Not really sure where Quinn Phillips is getting a 5th year of eligibility from for Hobart as he's currently listed on the roster. Can only get a medical redshirt if you played in a 3rd or fewer games in the injured season and he played 41% of games that year. Seems like some compliance funny business going on there. 

Who even knows this year.  And I'm close to getting to the point where it's "who even cares" if we continue to see the same nonsense from SLU. I want to follow the league as thoroughly as I always have but it's much more difficult to have interest when the powers that be for SLU soccer don't show interest. Results are one thing, the product is another.  SLU had a good spring and the coach finally ditched some of his ridiculous bias against the transfer portal after getting beat over the head by Cortland for so long, but we shall see.

Teams haven't been repeating the last several seasons because it's exceedingly more difficult playing with a target on your back as well as the home and away scheduling flips season to season. Hobart will probably be picked first especially with Vassar losing all that they did. Hobart will hope to avoid a repeat cycle of 2023 to 2024. Won the league in 2023 off the back of lots of wonder goals which regressed in the NCAA tournament and then underperformed in 2024.  Hobart also had a lot of wonder goals in the 2nd half of 2025 which again regressed in the first round.  They maintain most of their offense from last season, but now have the target on their back but will be better positioned than most of the league to start.

Skidmore had a nice season last year, but one has to wonder how much teams will adjust to them now that they won't catch anyone by surprise.  It's hard to imagine RPI continuing to be as poor as they have, but then again I've said similar things about SLU and nothing has changed yet.

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on August 17, 2026, 03:20:27 PMAt the same time, I'd be pretty sad if there's no pathway for nontraditional students to play sports.  When I was in college, we had a 28 year old freshman playing for the basketball team.  He was a local guy who'd just never gone to college for whatever reason.  The Coach found him somewhere, offered him a spot.  He commuted, but was on campus all the time, got involved in student life, played four years, and earned a degree he'd not otherwise have had.

I never thought about this.  One of the players on SLU basketball's Mount Rushmore was a non traditional student that enrolled when he was 21. This kind of player is more rare these days even without the eligibility stuff, but I do think they are completely eradicated if these changes apply to all of the NCAA.

Quote from: NYHoopsGuru on August 18, 2026, 09:41:04 PM

Quote from: D3BBALL on August 18, 2026, 05:25:51 PMIncoming freshman from Canterbury that was going to Trinity now going to URI. Losing a 6 10 athletic big never good,  but more of a hurt down the road than this year.

D3BBALL-

In what is supposed to be a stacked Trinity freshman class touted to replace the legendary '26 class, I thought Dash Mabilon had the most potential and was certainly going to be my preseason pick for ROY and even possibly an all conference team. Clearly Coach Archie Miller and staff at Rhode Island see a lot of potential taking a freshman this late in the offseason, after a whole summer of practices. That conversation with Coach Cosgrove could not have been an easy one, but only time will tell if the bantams will be able to make up for this loss and continue the winning pedigree that we are all so used to by now.

-Guru

Everyone was courting him, he most definitely would have made an instant impact in my opinion. UAA, NESCACs, several Liberty League teams and plenty of d1's were after him. He's not actually 6'10", but he's still all of 6'8". He has lots of range though and is very good beyond the arc. I wasn't surprised he chose Trinity given that he'd probably get immediate playing time with his skill set being unicorn like for d3.  Probably going to see fewer and fewer of these players go d3 now (if they don't have the academics for schools like Tufts/Williams/Amherst). 

Quote from: Hopkins92 on August 18, 2026, 05:13:59 PM

Quote from: SierraFD3soccer on August 14, 2026, 07:40:24 PMVery interesting article from May, 2026. Worth the read, talking about how irrelevant D1 soccer has become and uses stats. https://www.samford.edu/sports-analytics/fans/2026/The-2026-USMNT-Is-the-Best-American-Soccer-Team-in-History-It-Still-Isnt-Good-Enough

The other issue, and I need to be careful because I don't have any actual numbers on this, is the socio-economic/striving to make your (and your family's) life better aspect.

It's a big factor in a lot of other countries when it comes to football. In America, that cohort is focused on Football and Basketball. Interesting to note that in those sports, college is still an essential feeder system into the professional ranks.

