Distant Corners: American Soccer's History of Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes (Sporting) by David Wangerin

Author:David Wangerin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-26T19:08:00+00:00

In the first five minutes of the game between Yale and Dartmouth in New Haven in the fall of 1948, a spectator well versed in soccer would have been bewildered when the Dartmouth winghalf took the first throw-in. He approached the touch line, reared back like an outfielder in baseball, and threw the ball 40 yards one-handed. No whistle! The New England Intercollegiate League had sanctioned the one-handed throw-in for a brief time in the postwar era.

An equally startling modification occurred in 1952, when the Midwestern Conference voted to abolish the offside law, something coaches had identified as "a drawback in the promotion of soccer." The mind boggles as to the level of goalmouth chaos the decision would have produced; yet only by one vote was the experiment dropped for the following season.

The most obvious of college soccer's idiosyncrasies, though, was its liberal approach to substitution. Almost from the start, it had permitted replacements, first one and then, in 1913, two, "one to be regarded as a legitimate reserve and the other to be allowed in a game in case of injury sustained by a member of the regular eleven, subject to the approval of the referee." By 1934, the number had increased to five, with three resubstitutions; the limit on re-substitutions was removed in 1954; and by 1964, sixteen players could be shunted in and out at the discretion of their coach.

In truth, college soccer had become its own worst enemy. Whether the majority of coaches possessed much of an affinity for the sport is moot; certainly, few had any background in it and little desire to learn from those who had. Rather than face up to their own inexperience and shortcomings, they preferred to blame the game, changing its rules with giddy regularity.

Jeffrey's views seemed unequivocal enough-"We should leave the rules alone and play it like the rest of the world"-though at least one source cites him as "favoring the indirect free kick from touch and substitutions." Certainly, he was not averse to replacing an injured player or clearing his bench when the outcome of a match was no longer in doubt. But platoon soccer was anathema to him. Often, he stuck to the same eleven players Jack Fletcher didn't miss a minute of the 1935 wonder season-and won matches without the aid of a single substitute ("If a boy is good, he can go the whole way").

While the doggedness with which the colleges pursued their own rules was hardly unique to soccer, few of their other sports were so manifestly international. The NCAA's window on the wider world, though, was provided by the USSFA (as the USFA had become), a pinprick on the American sporting landscape that possessed neither the resources nor the appetite to bring the colleges more closely in line with convention. "For years I've been trying to interest the USSFA in college soccer," Jeffrey lamented. "It has always been my contention that the college boys play a fine brand of soccer, but our leaders have been slow to concede this point.

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