schools.

College games pay much better than local high school or amateur games, so referees want to get these games.  Coaches and assignors have a lot of power.  If a coach thinks that a referee gives too many cards, for example, he or she might be able to have that person blocked from doing their games.  In much of college soccer, the coaches have a disproportionate influence over who officiates their games.