Coach P: Great examples illustrating a very plausible scenario. I knew that NECSA's select program had been heading downhill -- I think what we're seeing is the result of the merger of an "up-and-coming" select club (CSC) with an increasingly "down-and-out" select club (NECSA). It's appearing to be an increasingly brilliant move by NECSA to have merged with CSC.
There's another factor someone privately e-mailed me about that I offer for your consideration. I was told that the typical CUFC team, particularly the Elite teams, were much larger in terms of roster size than either the typical CSC or NECSA team. So if you take the scenario that you've got 18+ players on an elite team at CUFC where you had 15 or so players on a team at CSC, then denying the Challenge team those "bottom" 3 players would probably hurt the Challenge team a lot.
If CUFC succeeds in putting more of its Elite teams into RIIIPL, all of this doesn't bode well for CUFC with respect to its competitiveness with regard to its Challenge teams. To put it another way, it appears that if these trends continue that CRSA and LCSC (someone mentioned CESA-Columbia, but I don't even think they have a team playing challenge -- so that's a long ways off) are increasingly more attractive as alternatives for players not playing on CUFC Elite teams. Or am I missing something?