But, when you look at the professional football rosters currently and throughout history, a ton of the best players come from poor, hardscrabble backgrounds.

For his faults as a tactical manager, this is one thing Jurgen Klinsmann has nailed.  Whenever he is asked why we aren't a soccer power, his first answer is always about how in the US most parents try to do everything they can to get their kids into the best college possible.  That is completely contrary to the system of producing widespread soccer talent since player development is most critical between ages 14-18.  You can talk about pay to play until the cows come home, but unless you break this socioeconomic and psychological stranglehold it will always be an uphill battle.  Good luck trying to convince the parents of a promising teenage prospect that they should put their plans to attend Stanford or Duke on hold and instead commit to a professional academy.  The median nuclear parent in this country will react to that like someone just threw acid in their face.

Quote from: nescac1 on August 18, 2026, 05:54:47 PMTrinity seems to be recruiting a lot of guys right on the edge of D1.  You obviously get huge talent in that way, but you can also lose guys very late in the recruiting cycle (worst ever in that regard was back when Williams lost Miye Oni to Yale) or after a year or two as transfers.  But when it works out, you get four years of Vetter and Okorougo and a chip! Trinity still has a loaded incoming class, but with so many wings fighting for minutes I doubt all of them stick around for four years. 

It's very hard to be very heavily reliant on transfers in D3 without grad programs.  NYU, Case and Chicago dramatically raised the ceiling of their programs thanks largely to grad transfers. Even among those, only NYU has the juice to make it a permanent program builder. Trine had a huge title year thanks in part to undergrad transfers but I think the big one was the brother of a guy already in program.  I agree that the odds of a NESCAC program vaulting into contention with transfers is very slender, just too hard to find guaranteed impact guys who aren't grad transfers, but they can help at the margins as gap fillers.  For example, Amherst had a massive hole at the 5 and the center they are bringing in from F&M will give them a guy who makes them competitive at that position. 

Amherst has Ryan Hempfling who had plenty of d1 interest.  I'm surprised he didn't play much last year, and seemingly is not getting starters minutes this year. I don't begrudge anyone taking the opportunity to get an Amherst education, but he'd play 30+ minutes a game elsewhere.

If the goal of making d3 5 to play 5 in order to retain enrollment because of decline, it feels like that's mutually exclusive with the schools that have enrollment issues.  Most of the schools in that situation do not have graduate school options.  It feels like a very dangerous game dangling an extra year of competition in front of a 21/22 year old since many are highly likely to want to play an extra year of competition against bottom tier teams even it means another year spending tens of thousands.  There is going to be someone who spends an additional $30k or so in order to play against Goucher.

Quote from: Hopkins92 on August 13, 2026, 04:08:12 PMCurious if there is $$ angle here that isn't being discussed. Does the proposed new set-up allow for more games? Which could mean more travel cost?

Even without more games it still costs more.  Have to pay game day ops and spread athletic departments thinner than they already are.  The borderline psychotic obsession with college soccer coaches trying to turn it into the premier league will never make sense to me.  College soccer is not a professional development league, it is a niche sport unique to America.

D3 hasn't adopted the 5 year change, and it's likely they won't.

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

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

This is it. So sick of hearing about "pAy tO pLaY".  Of course, there are issues with that. But this is as much cultural as it is structural. Jurgen Klinsmann has pointed this out numerous times, as he is obviously a product of the European system as well as a witness to how things work here since he's lived here since the late 90s. Until there's a change in the cultural mentality of a significant portion of America not a lot will change. You will have to convince the parents in this country that think the most important thing they can do for their kids is to send them to the best college possible should change their focus and instead send their kids to a professional academy and completely forgo the idea of college. That is a major, major breaking of the social psyche of a huge portion of the country's population. And that is also contingent upon players at a young age having the hunger for soccer like kids do for basketball and football.

This is why I absolutely HATE all the changes to college soccer that are currently going on. Coaches are trying to act like college is the premier league. College soccer is an extremely unique and niche thing only seen in America. It is not where we develop pro talent. It is for players who simply want to play a few more years while getting an education. We should not be altering the sport to accommodate the egos of coaches who delusionally think they're all a bunch of Pep Guardiolas.

