Top Drawer Soccer is reporting that he will be the new Pitt coach. It seems strange because this is his first year with the Portland Timbers after coaching at Wake Forest for 21 years. Have to think he doesn't like coaching MSL.
He had a great record at Wake Forest: Won an NCAA title in 2007; finished in the top ten 9 of his last 11 seasons at Wake Forest; won 3 ACC championships.
Wake has by far the smallest enrollment in the ACC. Of all the FBS FB schools, the only one with a smaller enrollment is Rice.
I never dreamed Barnes could get someone with his resume'. I was thinking someone who had done well at a smaller program. You have to assume that Barnes committed to a fully maxed out scholarship program, better paid assistants and recruiting foreign players to jump start the program.
When I was in Prague in 2014, I met a guy from Brazil who had played soccer at Wake Forest. He was traveling with his BF, so I had to assume he didn't know when he was recruited that Wake is a small, conservative Baptist school. But, he said he really enjoyed collegiate soccer. There is nothing comparable most other places in the world. If you are great, you sign with a pro team, often as early as age 9. If you are below that level, you have no future in the game in your country other than to play for lower division teams, which often don't pay their players.
It's not the long term solution, but signing foreign players is a great way to make the program competitive quickly. Especially since most top HS seniors already have signed LOIs.
As an aside, when my nephew was 15, he was the top-ranked junior under 18 golfer in the Southeast and already had a ton of scholarship offers. My brother and he went to North Carolina to check out Wake, Duke and UNC. They started each day playing golf with the coach and a fourth person picked by the coach. (My brother is a scratch golfer and was captain of the golf team at Pitt back when it existed.) all he knew about Wake is that was where Arnold Palmer had gone.) They went to Wake the first morning. My nephew rode in a cart with the coach. My brother rode with someone on the Board who had played golf there. The Board member spent the first few holes telling my brother how great the academics at Wake were. On the 5th or 6th hole my brother asked him how the social life was for Jewish students.
What followed, my brother said, was about 3 minutes of silence. Then the Board member finally said to him "Sir, this is a BAPTIST institution. I think your son would be much happier at Chapel Hill." My brother had no idea Wake was affiliated with any religious group. He said they rode the rest of the round without saying a word to each other in the cart.
My nephew ended up going to Texas. He is a golf teaching pro in Atlanta while he gets his Masters in Business. He now is a plus 2 golfer which is 2 strokes better than scratch. He has had offers to pay for him to go on the satellite tour and try to work his way to the PGA tour but he doesn't want to dedicate his life to golf.
