They are finally on! The Summer Olympics from Tokyo are here. Starting on July 23 and running until Sunday, Aug. 8, NBCUniversal will present more than 7,000 hours of content across all its networks and streaming platforms. That’s over 291 days worth of Olympic coverage.
Granted, a good portion of that – more than 5,000 hours – will be on their NBColympics.com website. But that still leaves 2,000 hours of traditional television broadcast coverage available for us to watch on our large-screen televisions. Meaning if we recorded it all and then watched, it would take 83 days of 24-hour-a-day viewing to get through.
Of course, here in the U.S. we can be expected to primarily focus our viewing interest on the athletes from this country, and there are a lot of them. We have 613 athletes from 46 states representing the U.S. over in Tokyo. They will compete in every sport at the Olympics with the exception of handball and hockey (that’s field hockey in the summer games). So we have a rooting interest in most sports.
One caveat to that information is this: the Olympics categorize the individual “sports” broadly. In their parlance, track-and-field competitors are all classified under “Athletics.” In addition, they don’t break out the sports by gender. The result is that there are hundreds of events among the 40+ sports the Olympic Games contest. But again, the U.S., with the largest contingent of athletes of any country in the world, has plenty to root for as we watch the Games.
However, one event that we won’t have a rooting interest for is men’s soccer (or as it’s known in the Olympics, football). The U.S. Men’s National Team did not qualify for these Olympics. Which is not altogether surprising as they didn’t qualify for the 2016 or 2012 Olympics either.
To be fair, though, the Olympic men’s soccer competition only includes 16 teams – half as many as are included in the men’s World Cup. Several other soccer-centric countries did not qualify either. England and Italy would be two good examples. In addition, it’s a youth tournament. Players on the teams must be born on or after January 1, 1997, with the exception of three team members who can be older.
But it’s still a little odd that a country with 332 million people, where soccer is one of the most participated youth sports, can’t put together a team capable of qualifying for the Olympics. Especially when the U.S. has more people between the ages of 5-24 than the entire population of several of the countries who did qualify.
Well, I think that the recent name, image and likeness (NIL) policy adopted by the NCAA (and legislation in several states) might hold an answer to this non-qualification streak.
As I’ve noted in the past on these pages (here and here) I am a proponent of the NCAA increasing scholarship limits for all other sports besides football and basketball. I believe that there are talented youngsters who choose football because scholarship opportunities are greater there than they are in other sports. Specifically, since the NCAA only allows a maximum of 9.9 scholarships for men’s soccer, as athletically-talented kids grow up, they can see what that number means when compared to the 85 scholarships allowed for D1 FBS football.
The chance of the NCAA ever increasing those scholarship limits is extremely small. However, they have now created a work-around where student-athletes in all sports – and specifically for this situation, soccer – can get money to pay for their college education. A full-ride scholarship, as it were (but we won’t call it that).
Let’s say you are a talented young soccer player of middle-school age. But you also play a few other sports including football. You are feeling the pressures of time and money that you need to focus primarily on one sport as you get older. You are interested in academics and would like to play whatever sport you decide on when you get to college. And even better, it would be great if playing that sport covered your cost of attending college.
That’s when those 85 scholarships per team for football start to look enticing.
Imagine though, if there were plenty of schools offering 30 completely-paid-for opportunities to play on their soccer teams? Might that make you decide to continue playing, improving and excelling at soccer? The average salary for a Major League Soccer player is $398,725. That’s just a bit more than half the minimum starting salary ($660,000) for the NFL. But it’s still good money for most people. And overseas soccer pays much better – most teams in the English Premier League average more than $1 million a year in salary.
So maybe you and many of your outstanding soccer-playing young peers start to look more seriously at choosing soccer over football. Widespread and high-quality soccer competition continues to be available through young adulthood into college, and this expansion of quality translates into a stronger and better national team. Which feeds the desire for more excellent athletes to play beyond their middle and high-school years and continues to improve the national team.
It all sounds wonderful and for the greater good of the U.S. Except, somebody has to provide the money for those completely-paid-for opportunities to play college soccer.
Using the new NIL policy, the first option we might think of would be finding wealthy individuals who have a strong interest in soccer and/or a desire to see colleges and by extension the country excel at soccer. Then have them “ante up” the necessary funds. But finding such people, connecting them, and getting them to commit their money would be a long, arduous and likely futile task.
But what about Major League Soccer? MLS is a growing, vibrant sports league that stands to benefit from increased interest in the sport of soccer by fans in the U.S. And what better way to generate more interest among Americans than to improve the quality of play of their own youth and young adults, and in turn the MLS?
MLS could begin to give money to college soccer players in return for NIL-allowed purposes. MLS generated almost $800 million in revenue in 2019. A paltry $10 million of that would pay the college costs of 200 soccer players. And if the MLS tithed in the traditional 10% manner ($80 million), this would cover college costs for 1,600 soccer players – 80 D1 college teams could have 30 student-athletes on their teams (9.9 traditional scholarships plus 20 NIL-supported student-athletes).
Might this entice some of those outstanding student-athletes to pursue this sport rather than football? And how long would this largesse from MLS need to go on until they saw revenues increase to justify its continuance? These are good questions but the MLS is in a position where such a strategy – however long-term it might be – could pay off and move it above baseball, basketball and hockey among the second-tier sports in this country.
And the additional nationalistic benefit? The U.S. men’s soccer team might become a force to be reckoned with on the international stage and the Olympics. Cue the fanfare and get the commissioner of Major League Soccer on the line.
