@AztecFB Enough with the alpha stuff! We just got stomped out by a MAC team to move to 1-3. This tweet is an embarassment. Better to sit it out. Sheesh.
About as bad as the first half could have gone for SDSU. When Sean Lewis said on Monday that "we're going to look as good as I think an Aztec football team has ever looked come Saturday," he definitely was not talking about the quality of football.
In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.
That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.
FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.
US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.
So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.
Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.
Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.
They will not.
Ranking the current Mountain West teams by the number of picks in the modern NFL Draft era 📊
1) San Diego State: 149
2) Fresno State: 86
3) Colorado State: 85
4) Utah State: 76
5) Boise State: 74
6) Hawaii: 72
7) San Jose State: 69
8) Wyoming: 66
9) New Mexico: 48
10) UNLV: 45
11) Nevada: 41
12) Air Force: 10
Hi @NFL. People know Chris Johnson the football player but I wanted to tell you about the person.When my father was on hospice before we lost him, Chris took the time to come visit him.He sat with my dad, listened to his stories and even hugged and comforted my mom.
Sacramento State Football going to the MAC is truly one of the stupidest things I've ever heard! Just absurd! I will discuss on @foxsportsksac next week!
The NFL will be better when the Chargers move back to San Diego, the Raiders move back to Oakland, the Rams move back to St. Louis and the 49ers move back to San Francisco.
CA High-Speed Rail is the biggest public infrastructure failure in U.S. history. We've just passed legislation to make it ineligible for any further federal funding.
The train was supposed to be done by 2020. Yet after 17 years and $17 billion, there's still no track.