TU just released their schedule for this coming Fall. Some quality opponents coming in.
TU Men's Soccer Fall 2025
- Thread starter TU_BLA
- Start date
I went to the men's team's scrimmage vs Southwest Christian last evening. Went about as you expected, it was 4-0 with 10 minutes left when I had seen enough. Hard to gauge since Tom seemingly let his two sides play 45 minutes in each half so I don't know if the 1st half group was the starting group or the 2nd half group was. 1st half, TU struggled to keep the ball in the MF and connect simple passes. This was concerning because SWC is not a team you should struggle to do that. It was rather ho hum to be honest and not very encouraging. 2nd half, new 11 on the field and the pace picked up for TU. They kept the ball better, explored gaps and options and showed some nice creativity in the attack. The kid at the 9 was like 6'3" and his pace was a definite problem for SWCs back line. He scored off a header on a beautiful service from a free kick. Last goal I saw the left wing player made a nice run and got the ball played in behind a defender and he made a nice soft pass back to the middle of the box as the defense was dragged to the goal line by a nice back post run. Impressive part about the pass is the communication from the player filling that slot, the on ball attacker seeing it and hitting a nice controlled pass instead of that usual hammer it across the box and hope something happens. I was way more impressed with the 2nd unit than I was the 1st unit last night.
TUs backline should be OK this year. They've got some good size and good speed and seem to communicate well. We'll see. They have an exhibition game vs SMU, a top 5 preseason team, this Saturday. TU's also doing their annual soccer garage sale meaning they'll have leftover gear from previous years for sale. I think the game is at 6pm.
And somehow I sat in the Lulu Lemon soccer mom section last night. They were the moms of the ball girls, maybe a 7-8 year old group from TSC/Metro Tulsa. I could have refloated a ground ship with the amount of botox around me
TUs backline should be OK this year. They've got some good size and good speed and seem to communicate well. We'll see. They have an exhibition game vs SMU, a top 5 preseason team, this Saturday. TU's also doing their annual soccer garage sale meaning they'll have leftover gear from previous years for sale. I think the game is at 6pm.
And somehow I sat in the Lulu Lemon soccer mom section last night. They were the moms of the ball girls, maybe a 7-8 year old group from TSC/Metro Tulsa. I could have refloated a ground ship with the amount of botox around me
TU men picked to finish 8th (out of 9) teams in the AAC this season, just in front of Temple. Charlotte picked first, FIU 2nd, Memphis 3rd, Missouri State (yes Mo State is part of the AAC in soccer) 4th, UAB nad FAU are in there too.
Not a lot of confidence in Tom's guys, although Wes Bottenburg was selected as the preseason Defender of the Year.
Not a lot of confidence in Tom's guys, although Wes Bottenburg was selected as the preseason Defender of the Year.
Went to the match last night so I could get a free scarf. Nope. I guess a big box of scarves was stuck in customs, dangit. That's OK, I got a free KC Sporting koozie. I don't think we're very good this year. I hope I'm wrong, but losing at home to a baseball school doesn't bode well.
I haven't been impressed so far. Defense is fine but there is no dynamic presence on offense. No one to stretch the field, no one to break defenders down 1 v 1, and let's be honest, you need at least 1 of those 2 to create chances. Defensive strategy and rotation in today's game are really solid and hard to break down without those mismatches attackers can create...and TU just doesn't have the horses to create those mismatches like they did a few years ago.
I don't know the answer. I think NIL for sure, open transfer another...I think this squad has maybe 4-5 players who played last year. There is no continuity whatsoever for Tom and even if he hits on a player, they hit the portal for NIL the next season. In the current climate TU would have never been able to sustain and players like Ryan Pore would have likely never made it beyond his sophomore year at TU before a Clemson or Maryland would have thrown a bag of $ at him. Same with that entire era of players in the 2000s that really put the program on the map. I mean there were several players from those teams that went on to MLS. Even the 3 years a few years ago likely never get beyond the 1st run.
I don't know that Tom is recruiting any differently but he probably lacks the resources to pull in those gems to TU and there's no way of knowing if TU is fully funding even the 26 scholarships they now can fund. I think part of that is the reason Tom is pulling so many overseas kids who are likely being sponsored to come to school at TU and TU is getting a near 100% cash payment from those sponsoring entities. But again, it's not sustainable. There was a player from Bartlesville who came in last year who I was really impressed with. His movement off the ball and understanding the space he could attack reminded me a little of MHS...he didn't have the same knack of finishing though. He's not on the roster this season. Outside of a couple of midfielders and a couple of defenders, everyone is new.
I don’t believe TU players are getting significant NIL deals to transfer to other schools. Those deals are fairly limited in the soccer world and I haven’t seen that type of talent at TU since maybe Meinhard. Now will a kid transfer for $5k…maybe.
I don’t believe TU is fully funding their allotment of ships in soccer or likely any of the non revenue sports. Can’t verify though.
There are ways of being creative or at least give the impression you care about NIL and the non revenue sports. I know one G5 school who give the soccer player a portion of the revenue from any merch sale with their name or number. The amounts are minimal but it’s something
TU would have to sell the jerseys though and I have not seen soccer gear anywhere. Can't get a replica jersey in the bookstore and I haven't seen any at any of the games I've been to. About the only thing is a generic ash gray t-shirt that has the TU logo and "Soccer" underneath. Pretty standard for most school bookstores.
Agree The school I was referring to sells the gear through their online store. Considering it’s a very small amount of NIL, I’m not sure I even should have brought it up. I just thought it was a creative way to give the non revenue athletes something back.
Keep in mind that 30M endowment that was set up to fund Olympic sports as well as non Olympic sports when talking about how well funded soccer scholarships are.
