There is a movement taking form among Mississippi State students and athletics fans. However, there is one group of people that isn’t completely on board just yet.With the recent posting of an online petition for the addition of a men’s soccer program, MSU club soccer team president Joe Macias sees several aspects of the argument from the inside out.
Macias said he respects Eliot Sanford’s recent efforts to bring a men’s soccer program to MSU and has been in contact with the freshman several times over the past month.
“I’m glad Eliot’s doing what he’s doing,” Macias said. “I’d like to see a Division-I team at State. I wouldn’t want to do what he’s doing, though. It seems like it’d be a lot of work.
“It could lead to nothing, and it could lead to something. It seems like he has the motivation to do it and has done a lot of work for it. If anybody could do it, it seems he’s going about it the right way.”
However, Macias said that he is indifferent on the subject of whether MSU adds men’s soccer to its list of NCAA athletics and said the hype surrounding the idea of bringing a program here is dimmer than everyone makes it out to be.
Macias predicted that MSU will eventually take on a men’s soccer program, but not for at least 10 years.
“I don’t really care either way if we have a men’s soccer team or not,” Macias said. “It’s not like we’re getting it in the next year or five years. Still, for MSU to have a men’s soccer team would be nice for the future.”
Eliot Sanford contends that the state of Mississippi is losing a lot of very talented players to out-of-state colleges and universities because schools like State and Ole Miss do not have men’s soccer programs that are sponsored by the university.
Macias said that while this notion may be true at club levels and with soccer organizations around the state such as Jackson and Tupelo, he doesn’t see very many good high school soccer teams around the state.
As an official, he has an insider’s view on the subject.
“I don’t think Mississippi is losing a lot of quality players, like Eliot does,” Macias said. “I referee high school soccer, and to be honest, there’s not a lot of quality high school soccer in Mississippi.
“I hardly ever see a soccer coach who is actually soccer coach. Instead, I see football coaches who get recruited to coach the soccer team. They only train them athletically and usually know nothing about soccer.”
Macias said all but two players from MSU’s winning club team are Mississippians.
He said that half the team could have played Division-I soccer elsewhere, and most of them could have at least played on the junior college level.
Instead, they chose to be Bulldogs.
“A lot of them didn’t want soccer to be their life and main focus in college,” Macias said. “They just wanted to do it for fun and have other areas of life, like being in fraternities or going out on the weekends with friends, and not having to worry about soccer.
“We, as the club team, just want our soccer to be a semi-serious thing instead of playing it like it’s our job.”
Macias also added that even though the club team would love to see an NCAA program at State, it is not and has never been the club’s intention or ulterior motive to push for one or get the university to add one.
He said the club team would support the program but only because they are soccer fans and Bulldog fans anyway.
Macias, who said he’s a fan of MSU basketball, said that the sports that Americans have poured money into have led to soccer’s downfall in the USA, especially in the Southeast and in Mississippi.
“I think the money people are putting into American football and basketball hurts soccer greatly,” Macias said. “In Europe, all the money goes to soccer. Here, all the great athletes want to play football, basketball or baseball because that’s where the money is. No kid is going to grow up wanting to be a soccer player making $40,000 a year.
“If you’re a good athlete as a kid, you’re going to play football because you see Reggie Bush on the television making millions of dollars and you want that, too,” he said.
Despite his guardish approach to the men’s soccer movement, Macias still said he wants to see a soccer team don the Maroon and White eventually and compete in the SEC.
“It’s got to start somewhere,” Macias said. “The whole SEC isn’t going to start having soccer teams at once.
“It’s got to start somewhere, at one school, so why not Mississippi State?