'We might become very small' - An alleged fake email, surprise votes and the bitter fight over men's college soccer's future as two-semester reform faces collapse

College soccer coaches are all too familiar with the toil and grind of the regular season. More than 200 Division I programs compress their regular seasons into the fall. Throw in conference tournaments and a potential NCAA berth, and the demands only increase. Student-athletes must juggle games in quick succession with travel, school and the standard rest and recovery process of being a high-level soccer player. Coaches backing reform have argued, for some time, that such a calendar is unsustainable.

By the end of the regular season, many teams are unable to practice, one source at a highly ranked men's soccer program told GOAL. Packed schedules leave little time for recovery, and coaches can find themselves managing depleted squads. Player development, too, can suffer, the source argued, as the focus turns more towards survival than fine-tuning a system in time for a late-season push.

The knock-on effect, sources argued, is less time to prepare players for the professional game and greater difficulty maintaining the quality of play as the season wears on. One MLS general manager offered a particularly blunt assessment, telling GOAL there is "no value" to be found in the MLS draft anymore.

Clubs, though, clearly place different values on those opportunities. Notably, in 2024, the Philadelphia Union traded eight MLS draft picks - spread out over three years - to the Colorado Rapids for $350,000 in guaranteed General Allocation Money, with up to $250,000 more tied to performance conditions. Philadelphia was willing to part with three years of selections. Colorado was willing to pay for them.

And that's where the two-semester model comes in. It is not a panacea. But it does, in theory, address some of those issues, sources argued. Spreading games across two semesters allows for more recovery time. Moving the national championship from December to the spring could also, supporters argue, give the sport a better chance of attracting eyeballs from the more casual sports fan.

"The compression of the fall has a whole lot of issues. One of which is the championship. So the championship being in December means inherently there's no broadcast media space for our sport. College football is raging. NFL is raging. College basketball has just started," Georgetown head coach Brian Wiese said. "We're very much back page news, if any page news."

Schools would retain flexibility over how games are spread across the two semesters. The proposal would allow up to 18 contests in the fall and up to 10 in the spring, within the existing annual limit. That would leave room for programs to keep the bulk of their schedule in the fall.

"You can still play all of your games fundamentally in the fall, and the same number of games you play in the spring now - and have that be your current model," Wiese said.

Proponents also argue that a less compressed schedule would mean fewer missed classes and more time for recovery. At Georgetown, Wiese said, the reaction from players has been emphatic.

"In our locker room, every player, 28 out of 28 guys, said 'this would be amazing.' All of our recruits said 'this would be amazing.' There's not a single player who's like 'I don't know if I like this all that much'," Wiese said.

Varying iterations of a similar plan have existed since the late 1990s. In 1998, Bob Warming, one of college soccer's most accomplished coaches, co-authored a white paper calling for the national championship to be held in May, but had no luck getting it approved despite what Warming described as "momentum" in the room.

Cirovski and North Carolina head coach Carlos Somoano have carried the torch since, but advocated for more wholesale change.

After years of failure, the move found some real momentum in May, when the Division I Men's Soccer Oversight Committee adopted the proposal. The Division I Cabinet sent it back for further review in June, before affirming it in October. For supporters, that successful vote appeared to put a long-awaited change within reach.

Yet that very October meeting also opened the door for opponents to overturn the change.

The proposal secured 67.4 percent of the weighted Cabinet vote, short of the 75 percent needed to avoid a 30-day rescission period. Among those voting against it was Pitt athletic director Allen Greene. Based on the NCAA's published tally, a "yes" vote from Greene would have taken support above that threshold.

Sources told GOAL that Pitt men's soccer head coach Jay Vidovich had not been informed of Greene's decision in advance, and described the vote as a surprise to supporters of the proposal. Greene did not respond to a request for comment.

Committee members who supported the change were unprepared for the campaign that followed, according to sources. With approval secured, supporters had not prepared a backup communications plan for a sustained effort to overturn it. The institutional rescission process also differed from the weighted Cabinet vote: eligible Division I schools each had an equal vote, including those that do not sponsor men's soccer.

Still, supporters initially believed opponents would struggle to reach the required 241 votes. By Thursday evening, according to GOAL's reporting, that threshold had been reached.

CAA commissioner Joe D'Antonio was among those pushing for rescission. Sources told GOAL that, during a recent video call, he told committee members he had gathered support for the effort and would seek consideration of the issue by the Division I Board of Directors. One source described D'Antonio as "angry" during the call. A subsequent motion to overturn the Cabinet's decision at Board level was unsuccessful. D'Antonio did not respond to a request for comment.

Opponents continued gathering institutional votes to rescind.

Those seeking to overturn the proposal have their reasons. Drake University has cited the strain on its support staff as a driving force behind its opposition. Its men's soccer SID also handles communications for women's basketball, football, track and field, and both men's and women's tennis.

Other issues have cropped up. Some schools have cited potential strain on shared facilities. Sources also said some programs could need to rent additional practice fields, increasing costs. The difficulties of playing cold-weather games have also been highlighted.

"We have significant concerns with facilities, mainly maintenance on our grass field in the winter months in the Northeast, the use of shared locker facilities, and the inability to utilize our turf field as men's and women's lacrosse are also in season," Fairfield University, which voted to rescind the proposal, said in a statement.

Multiple programs have also raised concerns that other sports could seek similar changes, creating further scheduling and resource pressures. Those arguments have become part of the effort to win support from schools that do not sponsor men's soccer.

Proponents have pushed back against the idea that those possibilities should determine the proposal's fate.

