Our second member of the Class of 2020 is joining our team, as Chris Cimino joins our unmatched 5-star recruiting class. Learn a little more about Chris here!
High School: Cheverus Class of 2020
High School Sports: Baseball (4 years), Basketball (2 years)
College: Bates, class of 2024
Hobbies: Anything to do with sports
Favorite D1 Teams: Michigan, Providence
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: Mobbing Andrew Degeorge after he hit a walk off to advance us to the regional final.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Malcolm Butler intercepting Russell Wilson at the goal line to seal the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory.
Joey Pelletier
Age: 19
High School: Holderness School (New Hampshire)
High School Sports: Football, Baseball, Basketball, Lacrosse
College: Hobart Football, Class of 2023
Hobbies: Working out, watching sports, hanging with friends, and playing video games
Favorite D1 Sports Teams: Duke Blue Devils, Oregon Ducks, Auburn Tigers
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: My last home high school football game, which we won 22-20
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Tom Brady winning his sixth ring over the LA Rams, 13-3 in 2019.
Football and basketball will always be king of the college sports world. Baseball is a national pastime, while postseason hockey tends to thrill even casual sports fans. Soccer has been the newcomer, at least in terms of fan interest, in American college athletics, but with the games’ popularity beginning to explode, it’s time to start respecting the sport.
Soccer has always been a tough sell in America. With the more violent and action-packed game of football being played in the fall, the low-scoring contests on the soccer pitch have been largely disregarded. Over the past decade, the game’s popularity has begun to increase. In 2014, 5.1 million people tuned in to watch USA take on Belgium in the Round of 16. However, the US national team has been declining since that game, struggling to even attain international relevance, and the MLS has not gained a lot of traction among American soccer fans, who tend to prefer the more competitive European leagues.
College soccer is by far the best non-international option to grow the game in America. Many people prefer college sports to professional sports, and soccer is no different. The MLS game is played at a slower pace, with too many 0-0 draws, and it’s slowly becoming a place for aging European stars to enjoy one last ride, but the collegiate game is played dynamically, with the speed and offense that make the game a little more entertaining. Yet, ESPN and other major sports channels would rather televise football preview shows and old reruns than a high-octane ACC soccer clash. If you Google “top college soccer games of 2019”, about half of the top results are about college football. While there are still some low-scoring games, the natural collegiate rivalries in soccer make games more exciting than the MLS, and parity is increasing rapidly.
This past year, ten top-5 teams lost to unranked opponents, many in high-scoring battles. Underdogs often build their teams to survive sustained attacks from more skilled opponents, but they feature dynamic playmakers on offense that can turn a game in an instant. UCLA outlasted #3 Akron in a 3-2 thriller this year, and unranked Memphis stunned a top-five SMU team with a 4-3 overtime victory. In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, unranked Wright State, making their first ever tournament appearance, took down perennial powerhouse Notre Dame 3-2. The Raiders featured a fast-paced attack and clinched the game on a curling 25-yard blast into the upper right corner. The game was televised only by the ACC Network. The national championship between Georgetown and Virginia saw a 3-3 tie in regulation with two lead changes in the final five minutes, as well as a thrilling 7-6 penalty kick shootout to decide the title. The sport has the storylines, the upsets, the action and plenty more, so what else can be done to improve the popularity of the game?
Improve the Scheduling
The NCAA could do a much better job of scheduling when it comes to soccer, as they often put games at inconvenient times for their target audience – college students – to watch. One example of this was the 2019 ACC Tournament. The ACC Tournament has teams host their first round games, which is a great idea to get student crowds, but their execution of this idea is less than ideal. When Notre Dame hosted Boston College in the first round of the ACC Tournament, the game was scheduled for 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. Why go through the effort of allowing teams to host postseason contests, only to schedule games at a time when the majority of college students can’t attend. The ND-BC game turned out to be a 2-1 overtime thriller, but only a few dozen students were able to watch the game unfold live. Such a scheduling catastrophe would never happen in basketball or on the gridiron, but in soccer? Who cares right?
Market the star players
Joe Burrow. Chase Young. Justin Fields. Trevor Lawrence. Those are just a few of the top college football names, and they are names that almost every casual sports fan would recognize. How many people would recognize the names Joe Bell, Robbie Robinson, or Dylan Nealis? Those were the three finalists for the Hermann Trophy, soccer’s Heisman, but nobody but avid fans of the game would know those names. ESPN is always posting insane graphics about record-breaking Burrow stats – post a damn soccer highlight here and there. The game has the potential to be popular, but it doesn’t help when you don’t market the players at all.
Televise More Games
This works in tandem with point #1, but the NCAA, and colleges themselves, could do much better with making a TV-friendly schedule. Many schools play their soccer games on Friday nights and Saturday, and quite frankly, when you’re competing with football for television time, that’s not going to work. Saturday and Sunday belong to football, and so do Friday nights to an extend. Whether it’s afternoon games on Friday, or shifting games to Thursday nights, there’s got to be a better way to balance the schedule with football. NCAA Tournament games shouldn’t only be available regionally, and with major conferences like the ACC engaging in ranked clashes every week, there should be far more nationally televised games.
