Ed McGhee has resigned as NPU's head coach to take an assistant coaching job at an as-yet-unnamed D1 school.

No other details forthcoming at this point.

Heh. Been working on the post I just sent throughout the morning at spare moments around my work tasks for the day. Now that I've posted it and can look at the thread again, I see that two other posters have posted pretty much the same conclusions as me.

Quote from: SierraFD3soccer on July 08, 2026, 12:34:17 AMA lot of truth here -

https://x.com/TheSammahmood_/status/2074434672201785728?s=20

Every word of this really rings true to me as well. And I see how the big-bucks bonanza and resultant boom in pay-for-play over the past two dozen years has had some bad fallout in other sports, as I'm pretty familiar with how AAU syndrome has afflicted basketball and how travel-team ball has created some real problems in baseball as well. And then there's hockey, a sport in which for generations players grew up learning the game on backyard rinks and neighborhood ponds but which is now too expensive for any kid whose parents aren't at least upper middle class.

But the big problem for US soccer, as I see it, is actually twofold: 1) The pay-to-play model has become widely successful in the US because it fits the capitalist system, is immediate-results-oriented as opposed to long-term-results-oriented in terms of stressing winning over skills development, and it follows a familiar template within the larger American sports culture that culminates in D1 college athletics as the be-all and end-all (with a professional contract dangled as an unrealistic carrot atop all of that); and 2) the grassroots fan base of soccer has yet to expand broadly enough to trickle down to support locally-based, pro/mixed/amateur tiers for those fans outside of major cities; you don't have the half-dozen to a dozen tiers of soccer in the US made up of teams manned by players 17 and above that you do in other soccer countries. The USSF's soccer pyramid only consists of three levels, with no promotion/relegation system, and, while another first division league (USL Premier) is in the works, the truth is that the financial infrastructure in terms of stadiums, salaries, promotion, etc., doesn't really seem to be there even for that top level, to say nothing of lower tiers. Outside of the MLS, pro soccer in America is a congerie of shoestring operations. As Sam Mahmood explained, the US soccer community is trying to build a soccer culture in this country in an ass-backwards manner. That's not an indictment of anybody in particular or of the US soccer community as a whole. It just means that the United States has a massive, vibrant, well-established sports culture that in a lot of ways is the envy of the world, but which just isn't conducive to being retrofitted to a particular sport (soccer) whose dominant existing national model is much more finely-tuned to player development and economically-broad-based outreach (both in terms of fans and of childhood sponsorship and scouting) than the American sports model.

As for soccer demographics, I don't worry about soccer missing out on athletically promising American kids. There are over 340 million people in the United States. Of the eight countries that made it into this summer's World Cup quarters, the most populous (the UK) has about one-fifth the population of the US. Belgium is a country of 12 million people. Even with the popularity of basketball, baseball, and football, there are more than enough athletic kids in the US for soccer to draw from for the US to be successful on the international stage -- provided that those kids get introduced to the sport early and are nurtured in an environment that prioritizes skills development over winning tournaments that are basically promotional vehicles for travel club owners trying to make money by using trophies as advertising tools.

Besides, there are different body types and innate athletic abilities within the pool of every generation of American children, and not all of them translate well to soccer. If you're a very large kid whose main assets are size and strength, soccer doesn't really have a place for you ... but football does. If superior hand-eye coordination is one of your prime assets, you'd be wasting your talent on a soccer pitch unless you're a goalkeeper ... but you might be perfect for basketball or baseball or as a football wide receiver. Superior jumping ability? Yeah, that's helpful in terms of the niche aspect of soccer's air game, but that particular ability is far more prominently showcased as a basketball player or as an outside or middle hitter in volleyball. That's doubly true if you have a large wingspan, a physical asset that, again, soccer can only make use of if you're a goalkeeper.

Carthage has landed Braylen Blue, a 6'5", 185 rising junior guard from Sun Prairie, WI and Madison Memorial HS. In 2023-24 he was a freshman at St. Francis (PA), played sparingly, and then departed once the school announced it was moving from D1 to D3. After a year at a Utah juco where he ended up redshirting, he transferred again last year, this time to Madison College right in his back yard, and averaged 9.5 ppg while putting together an impressive .441/.365/.950 shooting line.

