The NCAA first officially organized the sport of men's soccer in 1959, laying out a season that would run from roughly early September to late-November. It made sense. Teams played just eight or nine games a year. The NCAA tournament had a mere eight participants.
The sport then bears no resemblance to the sport now. College soccer today is more competitive, more physical and features far more games and travel, and yet that ancient calendar essentially remains.
The season has been extended slightly, from late August through a title game in December, but it still requires jamming as many 25 games -- including a 48-team NCAA tourney -- into a tight time frame. Teams routinely play three games a week, limiting time for rest, recovery, training and, oh yes, schoolwork.
"It's archaic," Sasho Cirovski, Maryland's legendary longtime men's soccer coach, told ESPN. "It's unsafe and unfair to the student athletes ...
"This is a sport where you're running 6, 7 and sometimes 8 miles in a game," said Cirovski, who has won three NCAA titles across 34 seasons with the Terrapins. "You need rest. The injury rate, when you play three games a week, is six times higher than when you play even just two games a week."
Almost everyone agrees the calendar is less than ideal.
A solution appeared to be reached this year, when the NCAA Division I Council approved a proposal that would extend the men's season across two semesters, stretching from September to late November, then, after a lengthy winter break, from late February through the end of April, when the NCAA tourney would begin.
By taking the 82-day fall season and encompassing the current 50-day "spring season" that already allows for training and five exhibition games, athletes would have the exact same number of days in competition. By making it all one season, teams would often play just once a week.
"I love the idea of our college kids having time to go to college, not just play games all week, as well as not have their bodies overtrained because they are playing too many games in too short a period of time," U.S. Soccer Federation CEO JT Batson told ESPN. "It's also better developmentally. No other league in the world has such a schedule."
Meanwhile, the NCAA tournament would take place in the warmth of spring, not the chill of late fall. That could turn the College Cup into a major event similar to the NCAA lacrosse championship, which annually sells out NFL stadiums. Men's soccer, meanwhile, attracts little fan attention; attendance at its title game was just 6,057 in 2024 and 10,316 in 2025.
"College soccer has enormous upside," Batson said.
OK. Great. Win-win. Let's go.
Or maybe not.
In classic college sports fashion, what is undeniably better for the student-athlete and the growth of the sport is at risk of being blocked.
Because the measure didn't garner more than 75% of the Division I Council vote, NCAA bylaws call for a "30-day rescission period." If 241 or more of the 361 Division I schools vote to rescind the proposal, it won't be enacted. As of Thursday, 196 had voted against it ahead of Friday's deadline, according to everybodysoccer.com, which is tracking things.
Most of the opposition comes from low- or mid-major athletic departments that cite a lack of administrative or facility resources to have the sport played across two semesters. Others, such as Ivy League schools, and major programs such as Boston College, Kansas State and Oklahoma State, have money, but voted no anyway.
There are additional concerns that if soccer gets a two-semester season -- even if it is deserved -- other sports will as well. (Women's soccer, for example, isn't part of the new proposal.)
"Expanding the men's soccer season will create increased costs, reduce experiential opportunities for student-athletes out of season, create facility conflicts with spring sports, heighten staffing demands, and affect competition schedules due to weather at northern institutions," the University of Toledo wrote in voting to rescind.
"We feel this would start a massive request for other sports to make similar requests, and support staffing would be spread very thin to cover another spring sport," the University of Idaho wrote.
Among the rescind votes so far are 58 schools that don't even field men's teams, which is particularly frustrating to Cirovski. People who care nothing about soccer are blocking the people who care deeply about soccer.
"Everybody's worried about Pandora's box, but nothing would ever happen if you sit in fear of Pandora's box," Cirovski said. "Perfection should not be the enemy of progress."
Concerns about costs are real, of course. By having fall and spring sports, staff and facilities can share the burden of different sports. Not every school has a Big Ten football program to provide abundant revenue. Cirovski, however, notes money can be saved in housing and feeding athletes by starting the season in September, when dorms are open, rather than making athletic departments foot the bill for August housing.
Mostly though, soccer players shouldn't have to bear the risk of an outdated system just because some schools can't, won't, or simply fear they might one day have to staff up. And as the popularity of soccer keeps growing, the commercial underperformance at the college level is striking.
Yet here we are, with a common-sense reform of what nearly everyone agrees is an antiquated and unhealthy calendar ... and it might get rescinded anyway.
"Inertia is a hell of a thing," Batson said.
Especially in college athletics.