Author: Chris Francis

The 2026 World Cup is less than 370 days away, and the clock is ticking for Team USA as they prepare under new head coach Mauricio Pochettino. He’s been on the job since August 2024 with mixed results thus far. 

Why has Team USA struggled with a new head coach?

A learning curve is not surprising as players adjust to a new style and the staff tinkers with roster and lineup combinations. Right now, however, there isn’t much optimism from outside the locker room as to whether the U.S. can put together a good showing on the world’s biggest stage. 

On Saturday, June 7, they lost 2-1 in a friendly (an exhibition match for the unfamiliar) against Türkiye, playing without many of their biggest stars. It was a tight match. The U.S. scored first on a fantastic goal from forward Jack McGlynn. From there, the 27th-ranked team in the world overpowered them, scoring twice in three minutes to take control. Pochettino was still pleased with what he saw.   

“I think the team shows great energy, great mentality, great attitude,” Pochettino said. ”It is this type of game that maybe if you made a mistake, you can lose, but it’s soccer, it’s football.”

Pochettino was mostly happy with the way his team played, not merely the results. 

Where are the team’s big guns?

Without stars like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, Gio Reyna and Antonee Robinson, all either recovering from their European seasons or playing in the Club World Cup next week, young up-and-comers saw some crucial minutes. 

Malik Tillman and Chris Richards stood out for their performances. Defender Tyler Adams saw progress as well. 

“Really exciting,” Adams said. “I think for the first time, probably in the past few camps, we’re going to take a lot more positives away than negatives, so a good building block for a lot of those guys. A lot of them, it’s their first opposition from outside of Concacaf, which is good experience for a lot of them. The game is just a little bit different, but they played excellent tonight.” 

They’ll get another shot in a high-profile setting next week during the first stage matches of the Gold Cup tournament. 

“I think we want to win and compete really well in the Gold Cup, and it’s going to be tough,” Pochettino said. “Of course, it’s going to be tough, but I think what we expect is what we saw, and then we need to have the capacity to continue giving tools to the players to be better and better and better.”

Is Team USA showing any improvement?

Despite their lack of confidence in the team, soccer pundits and online fans admit that Saturday’s loss was one of the best performances in the short Pochettino era. The U.S. side demonstrated a clear desire to execute his strategy. Pochettino took over after a first-round elimination at last year’s Copa América tournament, which led the U.S. Soccer Federation to fire coach Gregg Berhalter.

“I think what I cannot complain about is that every single player was very connected with the team,” Pochettino said. “Even the players that didn’t play, they were helping the team.”

It was still Team USA’s third straight loss, which hasn’t happened since 2015. Under Pochettino, they have a 5-4-0 record, and time is running out to get it right, with approximately 6 to 8 matches remaining before the World Cup.

One of those matches will take place Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern as they kick off a friendly against Switzerland in Nashville, Tennessee. Switzerland will pose another tough test. They are ranked 20th in the world and beat Mexico 4-2  on Saturday, June 7.  

Joey Nunez (Video Editor)
contributed to this report.

By Chris Francis

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025

The House v. NCAA settlement has fundamentally changed the way college sports will function. College sports have left amateurism behind for good, and right now, questions seem to outnumber answers.

How does the House v. NCAA settlement change college sports?

The House settlement, which began as a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA and five collegiate conferences profiting from a former Arizona State swimmer, a TCU basketball player and others, sets up direct payments from schools to athletes for the first time. People across the country are actively debating how this new paradigm will affect universities and their athletic programs. Officials have introduced some new rules, with more on the way, but they have not yet been fully tested. Some suggest that the same issues college athletics faced before the settlement may have simply shifted focus.

Each school participating will now have a $20.5 million yearly cap to spend on its athletic programs. Football and basketball will see the vast majority of that money. NIL payments will also continue to exist in addition to the direct payments. During an interview with Panther Insider, Pitt Athletic Director Allen Greene said this is just the first step in reforming what was a broken “amateur” system.

