Why College Coaches Can’t Save the American Athlete on Their Own

When you realize the American youth sports pipeline is broken, your first instinct is usually to look to the adults in the room.

Especially because there’s one group who could be incredibly effective in this fight: college coaches.

Surely, the people in charge of these programs want to develop homegrown talent, especially considering they themselves were likely once these aspiring athletes, growing up at a time when they were competing on fair grounds.

Surely, if they understood the sheer scale of the problem of American youth being deprived of college athletic opportunities at the hands of international players who are much older and already have professional experience, they would want to fix it.

We decided to put that theory to the test.

We sent a text message to over 10,000 college coaches across the country. We asked them to join Project Home Team to level the playing field for the next generation of American athletes.

We found mostly allies, coaches who remembered the purpose and character that brought them to coaching and who remembered the coaches who invested in and shaped them. But we were also shocked to find some opposition.

The replies flooded in. Some coaches cited complex NCAA eligibility rules to defend the practice, arguing that “clock” rules technically allow these older players to compete. But a surprising number didn’t bother with technicalities.

Some were dismissive, apathetic, or outright hostile to the idea that American college programs owe anything to American kids.

Here are actual, unedited responses straight from the phones of U.S. college coaches:

• “Practice and get better. What makes Americans entitled?”

• “If people want to play tennis let them who cares there have to be bigger things for you to worry about”

• “Be a competitor and beat your foreign competition.”

• “U.S. high schoolers should get better at tennis”

• “I like the international kids better too”

Read that last one again. “I like the international kids better too.”

It reveals a brutal reality about college recruiting incentives: You cannot solely rely on the people benefiting from a loophole to close it.

College sports is a high-pressure, results-driven business. A coach’s job security, salary, and reputation depend entirely on their win-loss record this season. They are not paid to be custodians of the American youth sports pipeline. They are paid to win.

If an overseas recruiting broker hands a coach a physically mature, 24-year-old international player who has spent the last four years training in a European academy, that coach is going to take them. It is the cheapest, fastest path to a winning season. Why would they spend time and resources developing an 18-year-old American freshman when they can import a ready-made adult?

Expecting coaches to voluntarily stop recruiting older international pros is like expecting an industry to voluntarily stop outsourcing labor when it drastically cuts their costs. They just want the result, and they don’t care how it gets built.

Now, we’ve spoken with many coaches who are with us. They see the bigger picture, that this system is failing our youth, our athletes, our future. It affects our economy.

But there is enough of a major conflict of incentives for coaches and even school administrators that those who do want to develop American talent need our help.

Because some coaches are perfectly content letting American high schoolers be collateral damage in their pursuit of an easy win, they aren’t going to speak up. They aren’t going to change their recruiting habits. And they certainly aren’t going to lobby the NCAA to tighten age and amateurism rules.

That leaves the rest of us as the people who must fight for the future of American youth athletes.

The NCAA and university athletic departments do not answer to our kids, but they do answer to public pressure, to alumni, to state legislators, and to the taxpayers who fund these institutions.

If we want to level the playing field so that an 18-year-old American kid actually gets to compete against other 18-year-olds for a college roster spot, we have to force the issue.

So we have a favor to ask.

Adults — coaches and parents — were on the same team in building up our youth for sports. Some coaches are going astray, focusing more on the dollars than the kids they’re developing and the country it supports. It’d be tragic if coaches are pitting themselves against parents. So we’re looking for coaches who want to help, who want to lead.

If you are a coach or know one who’s willing to help, please reach out to us at info@projecthometeam.com.

We are going to need all the help we can get.