Unconquered

No there needs to be parity with the total amount of scholarships available. Because football offers 85 there are more women's sports needed.

I really hope that this could potentially open the door for FSU to field a varsity Men's Soccer Team. Being a fan of the "beautiful game," I would love to see this become a reality.

The ACC is loaded with quality teams and it baffles me that both schools in Florida don't have a team. Florida is a hotbed for soccer talent and I believe it's a sport FSU could instantly be competitive and challenge for titles.

Agreed. Unfortunately our short sighted athletic department wants to field a lacrosse team before soccer, strictly because the coach has some money to back it. UCF and USF have soccer teams, along with UNF, Stetson, JU, UWF, FAU, FIU, Rollins, and some small schools. UCF, USF, and JU typically field quality teams. USF finished the season 6th and makes the tourney most years.

FSU could build a top 10-15 team in a matter of a few years and there will be exponentially more fan support than lacrosse will ever get. One of the problems with FSU being in Tallahassee is that a lot of FSU employees are out of touch with the rest of Florida and are more South Georgia/Bama than Florida.

Title IX isn't fully understood by most. It's based on a 3 pronged approach where you need to meet just one of the criteria listed below. The number of football scholarships don't necessarily play a part in it.

Prong one - Providing athletic participation opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment. This part of the test is satisfied when participation opportunities for men and women are "substantially proportionate" to their respective undergraduate enrollment.

Prong two - Demonstrate a continual expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex. This part of the test is satisfied when an institution has a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex (typically female).

Prong three - Full and effective accommodation of the interest and ability of underrepresented sex. This part of the test is satisfied when an institution is meeting the interests and abilities of its female students even where there are disproportionately fewer females than males participating in sports.

You are correct though. Most of the ACC recruits Florida insanely. I went to NC State for soccer, hated the coach and came back to FSU. Knew a lot of people that went to Maryland, came to State with me, and so on.

With the resources that we have in this state alone we could be a contender for a top 12 program every year.

Maybe it would be top 10-15 in a few years. But I doubt it'd be as simple as that. There are some very good, established programs that we wouldn't just crack into. And exponentially more fan support than lacrosse? Just a wee bit of an hyperbole there.

Whichever sport is added next, if we add another, will be determined by the finances. If there is more money backing a potential lacrosse program than soccer, we'd be stupid to invest in soccer. Period. That would also seem to indicate there isn't more support for soccer than lacrosse, but this is just a hypothetical.

And I'm pretty sure the number of scholarships for the men and women don't have to be equal. Thought they had to be proportional to the percentage of male and female students on campus. I believe they include walk-ons in these figures and even include some men in the women's totals if, for example, it's some guys acting as a practice squad for the women's volleyball or basketball team to go up against. (EDIT: I see Matt Lauer touched upon this already and provided more insight.)

Yea there is a ton of talent in the state, heck even at FSU. I ended up playing JUCO in Georgia (goofed on grades in high school). Was conference freshmen of the year and was getting recruited by some top 25 D1 teams, but transferred to FSU to hang with my friends and now ex-GF. Had no interest in playing on the club team here, but did play around campus a lot, and there were a lot of kids who had talent to play college ball. Back then (2000) there were little to no pro prospects, so you had a lot of kids who came from money or had Bright Futures that preferred to go to FSU/UF over playing soccer at JU, Stetson, UCF, etc.

With the growth of MLS and the fact that European teams are scouting here much more, busting your ass in college soccer is a lot more viable than it used to be. Getting to play in the ACC against all the powers would instantly make FSU the #1 team in the state. Plus we already have great facilities from the women's team.

One of these days I'll do some research to show the athletic department.

There would only be two college sports and most schools would only have one or none.

All opinion.

I played Lacrosse at FSU and I totally agree that Soccer is a way bigger sport and deserves to be the next sport added at FSU. Our Women's team draws rather large crowds. I can only imagine what the men would draw. We cal also add in that Soccer is the #1 sports played by youth in America.

Truth about coach harkins. That guy paid for the turf practice field himself.

I played in 99-00 so I didn't have the luxury to play under Harkins. Very interesting about adding a mens lacrosse program. Selfishly I would love that, but I really get in to World Cup and Olympic soccer so I'm sure I would quickly fall in love if FSU had a men's team.

If lacrosse has more financial backing it should be that.