Why the flurry about combines and expansion over the past few weeks?

What feels like a long time ago now, I wrote about the NWSL draft-day experience, January 2024, where I had the privilege of watching two of my grad students actually get picked, one of whom went on to start a great deal during her rookie season (Hannah Anderson, Chicago Stars FC) before an injury sidelined her for some time in 2025.

Turns out that was the last draft the league would ever have.

Over the past year and a half, if you've been reading along—and we see you, friends (thank you)—you've read Ashley's stories about the NWSL's push toward expansion (two more teams will be added next season with several more on the horizon) and about this notion that there will be combines, or tryouts. Yes, it's all more like the NFL and yes, league commissioner Jessica Berman is committed unabashedly to those things.

And, we're not talking about in a hundred years or whatever. Why?

Because, author clears throat as she's about to get serious: The end of a lot of college programs that can afford to sponsor women's soccer (or men's) is near. Very near.

Your favorite Power 4 conferences might be able to justify having a sport like soccer still exist, but for the rest of the athletic departments who make up what is listed as 351 Division I schools that sponsor women's soccer in 2025? Um. That may not be possible anymore.

When House v. NCAA's settlement was agreed on, it established a $2.8 billion (you read that right) amount that colleges would have to pay student-athletes in back damages from 2016 - present (2025) and will allow them to negotiate moving forward.

Guess who's getting the majority of that money?

If you said women's soccer players cue that annoying game-show buzzer in your head that tells you, you're wrong.

It will be football and men's basketball players who will get that back pay (estimates have it at about 90% of the money).

Now guess who will be paying the $2.8 billion amount?

If you thought something like, well all the biggest football and men's basketball programs, so maybe 65 schools?

That guess would be a better one than thinking collegiate women's soccer players were going to all get paid, but you'd still be wrong.

Sure, those biggest programs have to pay more, but that leaves 286 college programs who, I guarantee you, can't afford the estimated $1 million fee (per school) the settlement agreement provided, let alone affording the ongoing costs that are associated with having a DI athletics program even before we started paying players.

Some of them may struggle through for a few years, but unless they have a trillionaire alumnus who wants to underwrite sports or have a men's basketball team that gets into, say the 2025-26 men's hoops tourney as a No. 15 seed (cheers to you, 2025's UC San Diego) and then goes on to win the *bloody thing, well, those schools really can't afford the settlement at all.

So, something's got to give and my money is on the fact that a lot of college sports are going to get cut because American football is too big to fail (at least in my—and likely your—lifetimes).

Does that mean that women's soccer isn't popular and lucrative, or that the NWSL won't be a viable league?

No, quite the opposite. It means that the league needs a way for our 13-17 year-olds and those considered "adults" (18-23) to be seen and evaluated by its teams in a more convenient way, like combines provide so those athletes can be signed and paid to play the sport even while they develop. (Look for some partnership between USL / NWSL teams in development for "minor league" or smaller markets sometime in the future? Perhaps.)

Because it does mean that we'll need many more teams competing, too, so we have enough roster sports for elite players to compete for.

And, sorry folks it also means you might need another reason to sell a kid on why they should go to college at all.

*As of this writing, the lowest seed to EVER win the NCAA men's basketball championship was No. 8 Villanova in 1985, but sure, it could happen.