"Can you imagine if men's soccer went out there and politicized against another sport's interest or proposal? It would never happen. And not only that, we're so low on the totem pole, people would slap us back so far off our pedestal for having the nerve to do so," Somoano said.

Significant voting blocs have formed over the last month. The Ivy League said all of its schools were voting to rescind the proposal, even if one waited until relatively late to move against it. Sources also described unanimous opposition among schools in several other conferences, including the ASUN, CAA, Horizon and Big South. GOAL contacted several of those conferences, but none provided comment. The NCAA also declined to comment. A handful of colleges that do not sponsor men's soccer did not respond to requests for comment.

Historically successful programs in otherwise reluctant conferences, though, have taken different positions. Saint Louis University, which has won 10 national championships, is expected to support the proposal, according to sources, who described opposition throughout the rest of the Atlantic 10. Others are more evenly divided. As of Friday morning, sources described five Big East schools backing rescission and seven supporting the proposal.

Other sports have also gotten involved. On Thursday morning, J.B. Clarke of the Intercollegiate Men's Lacrosse Coaches Association circulated an email urging schools to vote to rescind.

There are practical concerns behind that opposition. Some colleges share soccer and lacrosse facilities, and supporters of the model acknowledged that overlapping spring schedules could create difficulties. But Clarke's intervention against the proposal infuriated proponents.

"The fear-mongering is out of control, and it is beyond despicable at this point in time; people trying to block this all for selfish reasons," Cirovski said.

The result is a mixture of surprise and incredulity from those who thought they would have their crucial change confirmed.

The oversight committee, as well as college coaches, have been scrambling to explain the proposal to voting institutions in recent days. Supporters have expressed frustration at the tenor of the debate and argue that some objections reflect misunderstandings about how the new calendar would work.

"The amount of back-channel kind of politicking and opposition is very strong, and they're able to work the system because that's coming from the administrators and the people who work within that cycle," Somoano explained.

Questions have also arisen about how individual schools reached their decisions. GOAL was told that one Power Four institution submitted a rescission vote without its athletic director's knowledge, before later withdrawing it.

A source alleged to GOAL that a lobbyist created an email account under a false identity, presented themselves as a "concerned parent" named Gustav, and sent a message to administrators nationwide explaining how they could vote to rescind the proposal.

Cirovski was blunt about his view of the wider lobbying campaign.

"This is a pathetic and despicable lobbying effort by so many people who don't really even understand the merits of the model and the positive effect it will have on men's soccer players and the sport of college soccer," Cirovski said.

Wiese, meanwhile, pointed to a lack of understanding of the two-semester model as a major obstacle.

"The challenge for this whole thing is still education on what this really is. A lot of the comments that some of the schools or compliance offices or ADs are making are factually just not accurate," he said.

The debate has also raised broader questions about NCAA governance. Some sources see the vote as an opportunity for schools and conferences to demonstrate their influence over decisions that extend beyond men's soccer.

"Administrators are taking a much larger look at this in terms of what the significance could be and the message it sends... some schools and conferences probably feel like, 'hey, we need to be able to show that we can rally together,' and that they can't just force through any piece of legislation that they want," a senior official at a college that voted to rescind told GOAL.

For leading proponents, the concern is that the details of the soccer proposal risk being lost in that broader fight.

Two hundred and forty-one votes are required to rescind the proposal. On Thursday evening, multiple sources told GOAL that the threshold had been reached. Schools can withdraw their votes before the rescission period closes at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, although multiple sources said they did not expect enough to change course to save the proposal.

For supporters, the implications extend to where the college game stands in the national landscape. Historically, college soccer has been an important pathway into MLS and USL. With MLS academies producing first-team players, that pathway faces greater competition. And with MLS moving to a summer-to-spring calendar in July 2027, proponents of college reform see an opportunity to bring the two schedules into closer alignment.

U.S. Soccer continues to support the switch, even though it has no vote in the NCAA process.

"While we aren't directly involved with NCAA governance processes, U.S. Soccer continues to support the modernization of men’s college soccer and believes it can be an even more important part of the American pathway with changes like those in the pending proposal. We have heard consistently from the student athletes that the redistributed calendar model would provide the time to better focus on both academic and soccer development, alongside improved rest and recovery. The proposal also provides the scheduling flexibility that many have sought to accommodate unique school circumstances related to weather, facilities, and resources," Dan Helfrich, COO of U.S. Soccer, said to GOAL in an email.

If the proposal fails, Cirovski suggested that a smaller group of willing schools could look for another way forward. He raised the possibility of building around the model's strongest supporters, rather than continuing to seek agreement across all men's soccer programs.

"We fought hard to be very inclusive to involve all 213 schools, but if 130 schools don't want to do it, then let's take the 80 schools that want to do it and find a solution," he said.

Multiple sources said coordinating such an alternative could be at least as difficult as securing the two-semester model. U.S. Soccer did not commit to a specific structure, but reiterated its support for reform.

"We’ll explore every route if it doesn’t pass, but we have not yet discussed specific structure. The goal is to strengthen college soccer through the NCAA process," the sport's governing body said.

Where that leaves the college game remains uncertain. For proponents, another failed push would leave the problems they have spent years trying to address unresolved.

"This is an opportunity to grow and get it better. So there's no way this is a sustainable model. It's not. We know that. That's why we still are at the bottom, and we can't even get a simple proposal like this passed. So we have to continue to find a way," Somoano said.

For Wiese, the concern is how much ground the sport could lose.

"College soccer needs this to stay relevant. We have an opportunity to be intertwined with MLS," Wiese said. "It's not like we're going to go extinct, but man, we might become very small relative to where we are now."