Of the anti-Berson sentiments, Mr. Keano does an excellent job of putting his case forward. But I do take exception with the comment about CoC being a 'featherweight of an educational institution.' If you refer to athletic programs, sure, but as far as an educational institution, you may be making a mass generalization, but that's for the 'SCHIGHEREDUCATION.COM' board. But Mr. Shearer, the "TRUTH", not "BITTER"? Then why the '**** off' and 'kiss ass' comments. If you aren't bitter then why resort to vulgarities? Usually that's the result of someone who is not comfortable in the use of the language or someone who is so angry they can't complete a sentence without cursing. You may get more empathy and understanding of your position if you would speak to the message board as you would a room full of strangers at a workplace function instead of drunken Clemson/Carolina fans in a smoky bar.
This topic seems to change issues based on the emotional state of a few. The thread started regarding players who were no longer on the team and quickly digressed to USC being horrible and how Berson is the cause of players leaving the team as well as 'stealing' money from parents of soccer camp attendees by ignoring them when he recruits. I would speculate that almost all programs have someone who doesn't make it and places blame on the coach(es). But to really take a totally negative position, anti-Berson/USC, could anyone give some specific facts. This is what I would want to know: how many scholarships are available for men’s soccer, how many are awarded for men’s soccer and how many walk-ons do each of the major colleges get in our state? How many SC high school soccer players go on to play college soccer? Of those, how many are on scholarships and how many graduate?
So how do other colleges fare regarding players whose home residence is in the state of the school they attend? I was curious so I went to the NSCAA/adidas® National Rankings for the week of September 8 and used those schools for comparison. If you look at each of those schools rosters here’s what you’ll find.
Maryland 6 of 24 (25%)
Wake Forest 9 of 31 (29%)
UCLA 27 of 28 (96%)
Saint Louis University 18 of 27 (67%)
University of North Carolina 16 of 26 (62%)
Santa Clara University 13 of 27 (48%)
Old Dominion University 11 of 26 (42%)
Rutgers 12 of 33 (33%)
Southern Methodist University 12 of 25 (48%)
University of Connecticut 5 of 27 (19%)
Indiana University 9 of 28 (32%)
University of Alabama at Birmingham 5 of 25 (20%)
Hartwick College(NY) 3 of 28 (11%)
UC Santa Barbara 18 of 25 (72%)
St. John's University(NY) 5 of 23 (22%)
University of South Carolina 2 of 18 (11%)
Coastal Carolina University 2 of 31 (6%)
University of Notre Dame 2 of 27 (7%)
Stanford University 6 of 24 (25%)
Oakland University(MI) 10 of 24 (42%)
University of Tulsa 5 of 24 (21%)
Florida International University 14 of 25 (56%)
Cal State Northridge 28 of 29 (97%)
Virginia Commonwealth University 11 of 25 (44%)
University of Pennsylvania 2 of 24 (8%)
The state with the highest number of home-grown players is California; five schools are represented by 92 CA players out of 133 total players on the rosters. Three schools have less than 10% of their players who are their own, USC with 11% is not one of those three. It was interesting to learn that the UCONN roster includes Willis Forko, former USC player from Texas. It was even more interesting to see a large number of players who had transferred from other colleges. I wonder why they do that, does Berson secretly coach at hundreds of colleges and universities?
To argue that we should only compare the two largest public universities is equivalent to arguing that we should only consider public high school players from Class AAAA and AAA as being qualified to play college ball.
As for Berson, I don’t believe I’ve seen anything claiming his youth soccer camps are a feeder program for state soccer. Quite frankly, a coach would be an idiot to sponsor a camp and then tell the participants ‘you will never have a chance to play college ball because you’re not good enough and we’ll never recruit you even if you were.’ The fact is that he and his assistants and other experienced staff interacts with the kids and gives them positive encouragement. Furthermore, any camp that brings young players in and gives them the opportunity to learn and develop skills and interact with college level players IS making an investment in improving South Carolina soccer.
Jon Eggert of Riverside High School is a freshman and one of the two USC players coming from the state. He was also the only player from South Carolina who was selected as a McDonald's All-American for the men's team this year, which featured the top 36 high school soccer seniors in the country. It seems like Berson’s standards are high, maybe too high. And let’s face it, college sports is a business, although some sports are ‘non-profit businesses.’ It’s better to keep your bosses happy than former high school players who didn’t fit a coach’s profile for recruiting.
I was sitting with my eight year old daughter at the NCAA Regional game USC played in Columbia last year. It was an enjoyable game until a group of local high school BOY soccer players sat down behind us. They weren’t as interested in the game as much as bragging about how great they were. All they did was criticize their teammates describing them in such eloquent speech as ‘he sucks,’ ‘he’s gay,’ ‘he’s a queer.’ They then questioned why the coach would let any of those degenerates play. The highlight was when one of them described a conversation they had with a female soccer player from their school, who had won a state championship with her team, telling her she wasn’t any good, just lucky and she would never be good enough to play for the boys team; duh! If this is representative of SC high school soccer players maybe that’s a good reason for not doing much recruiting in the state. If I were a coach I’d look for recruits anywhere else if there were more dedicated to a team than to their own inflated ego.
And lastly, the original post for this thread wanted to know about players no longer on the team. The answer, academic ineligibility. That is the truth of that matter and that lies totally with the individual. It doesn’t matter what sport you play, if you don’t make the grades the NCAA won’t let you play. But of course, doesn’t Berson control the NCAA also????
