Footballers, migrants and scholars: the globalization of US men’s college soccer

Abstract

US intercollegiate soccer is unique in world football by melding competitive amateur play with higher education and operating independently of FIFA. While immigrants have driven much of the 150-year history of college soccer, there has been an unprecedented foreign influx in the twenty-first century. We quantify the modern internationalization of men’s college soccer and assess factors driving this change via analysis of rosters from 1317 teams and a survey of coaches’ perceptions on foreign players and international recruitment. We estimate that 7600 players from 170 different countries played men’s college soccer in 2016, a 120% increase since 2000. Perceived growth drivers include expanding international recruiting by coaches, growing international awareness of college soccer as an option, a burgeoning industry of recruiting agencies, and technological globalization. Overall, US college soccer has become a globally attractive niche as an alternate pathway for players seeking quality competition while continuing their education.

Keywords:

• College soccer
• player migration
• sport and education
• football and globalization

Notes

1. There are three universities in Canada and one in Puerto Rico that compete in US collegiate divisions. These are included in the analysis but are not reported separately.

2. The USSF-recognized 4th tier of the US soccer pyramid consists of the 65-team all-amateur Premier Development League and the 29-team semi-professional National Premier Soccer League. The top three tiers are Major League Soccer (MLS), National American Soccer League (NASL), and United Soccer League (USL), respectively, although the USL is being reclassified as a second tier league, with new third tier leagues in the planning stage. The current NASL is different from the former first division league of the same name that operated from 1968–1984.

3. All statistics in this paper that are not referenced to other sources were calculated as part of this study.

4. See: Bale, The Brawn Drain; Zangari, “The Recruitment of International Athletes by NCAA Schools,” 6–8.

5. This study includes all men's teams within the following regulatory agencies: National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics, National Junior College Athletic Association, National Christian College Athletic Association, United Collegiate Athletic Association, California Community College Athletic Association, and Northwest Conference Athletics. Current and historic rosters were collected from each college or university’s athletics website. Of the 1405 team web-sites visited, 1317 contained rosters with hometown information (94% capture rate). All roster data were cleaned for redundancies and hometown name errors using semi-automated database routines, and reformatted into standard formats for player position, academic year, and hometown.

6. Interviews were semi-structured and designed to learn the personal pathways of international players in college soccer. Interviews were conducted by the corresponding author between December 2014–August 2016. Interviews were not recorded, but the interviewer took notes during the interviews and typed up the primary narratives shortly after the interview. Follow-up meetings or emails were used to clarify details where needed. Interviewees were selected opportunistically through personal contact. All interviewed players and coaches were from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and New Zealand. Primary outcomes for these interviews were identification of various stakeholders in the recruiting process and aiding the crafting of survey questions.

7. The survey was reviewed by a sport management survey design expert and NSCAA staff. The survey was validated by 6 separate assistant coaches who were not in the official survey population. Questions consisted of quantitative ratings of coaches perceptions regarding the relative importance of various factors related to the growth of international players, perceived relative differences between domestic and international players, and perceptions of recruitment and administrative challenges regarding international players. Open-ended questions were also included. Analysis consisted of a standard set of quantitative and qualitative interpretation. The survey was sent in March 2016. In addition to this current study, we have multiple additional manuscripts in preparation that draw from this survey.

8. Hollander, The American Encyclopedia of Soccer, 19.

9. Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World, 15–23; Markovits and Hellerman, Offside, 69–78; Guest, “Individualism vs. Community,” 25–42.

10. Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World, 20.

11. Baptista, History of Intercollegiate Soccer, 65.

12. Ibid., 67.

13. Ibid., 69–71.

14. Markovits and Hellerman, Offside, 121–127.

15. Baptista, History of Intercollegiate Soccer, 198–199.

16. Ibid., 128–140.

17. Cochrane and Oliver, “American College Soccer, 1946–1959”; Baptista, “History of Intercollegiate Soccer,” 198.

18. Baptista, “History of Intercollegiate Soccer,” 127.

19. Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World, 148.

20. Bale, The Brawn Drain, 44.

21. Hollander, American Encyclopedia of Soccer, 105–133; Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World, 149–50.

22. Bale, The Brawn Drain, 46; Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World, 155–156.

23. Saunders, “Soccer in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics from 1959–1974,” 115.

24. Wieberg, “Limits on Foreign Players Spark Controversy,” C.8.

25. Sharp, “Junior Colleges Scrap Limits on Foreign Athletes”.

26. This estimate is calculated from a question in our coaches' survey regarding international players' location of schooling prior to matriculating to a college or university.

27. The uncertainty of these estimates increases significantly moving backwards in time. Our player database contains 490 players for 1990, 2028 in 2000, 20,569 in 2010, and 36,044 in 2016.

28. This estimate of international hometowns is based on 7238 tallied players across the 1317 documented rosters, and scaled to all 1405 teams by applying the average number of international hometowns for the respective administrative division to each missing team.

