NCAA Soccer : Aztecs, Coach Nearing End of a Rough Road

Chuck Clegg had the platform. The spotlight was his. Microphones awaited. Pens were poised. This was his opportunity to sell the sport he coaches, and maybe take a dig at the big guys.

Clegg is the soccer coach at San Diego State. You don’t hear much about the soccer team--or the coach.

That’s the way it is in collegiate sports. Football and basketball are Broadway productions, and anything else is a classroom skit. The soccer team is more than likely perceived as a good place to train kickers for the real team.

But this time, Clegg was the man of the hour. As far as San Diego State sports are concerned, he may well be the man of the year.

Clegg’s soccer team is having the dreamiest of seasons.

The Aztec soccer team is in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Final Four, today and Sunday at Clemson, a South Carolina outpost better known, naturally, for football and basketball than for soccer.

The Aztecs got there by winning at St. Louis, at Southern Methodist and at UCLA. Winning soccer games in those places against those teams is like fighting polar bears on icebergs. It probably is equivalent to beating Kentucky, Louisville and Indiana--on the road, at that--en route to the Final Four in basketball.

“Getting to the Final Four is the toughest thing to do,” Clegg said. “But we’re not going with the idea that we’re just happy to be there.”

San Diego State will open today against Harvard, which fields excellent teams in soccer, crew and debate. Clemson and North Carolina will play in the other semifinal game, and the winners will play Sunday.

This would seem to be a great opportunity for San Diego State soccer to get some exposure, and maybe even put a few bucks into the bank.

What, Clegg was asked, will the Aztecs get for making the Final Four?

He scratched his head.

You know, he was prompted, what’s the pay-out for competing teams?

“Oh,” he said. “We’ll get our travel expenses reimbursed.”

What?

“This isn’t like a football bowl game,” he said, laughing. “We don’t have any $500,000 to $3-million to $6-million payoffs.”

And now he had an opportunity to rant and rave. He had a chance to lament the unfairness of it all. The moment was his.

“Minor sports are not minor sports,” he said. “They’re just non-revenue sports.”

Now he was rolling. Surely it was time to take his rips at those big headline-hogging, money-crunching “major” sports.

Not exactly.

“Soccer barely pays its expenses,” he said. “Priorities have to be football and basketball. You won’t see me asking to take eight scholarships from football to give them to soccer, because football has to be successful for the sake of the whole athletic department.”

It probably figures that a coach in such a team-oriented game would be such a team-oriented guy.

Clegg calls this a very special team. It is also a very unselfish one. The NCAA maximum for soccer scholarships is 11, and this team has 3. Significantly, the Aztecs carve up the scholarship money, just as they have carved up the opposition.

These guys, it would seem, have taken nickels and dimes and turned them into a fortune in opportunity.