Wednesday, July 4, 2007

USA! UCLA!

It was when I was watching the highlight video, listening to the chants of "USA" that it occurred to me that it's a little similar to what UCLA fans chant.

Anyway, in this case, it's especially fitting, because no college team has contributed more players to U.S. soccer than UCLA.

Not only have more UCLA players played in MLS than from any other university (50+), more of them have played abroad as well (20+).

In the last U20 cycle, Marvell Wynne and Benny Feilhaber were the slightly unexpected Bruin picks to the World Cup who showed their quality to the world.

This time around, Sal Zizzo and Tony Beltran are proving their worth on the U20 stage.

Before anyone asks about UCLA's bitter crosstown rival, USC - they don't have a men's soccer team.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

usc without a men's soccer team . . . . one of the great results of title IX. hopefully one day soon they will correct that rule so that less popular men's teams are not sacraficed to make space for football players.
DMH

A.C. said...

People might laugh at UCLA football at times (though the Bruins beat the Trojans), but they've managed to have a football team and a soccer team, so it can be done.

Doug Whitehead said...

UCLA has both because they were both established as known programs before title IX was enforced. The tragedy is that, with it in place, no school can ever add a men's program in the future. Unless, of course, a school gives up their football team (such as UCSB).

By the way, USC does have a men's team. Its not official though.
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~scsoccer/

A.C. said...

I'm not a lawyer, but nowhere I've read about title IX said that established programs were exempt from compliance.

Also, Title IX far too often becomes the scapegoat for athletic departments wanting an excuse to cut non-revenue sports.

Honestly, one only has to look at one thing to realize why women's soccer flourished after Title IX - it was a cheap program for schools to start to get to compliance.