29. AFC = Asian Football Confederation. CAF = Confederation of African Football. CONMEBOL = Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol, or the South American Football Confederation. CONCACAF = Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. OFC = Oceania Football Confederation. UEFA = Union of European Football Associations.

30. Alaska is the lone state without any college soccer teams.

31. Bale, The Brawn Drain, 115. In Bale's survey of 68 foreign athletes, the most widely cited reason (56% of respondents) for university choice was ‘weather and climate’.

32. Zgon, NCAA Student Athlete Ethnicity Report: 1999–2000 – 2009–2010. The NCAA defines an International Student-Athletes as nonresident aliens, or a ‘person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely.’ This definition varies from our definition of international athletes as those who self-identify an international hometown on the team's roster.

33. NCAA, Study of International Student-Athletes; Zgon, NCAA Student Athlete Ethnicity Report.

34. NCAA, NCAA Student Athlete Ethnicity Report, 108.

35. Bale, The Brawn Drain, 12.

36. Ibid., 115.

37. Zangari, “Recruitment of International Athletes,” 15.

38. Fischer, “International-Student Numbers Continue Record-Breaking Growth”.

39. Bale, “Alien Student-Athletes in American Higher Education: Locational Decision Making and Sojourn Abroad”; Popp et al., “Do International Student-Athletes View the Purpose of Sport Differently than United States Student-Athletes”.

40. Smith, “The US Colleges Making Football Dreams a Reality”; Kilpatrick, “Is NCAA Soccer a Better Route for Aspiring British Talent?”.

41. Foo, “Exploring Sport Migration”; Kilpatrick, “Is NCAA Soccer a Better Route”; Keh, “Jack Harrison's U.S. Soccer Path Started With A Choice In England By His Mother”; MLS Soccer, “MLS Announces 2016 Generation Adidas Class”.

42. Coach biographies on team websites for all NCAA and NAIA were analysed in May 2017.

43. Zangari, “The Recruitment of International Athletes,” 71.

44. Ibid., 26.

45. Agencies were identified via three separate internet searches conducted in April, June, and October 2016, using a variety of search terms.

46. Zangari, “The Recruitment of International Athletes,” 56–77.

47. Coaches were asked to rank differences between international and domestic players on a 1–5 scale, with 1 = ‘strongly more for international players’, 2 = ‘slightly more for international players’, 3 = ‘no difference between domestic and international players’, 4 = ‘slightly more for domestic players’, and 5 = ‘strongly more domestic players’. Results are presented here for categories in which a majority of all coaches rated a category as ‘strongly more’ or ‘slightly more’ for either international or domestic players.

48. Popp et al., “Do International Student Athletes View the Purpose of Sport Differently”.

49. This argument was made by two coaches in separate interviews.

50. See: Bale and Maguire, The Global Sports Arena; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Football; Poli, “Understanding Globalization through Football”.

51. Elliott and Maguire, “Thinking Outside of the Box”.

52. Foo, “Exploring Sport Migration,” 149.

53. Smith, “The US Colleges Making Football Dreams a Reality”; Kilpatrick, “Is NCAA Soccer a Better Route for Aspiring British Talent?”; Foo, “Exploring Sport Migration”.

54. Maguire, “Blade Runners”.

55. Magee and Sugden, “The World at their Feet”.

56. Love and Kim, “Sport Labor Migration and Collegiate Sport”.

57. Ibid., 100.

58. Ibid., 99.

59. Foo, “Exploring Sport Migration,” 155.

60. Ibid., 100.

61. This phrasing of a college soccer as a ‘four year contract’ was first shared with us in an interview by a college soccer player who came to the US on scholarship after being released by an English Premier League youth academy team. Although he had offers for trials in lower leagues in England, he preferred the stability and education a college scholarship provided.

62. Ibid., 101.

63. See: Markovits and Hellerman, “Women's Soccer in the United States”.

64. Ladda, “The Early Beginnings of Intercollegiate Women's Soccer”.

65. Markovits and Hellerman, “Women's soccer in the United States,” 20.

66. Ibid., 20.

67. Bale, The Brawn Drain, 56.

68. Booth and Liston, “The Continental Drift to a Zone of Prestige”.

69. NCAA, NCAA Student Athlete Ethnicity Report, 108.

70. Zangari, “The Recruitment of International Athletes,” 116–119.

71. Weston, “Internationalization in College Sports”; Pierce et al., “The New Amateurs”; Abbey-Pinegar, “The Need for a Global Amateurism Standard”.

72. Tunstall, “College Soccer Seeks Rule Changes, Greater Relevance”; Trecker, “Is American College Soccer being Ruined by the Unlimited Sub Rule?”.

73. McGonigal, “College or Pro?”.

74. NSCAA, “NSCAA D1 College Men Propose Academic Year Season Model”.