Augustana was also after him, and Clarke offered him an NAIA scholie. Radford sent him a preferred walk-on invite, but one season sitting at the end of the bench for a low-level D1 in another time zone seems to have been enough for him.

Given the wholesale losses Carthage suffers from last season's backcourt -- Riley Brooks in particular -- the addition of Blue looks like a pretty welcome development for Steve D.

Quote from: Kuiper on July 05, 2026, 06:47:03 PMBottom line is that while Bolagun is very good and clearly our best striker, it's not like he's Erving Haaland (beating Brazil today with a brace!). We weren't doomed without him and we aren't saved with him.

That's fair. Balogun certainly isn't Haaland. Then again, at this point there aren't any more than two or three strikers on the planet who deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Erling Haaland.

Incidentally, speaking as a North Park fan, it's obvious that the three teams I've rooted for in this World Cup are the United States, Sweden, and Norway. Pretty excited about what Erling & Co. did to the Brazilians yesterday! Norway, which only has a population roughly the same size as South Carolina's, is the 31st-ranked team in the FIFA international standings. Getting to the World Cup quarterfinals, and beating Brazil in the process, is an amazing accomplishment for such an underpopulated and lightly-regarded country.

Yesterday, however, I adopted a fourth team, England, because I understand the principle of rivalry. In hockey I always root against Canada, and in soccer I always root against Mexico. So I was certainly pleased to see the Three Lions take down Mexico, especially in the stadium with possibly the greatest home-team advantage in international play, Azteca.

Quote from: jknezek on July 06, 2026, 09:07:23 AMBelgium, and 90% of the world, is going to want to beat the "cheaters." And yes, I know the team didn't cheat, but that's going to be the view, especially now that the President is mixed up in the decision.

Well, at least we'll still have the Congolese in our corner. Trump may be Trump, but he's no King Leopold.

Quote from: Kuiper on July 01, 2026, 12:22:40 PMGiven the growth of the C2C in Virginia/North Carolina with the additions of J&W Charlotte and Regent (once the latter fully transitions), I wouldn't be too surprised if they ditch UC Santa Cruz and Alverno and just form a conference of their own.  It's too bad because UCSC doesn't have a lot of options for conferences that would take them given their size and public status.  They likely would have to go independent, but they play as an independent for regular season scheduling already.  Alverno is only restarting athletics and has a lot of nearby options if they can get somewhat competitive.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that Alverno will cease to exist within the next few years, making a quest for a new conference affiliation a moot point. If somehow the school beats the odds and manages to survive, it's likely to be without athletics. The Inferno have mostly been awful across the board when it comes to sports in the quarter-century-plus that they've been D3, and I don't think that they were any better when they were NAIA before that. More to the point, fielding full rosters has been a chronic problem for them over the years, so it doesn't seem like the school has ever tried to use athletic recruiting as an admissions tool.

Quote from: MCScots2013 on June 26, 2026, 06:24:54 PMI think I'm genuinely missing your point, but Roanoke's MBA started in 2023 and Guilford's (and E&H's) 2022. Lynchburg, a little surprisingly, started in the mid-00s.

The point is that the aforementioned crisis in higher education is of very recent vintage.

Quote from: MCScots2013 on June 26, 2026, 02:19:17 PMAre you sure about that?  I see your point, but tons of schools are adding graduate courses.  Schools that were strictly undergraduate 20 years ago when I was in high school and looking around, now shock me when I see how many graduate programs they have. I'm sure there are a lot of online classes, but graduate nonetheless.

I live in Virginia, so here are some examples in the region: Roanoke, Shenandoah, Averett (seemingly online), Bridgewater, E&H, Guilford, Methodist (now has a medical school), Greensboro, Lynchburg, Piedmont, Pfeiffer--given a few more minutes I can find more.