Interest in soccer is finally growing, and the collegiate game is the way to take advantage of that interest. It’s time for major sports channels and the NCAA to figure that out and giving soccer its fair share of respect.
The elite recruiting class continues to take shape, as we welcome in our third writer from Syracuse University. Learn a little more about John below!
Age: 19
High School: Glenbrook South High School
High School Sports; Water Polo, Swimming, Football
College: Syracuse University
Hobbies: Broadcasting sports on TV and radio, working out, playing spikeball, and playing video games
Favorite D1 Teams: Syracuse Orange, DePaul Blue Demons, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Ohio State Buckeyes
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: Scoring the game-winning goal in triple overtime to win the 2019 CSL conference championship.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Being at Lambeau Field for Week 1 of the 2018 NFL season to see the Packers come back from being down 20-0 to beat the Bears.
Favorite Athlete Kirk Hinrich
To learn about our latest team member, Will Read, a sports and entertainment management major at the University of South Carolina, read below!
Age: 19
High School: John Creek High School (Georgia)
High School Sports: Soccer
College: University of South Carolina
Hobbies: Fishing, hiking, following sports, and working out
Favorite D1 Teams: South Carolina Gamecocks
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: Winning the 2014 Super-Y Club National Championship
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Lebron James’ block of Andre Iguodala in the final minutes of Game 7 in the 2016
As our team continues to grow, we welcome Megan Read to join our staff of writers here at collegetalking.com. Megan is a field hockey goalkeeper, and she signed with the University of Michigan out of high school. Learn more about Megan below!
Age: 18
High School: Kentucky Country Day
High School Sports: Field Hockey
College: University of Michigan, Class of 2023
Hobbies: “I do a lot of art, watch Netflix, and do power lifting”
Favorite D1 Teams: Michigan Wolverines, Louisville Cardinals
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: Making the state finals in my senior year of high school and earning Defensive Player of the Year.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Beating Maryland – the #2 team in the country – under the lights this past season.
As our team continues to grow, preparing to grow our coverage when sports resume, we welcome Jackson Wilson as the newest member of our team. Jackson just finished classes for his senior year of high school, and he will be taking over, primarily covering hockey and lacrosse for us. Learn more about Jackson below!
Age: 18
High School: Cheverus High School, Class of 2020
High School Sports: Hockey (4 years), Lacrosse (2 years), Cross Country (4 years)
College: University of Maine, Class of 2024
Hobbies: Weightlifting, Hiking, Playing Video Games, Collecting Hockey Cards
Favorite D1 Teams: UMaine Black Bears, BC Eagles, Maryland Terrapins
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: My favorite sports memories are from my high school hockey career. I scored to tie the regional finals my sophomore year, scored the first two goals as a captain on my senior night, and I had a four-goal game to reach 100 varsity points.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: The Boston College Hockey national titles in 2010 and 2012. I’ve loved attending professional and college games, especially the Hockey East championship games with my dad, and Portland Pirates games with my grandparents.
The latest member to join our growing team at College Kids Talking College Sports is Ryan Nelson. Ryan is an associate producer with CitrusTV – Syracuse’s student-run television studio – and a beat writer for Syracuse Men’s Hockey. To learn a little more about Ryan, check below!
Age: 19
High School: Notre Dame College Prep, Class of 2019
High School Sports: Volleyball (1 year), and Tennis (3 years)
College: Syracuse University
Hobbies: I love watching, commentating, and talking sports. As mentioned above, I work both as a beat writer for Syracuse Hockey and an associate producer with CitrusTV.
Favorite D1 Teams: Northwestern Wildcats and Syracuse Orange
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: In sixth grade football, I scored a touchdown despite only playing as an offensive and defensive lineman.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: Any Chicago championship – The 2005 White Sox, Blackhawks in ’10, ’13, and ’15, and the 2016 Cubs are especially memorable.
The fourth member of our team is Aidan Thomas, who designed our website and oversees our sports news production and Twitter account. Here’s some additional information about Aidan!
Age: 18
High School: Cheverus High School, Class of 2019
High School Sports: Soccer (4 years), Baseball (3 years), Ultimate Frisbee (1 year)
College: University of Notre Dame, Class of 2023
Hobbies: I love all sports, playing chess, and I play on the Notre Dame Ultimate team.
Favorite D1 Teams: Georgetown, Army, and Notre Dame
Favorite Personal Sports Memory: Our soccer team hosted a quarterfinal playoff game and won in penalty kicks over a team that had beaten us 5-0 two weeks earlier. The crowd stormed the field, and it was easily one of my favorite high school memories.
Favorite Professional/College Sports Memory: When David Ortiz hit a grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning to tie Game 2 of the ALCS, leading the Red Sox to an eventual World Series.
Favorite Athlete: Xander Bogaerts
College Kids Talking College Sports 