At a SLU game a few years back I sat next to the coaches of a New England Prep school program and listened to one of the new members of their staff complain about college soccer rules like unlimited substitutions being a reason why the US national team hasn't become elite. This is the kind of brain rot and misplaced attitudes toward US soccer structure that continues to make the soccer intelligentsia in this country make wrong decisions. 

Personally, I think that the main way is to keep creating MLS academies as a way to get young players scouted and bought by European team. Mathis Albert being the most recent example. Scouted by Dortmund in the Galaxy youth system and then bought and transferred over to their youth program at a critical age window for development. But that is still a somewhat rare thing happening for American players. For every 1 Mathis Albert there are 9 kids whose parents would rather light themselves on fire than be told their kid cannot go to college at 18-22 years old if he wants to pursue soccer seriously.

Netherlands and Germany didn't make it further than the round of 32. Brazil and Portugal got as far as the round of 16. All were considered World Cup contenders. Can say it was a disappointing finish last night since it was, but you'd think we finished in last place going off some of reactions.

Quote from: Ejay on July 06, 2026, 04:32:47 PMI was coaching a u12 team in a tournament several years ago and my player scored a goal after the ball had clearly crossed the end line but went unnoticed by the ref.  We'd always taught our kids to "play until you hear the whistle" so that's what my player did. But I saw it go out, the opposing coach saw it go out (and lost his **** when play continued), the parents saw it go out (and lost their **** when play continued), and the defense saw it go out (and stopped defending). 

I couldn't in good conscience accept this as a good goal and told the ref I agreed with the opposing coach and defense and that it should be a goal kick instead of a goal. He agreed to waive the goal off. My goal scorer burst into tears (sigh).

I don't expect the USA to sit Balogun, but I would love if they did and publicly announced it was because they had integrity and respected the game.

Did that game have VAR where the original call was no goal and then said it was a goal after review? Because if not then it's not analogous.

If the officials had integrity he would have never been carded in the first place. You don't get points for ceding the faux moral high ground.

This is partly why it's been hard for the sport to take off in the more mainstream in this country. Process over outcome is still the obsession. All because a lot of people want to be pat on the head from someone 3000 miles away.

Quote from: jknezek on July 06, 2026, 03:20:52 PM

Quote from: stlawus on July 06, 2026, 03:02:08 PM" This decision changes all of that. Belgium, and 90% of the world, is going to want to beat the "cheaters." 

As if that wasn't already the case, come on. Nobody besides Americans have wanted us to win, and that's always been the situation, especially this World Cup.

Again, its not about that. It's about a Belgium team that had every reason to look past this game, at least a bit, and now doesn't. You may not believe in that, but a lot of people do. It happens in every sport, every time. This was a quintessential trap game for Belgium. Now it's a lot less of one in my opinion.

Same thing was said about Australia.  All we heard for 6 months was noise about them having "extra motivation".  It's the world cup knockout round, everyone is motivated.  And all the outside noise about external motivational factors goes away the second the ball is kicked off and the game starts.   

" This decision changes all of that. Belgium, and 90% of the world, is going to want to beat the "cheaters." 

As if that wasn't already the case, come on. Nobody besides Americans have wanted us to win, and that's always been the situation, especially this World Cup.

Doesn't even have to do with the card itself, it was the improper use of VAR.  Immediately after the call was made you saw tons of former refs and officials say that it was the wrong call because they incorrectly applied VAR.  Even Clattenburg himself said as much on the broadcast.  The game lost integrity by the ref incorrectly using VAR so I don't see why the ref should be supported when he didn't abide by the rules in the first place.

If Belgium couldn't even be motivated to play a world cup knockout game before this then yikes.

Going to lose my mind, yet ANOTHER mid November game between Clarkson and SLU.  Who on earth is making these decisions?  Never mind the fact it's a league game played on November 14th which is ridiculous in itself, the rivalry series between these teams for decades was always played in December at the earliest.  And yet another season where SLU and Clarkson are the only teams to play 6 consecutive road games.