Let's take Guilford as an example, first.  The Guilford MBA is a 12-month program, tuition is $19,800.  When prompted to go to the "Financial Aid" page, it has an overview of the unsubsidized federal loans--no mention of scholarships. Another avenue for funding is tuition reimbursement as a benefit from employers.  Schools are getting wise to that and adding these programs.  Can't say I fault them, especially if you have the same faculty and you know beforehand the money is coming in.

Here's probably a better example: Roanoke, which has two MBA options. 4+1, and online 2-year self-paced.  Not  a terrible idea.

I'm not saying it's a good idea for every small colleges to rush to do this, but faced with the numbers issues they have to do something.

And how many of them have started within, say, the past couple of years? That's my point.

Quote from: MCScots2013 on June 23, 2026, 05:00:47 PMInteresting possibilities if D3 adopted the same 5/5 model:
1. as you mentioned, an increase of good D3 talent transferring to D1 and D2 schools for a graduate year.  Always fun to see that happen. Talent is talent!
2. more undergraduate schools will start graduate programs, or
3. schools with very small graduate enrollment will grow offerings to keep from "passing off" a student to another school for the 5th year.

I think it's extremely unlikely that the vast majority of D3 schools would consider #2 or #3 to be sound policies right now, given demographic challenges and the current economic climate of higher education. Masters-level graduate programs bring in only a fraction of the amount of tuition income that undergraduate programs do, unless you plan to wholesale your school's masters programs (i.e., convert them to online format and then admit remote students by the trainload, a la Liberty and Grand Canyon). This is likely going to be an era of retrenchment in U.S. higher education, not an era of expansion, with lots of schools fighting to stay healthy and lots of others just fighting to survive. And, besides, D3 schools don't prioritize the interests of athletics over the interests of the school's academic aspects in the tail-wags-the-dog fashion of D1. For that reason as well, the idea of D3 following D1 into a five-years-of-eligibility model seems unlikely, unless someone can make an effective argument that five years of athletic eligibility will lift five-year graduation rates above where they stand now under D3's current eligibility rules.

Quote from: GusD on June 23, 2026, 09:35:45 PMNCC's new 🏀 GA for the next two seasons is Nathan Valentine who began his career at IWU before transferring to Lawrence where he played the last two years.

A former Titan on the North Central coaching staff? Something tells me that the two of you aren't going to have the warmest of relationships, even though he'll be wearing a Cardinals polo and will be two or three seats away from Vince Kmiec on the NCC bench.

Quote from: Dr. Acula on June 08, 2026, 03:13:02 PMMalone already dumped football.

Always strikes me as sad that the one college or university that's located in the mecca of professional football had to close down its football program eight years ago. Even worse, it did so just prior to Ashton Dulin becoming the first (and last) Pioneer to play in the NFL.

Quote from: Kuiper on June 16, 2026, 11:41:28 PMThis Messi kid looks pretty good.  Not tall enough for Amherst, of course, but I'm sure he could find the right fit with some college recruiting consultants.

I dunno. I'd hate to see Lionel Messi relegated to pounding the table over Williams College setting the gold standard in excellence in academics and D3 athletics.

Quote from: GU1999 on April 27, 2026, 07:03:00 PMObi Ogomo (GU '11 and '18) has been named head coach of Westminster.  Obi is loved in Greenville.  He most recently has been at Depauw and while there was the lead recruiter of a close family friends son.  They indicated he was GREAT in the recruiting processs.  The Barber coaching tree looking nice these days.  Good luck to Obi and Westmin. 

Obi Agomo just hired Jalen Boyd as his assistant coach. Jalen, a former All-CCIW player for North Park who was a starter on the 2022-23 Vikings team that made it to the Sweet Sixteen, just completed a two-year stint as North Park MBB's graduate assistant coach and received his M.A. in organizational management from NPU last month. Best of luck to Jalen and to the Blue Jays!

Sorry to see that. Rip currents are a serious matter in Lake Michigan.  Roughly 100 people drown in the Great Lakes every year, the vast majority of them due to rip currents, and about half of those fatalities occur in Lake Michigan.