“I think student-athlete employment is still a topic of conversation that’s going to occur,” Greene said. “I think rule setting is going to occur still, in just how we are applying all the various rules in our industry that govern what we do. And I think there’s still going to be conversations around congressional engagement, congressional involvement.”

What if schools don’t have the pool of money to pay players?

Many schools will continue to depend on wealthy alumni for support as their athletic budgets remain under pressure. Adding another $20.5 million in expenses means schools will have to make tough choices. Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard was blunt in a recent interview. 

“Iowa State does not have that $20 million,” Pollard said. “But if we don’t pay it for this coming year, we have big problems, right? So we’re going to pay it.”

It’s also bigger than college athletics. Towns like Ames, Iowa, depend on college athletic programs and the tourism dollars they generate.

“Iowa State University will be faced with an athletics program with a huge annual deficit if it wants to stay in the Big 12 and if it wants to have a P4 (Power 4) athletics program,” Pollard said. “Now, we can decide we just want to have an athletics program like Northern Iowa, but that’s going to have a huge economic impact on the state, on central Iowa, on the city of Ames and on this institution.”

What will happen to NIL payments?

Those issues also don’t account for NIL payments. That money will still be available to athletes in addition to the $20.5 million pool. Just hours after the settlement received approval, leaders formed a new College Sports Commission. Brian Seeley is the man in charge. The former MLB executive and his team will review each NIL transaction to ensure it serves a legitimate business purpose and is not merely “Pay for Play.”

There will be a lot of gray areas to sift through because, up to this point, there were no rules for why a business or collective could pay a player. Conference athletic directors say it will be incumbent upon everyone to follow the rules when they are set up. Penn State head coach James Franklin said this does nothing to address the moral issue surrounding football programs, where it’s all about the dollars.

“I worry a little bit now that because of how the sport has changed,” Franklin said. “There’s people being attracted to the sport for the wrong reasons and the way the sport has changed from a transfer portal perspective and from an NIL perspective. I think there’s also young people and families that are making decisions based on a transactional experience rather than a transformational experience.”  

There’s also nothing stopping a Penn State, an Ohio State or an Alabama from using the majority of their $20.5 million on their football program in addition to another $20-30 million in NIL payments. That could create an arms race that the whole settlement intended to curb. Without stronger guardrails, the gap between well-funded programs and those with fewer resources may continue to grow.

“You watch Ohio State in the men’s football game, national championship game, you don’t hear any announcers talking about NIL,” Texas Tech softball coach Gerry Glasco said. “They just don’t talk about it. And yet, Ohio State had one of the highest two or three NIL payrolls last year in college football.”

Glasco, whose school’s collective announced a second million-dollar payment to star pitcher NiJaree Canady one day before they lost in the championship of the Women’s College World Series, knows his “non-revenue” program will have to continue raising money outside of the $20.5 million. Paying a player like Canady through NIL is worth it if they want to remain relevant.

“I think it was three days after she signed, somebody told me there was over 700,000 Associated Press type articles where they said Stanford, Texas Tech and NiJa Canady and softball all in one,” Glasco said. “Seven hundred thousand times you got mentioned. Then you look at the exposure she brought to us. I think we now played 10 or 11 games on national TV.”

What will happen to “non-revenue” sports?

Whether non-revenue sports are left behind in this new college landscape is one of the many questions left unanswered in the aftermath of the settlement. It will depend on how each school divides the $20.5 million in payments and how schools chase the NIL opportunities.

Schools without football, like Gonzaga University and many others in the Big East Conference, will be flush with cash to spend on their 12- to 15-member basketball teams and their non-revenue sports teams. That could open the door to another gap between “haves and have-nots” in their respective situations. The catch is not having a football team makes it a bit harder to find that $20.5 million in a school budget.

There may also be more litigation in the near future as challenges to upcoming NIL payments make their way through the College Sports Commission. What comes next will largely depend on what rules are put in place and how they’re enforced.

Joey Nunez (Video Editor)

and Devin Pavlou (Digital Producer)
contributed to this report.

By Chris Francis

June 9, 2025June 9, 2025