The Mixed Zone with Dave Simeone

The climate in intercollegiate athletics has changed from embracing challenges to excel to opting out and taking a break. Coaches are working in an environment where administrators have set the barometer without ever having competed or ever having coached or managed athletes and programming. Coaches who travel this road find it tenuous.

The NCAA along with state and federal legislatures are closer and closer becoming one in the same bureaucracy. The presidents of colleges and universities, along with their athletics directors, are not looking far enough down the road to understand that they are just a couple of steps away from being nationalized. The influence of revenue and growing that base of resources through intercollegiate athletics is the root of the problem. Once upon a time college athletics, although it had to be built on a business model also, was predicated on values, but that's changed. What were once vices are now habits...

The investment in players by clubs is costing millions of dollars with the expectation of generating millions in profits. Similar expectations are being created by confederations, national sport governing bodies, and FIFA. As a result, we are seeing more wear and tear on the sport and the players as profit replaces the sporting essence.

Within MLS a view of the effectiveness and contributions of foreign and domestic coaches. What do the numbers say and why do we keep going back to the well for all the wrong reasons?

The alliance formed between these three entities creates a national soccer conglomerate where the various interests cross over and collide.