We could be the SEC of soccer

[BillEsq]

hey i know its not basketball and i know its not football but the potential conference has so other potential money makers... and in college sports any sport that is not loosing money is good.

The Potential C7+ would have one heck of a soccer league to sell out as filler in the fall and a decent lacrosse league to sell in the spring. For schools without football this does two things - creates name recognition for the school outside of bball season and brings in revenue without having the serious financial drain of football. This coupled with the added revenue from the bball would allow for some of the programs to expand again. I think the goal is to make the new conference a competitor against the other big conferences in all sports.

I know SLU wants its hockey team back and could easily add m/w lacrosse with the additional revenue. Maybe St. Johns re adds their track team? any thoughts on this?

[Jet915]

Not sure about other schools but soccer is huge at Creighton. We get around 3K a game. It's the only sport other than basketball that doesn't lose money. Not sure how it would translate as far as ratings on TV though. Considering the only time ESPN shows soccer is for the College Cup (with rare exceptions, I think ESPNU showed Creighton vs. Princeton last year), I assume it's not much in terms of ratings. However, I could see it as filler for Fox Sports 2.

[butlerguy03]

This may be a good point. Fox has invested heavily on soccer recently and could help promote NCAA soccer through this conference. Butler's always had a respectable soccer program and central Indiana is becoming a larger soccer fanbase.

[BillEsq]

i'm not suggesting that soccer is the moving factor or will challenge football. but look at it this way in basketball in a market saturated with hundreds of college BBall games a week the A-ten ( a good conference) only gets 350,000 a team. For most of the A-Ten schools this is their primary budget-plus basketball ticket sales-and NCAA units.
In the fall outside of one day there is no sport filler. Heck in October and most of Nov there is nothing as you lose MLB and you are pre NCAA BB. Soccer fits well here and it has developed a nich following. The new conference will would have had GT, Marquette, Creighton, SLU, and VCU ranked with X and St. John's receiving votes. Providence has also been historically good and Dayton has multiple appearances in the tourney since 2000. Essentially your talking 6-8 good teams a year with a solid chance of a final four and title every year (sound familiar) The average soccer fan would watch that game.

No there won't be a 100 million a year deal like football but maybe a 1-4 million. (more than the sunbelt for football) this is at virtually no cost as most of the new conference is breaking even on soccer. Plus you get the added name recognition of being on TV without any real rivals during the fall (just avoid sat).

While football is a cash cow its also a cash black hole- it eats up AD revenue and few programs pull a profit. The new league is looking at having 2 sports pulling a profit. This is huge it means more money for facilities, which leads to better recruits, which leads to more success in all sports... which leads to more recruits, and more money ....

[flyerlax06]

Providence's ice hockey teams play in Hockey East. That will not change. That league also has a TV deal with NBC.

[BillEsq]

Providence's ice hockey teams play in Hockey East. That will not change. That league also has a TV deal with NBC.

I'm not sure what that means for their soccer program. I think you misread something.

[EMT]

You mentioned hockey in your last sentence to open this post.

[BillEsq]

You mentioned hockey in your last sentence to open this post.

ahhhh, well i said with the added money.. SLU wants to add a hockey team... however i know the C7+ is far from having enough teams to have one so i'm sure they would have to join one of the midwestern leagues. My point on that was with the bball money and if we could sell soccer to turn it into a small money maker it would allow the schools to add programs.

[pki1998]

Personnally I could not care any less about soccer. This statement is not ment to offend the followers / players of soccer. It is defenitly a sport that takes an emense amount of athletic ability. But when I was young, soccer was not a very popular sport (at least in the Cincinnati area). Since I never played soccer growing up its just not that interesting of a sport to me. But over the last twenty years soccer popularity has grown by leaps and bounds. As Soccer becomes more popular it seems likely that one soon college soccer will become a popular sport for people to watch. Given this fact it would be wise for the C7 to consider soccer success/committement when assessing future additions. Granted Basketball should be the primary focus. But if a tie breaker is need to help seperate potential canidates the schools would be wise to give the nod to the program with the better soccer history.