Do you have any idea how that endowment is distributed as to ships. A 30M endowment returning 5% per year would fund 30 ships per year assuming we allocated 50k per year as a cost of a ship. I assume this is not how the funding is allocated but I’ve never seen a breakdown. I’ve also never seen a statement from TU that they are fully funding all soccer and softball ships. Like I said…I have no idea if they are or aren’t.
It would be interesting to know which programs are funding the full 26. I have a hard time believing programs wouldn't go all the way. It isn't that expensive to fund the full things.
Girls have to fund the same as men and vice versa.
Girls have to fund the same as men and vice versa.
Yeah, I don't know how much they are funding and where it is distributed either. I just know it is funding a decent amount more than before, unless TU dropped the level they were funding at, after the endowment was funded.
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Broski, it is for whatever you want it to be.
There are no rules as to the sports you fund. The university can pay out 20,000,000. The collective can fork out whatever.
God, I love seeing arch manning fail miserably on 5 million a year.
These are professional athletes. They want the money. They can take the booing.
True…unless those who donated the money for the NIL placed restrictions on the sports for which it could be used. I assume that didn’t occur but have no idea.
Agree regarding Arch. There were whispers that he was overhyped. Played at a small high school against very average competition. Hadn’t looked great in practice. Couldn’t beat Ewers out. Lots of signs
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That might be tied to how much nil they are giving him to work with, or how much they are not. They may be putting all their nil money into football and basketball. I would think it's safe this season. They wouldn't or shouldn't can him after one bad year. He, like Mike Gundy should at least have some good will built up for all the years he has put out a good product. I wouldn't expect him to lose his job till after next year at the earliest.
Yeah, I still think he has built up more good will here than Gundy. I don't think two sub par years in a row will get him canned.
He is not as combative in the way he deals with the administration first of all. And I think a lot of it has to be with how much nil they are giving him. I would hope
they realize that could have a huge affect on his record the past two years.
Lost 1-0 to ORU last night...that's when you know things have really gone off the rails
I watched this one online and we didn't look too bad. Just had trouble creating chances. I was hoping the win would launch a push to close the season. Apparently not.
Based on what I know from the girls side, I would be shocked if any of our conference mates are contributing any significant amounts to NIL. More likely, we are not funding ships at the amounts of other schools….or we just aren’t working as hard to bring players in as we did in the past
I find that whole scenario hard to believe. I just can't believe he recruited so well over past years, and then just stopped trying. Was he recruiting to get a better job offer and one didn't come, so he just quit trying? I thought our $30m endowment was supposed to increase our athletic scholarship amounts dramatically. I can't believe we are not offering scholarship amounts leading to this. I would have thought the men might draw more nil than the women. I don't think that it would necessarily be magnificently greater, but greater nonetheless. I just can't figure out the drop in talent.
I was told last week that women’s soccer teams in the ACC and Big12 aren’t offering full ships. Schools like SMU, Texas Tech, etc… Which is why I assumed TU wasn’t either. Can’t imagine the men’s side is different due to the need to add ship funding to women’s sports due to Title9.
I wasn't really putting #'s to the 30m endowment. Even with a bunch more walk-ons than we probably have, and even if we invested that money at a really high rate of return, we would be damned lucky if it covered 25% for the majority of our scholarship athletes. So I guess that doesn't get us there. I was thinking we were funded to 65 or 70%, and we'd be lucky if it was half that.
If I’m a coach of an Olympic sport my #1 priority is to get as many ships funded as possible.
Full circle, the apprentice (Ryan Pore) is now the master. I think that is 2 straight for UMKC over TU. UMKC was ranked earlier this season.
That's not how an endowment works. I was playing around and a modest investment account on $30M would not cover 26 full scholarships estimated at around $70k annually on the men's side. You'd need to get closer to a $50M to have a truly endowed men's soccer program where the interest on the account funds the program annually, including the HC's salary.
For the entire athletic program, not talking including coaching salaries in the figure, TU would need an endowed athletic scholarship fund in the neighborhood of $270,000,000. This at a 5% annual yield compounded monthly is leaves about $14,000,000. I figured cost of attendance of TU is about $70k annually right now and about 200 student athletes (# of athletes is probably too low now that I think about it).
(an actual investment analyst could figure this out in a heart beat, I'm using an online calculator and someone with better investment knowledge can probably find a daily compounded fund that doesn't go crazy on the risk. Crazy thing is, TU probably has some ties to places that could help make this happen.
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Think before you type. First of all, it can't cover the coaches salary. It is not meant to cover anything but scholarships. And you didn't read every post, and you do not know how I was figuring it nor did you read my subsequent posts where I spoke of actually putting money to the figure.
Second if you are spending the interest it does not compound. Third I was assuming the University is covering the scholarships like they were before, and adding the interest to additional scholarship amounts. It would be silly to not add it, because the 30m wouldn't even match up to the scholarship amount that the university was covering before the 30m simple interest was there.
Yes, if you were funding a full scholarship, 1.5m simple interest would not even cover it for 26 scholarships. But the university is not funding all 26 players either. Even if you were figuring compound interest that would only account for 35k additional funds, (if it were bringing in compound at 5%) which it is not. So the difference in compound interest would be negligible. You often don't read all the posts and don't correct yourself when you do read later posts, if that even happens.
It would take approx. 20M in interest to cover everyone at 70k. 30m won't bring in 66% simple interest. And that is what I was referencing in my later post. If the University were funding at the same level as the 30m brought in and it was doubled, that would only account for approx. a 10k scholarship for each athlete in the Olympic sports excluding basketball, at best. Likely with interest from 30m and scholarships school was already providing, it adds up to 12%-18% scholarships of total cost to attend, being funded by both the endowment and the school for 275 Olympic sports athletes.
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