AIFF president

[sajoodk]

This guy Priya Ranjan has the president for the past 20 years and under his tenure the game is reaching all time low. He seems to be trying to get India a FIFA ranking of 203. How does he get selected as the president? Is there no way of throwing him out. He must have made hell of a money from FIFA and AFC grants given to develop the game.

[prasen9]

The current president Mr. Kalyan Chaubey wants an inter-university league. He quoted the U.S. college sports model. Not a bad idea if we can get some rivalry going and media coverage, etc. And, people want to support their universities (btw, go longhorns! who was the one who commented after the Sooners game? slightly )

Chaubey wants inter-university league

What do you guys think? Now, the question is whether he is just bloviating or will do something about it.

[jayakris]

If AIFF can come up with a proper scheme with incentives and sponsorship for players, colleges, and press/media to take it seriously, I guess it can only help. It would be tough to do though, because many Indian universities are spread out over vast areas with affiliated colleges and are not based at single campus locations that encourage "college spirit".

But an all-India inter-university championship already exists, apparently. Nobody seems to pay attention, nor does the press report anything, except for some one-off random news items like some college beating another somewhere!

Here is some news from just yesterday, about 4 teams qualifying from the Southeast regional held at Mangalore: Osmania University Men’s Football Team Makes History, Qualifies for All India Inter-University Championship

I have no idea why a "Southeast" regional would be held in the west coast in Mangalore, nor why a Chattisgarh university would be among the qualifiers from that regional! Bizzarre. But that kind of odd news reports is all one finds. I could find nothing about what the national trophy is called, the format for the championships, its schedules/venues, nor its history

[jayakris]

Here is a plan to get colleges involved - not just for football, but all of sports. This needs a lot of money and resources, so probably only the national sports ministry can set it up.

1) Select, based on competitive bids for a 5 or 10 year plan, some 25 universities to participate in a remote college education program for athletes and sports-persons. They also propose appropriate degrees for the list (Can have addition/deletion of say 5 of them every 5 years, for instance, after re-competition)

2) Set up remote education facilities (which is pretty cheap these days) on selected degrees and courses that are appropriate for sportspersons and remote instruction.

3) Each university also proposes national collegiate sports infrastructure plans (funded by the ministry but space/land provided by the Univs). Only 5 or 6 univs are selected for every sport, and this also can be periodical, like one more Univ selected for say badminton every 5 years after the initial 3 or 4. It is all part of their proposals to be selected in the listed top-25 sports univs that are supported. They need to pick and choose the sports they each focus on. Promised success in Industry and alumni support/sponsorship is part of the bids too.

4) Have a national sports college entrance clearinghouse with recruiting, and press/media coverage of the universities which are the "sports universities" (call them KVVs "kreedavishwavidyalayas" or whatever for the samskRta folks!)

5) Select a national list of top-performing players/athletes based on u14-u18 performances in various sports (the numbers in each sport varies). Federation lists can be the starting point, but colleges may use their own lists to recruit just like in NCAA recruiting.

6) The universities also get serious funding and sponsorship of industry houses depending on the results they show in the national championships of every sport. They have an incentive to give proper support/sponsorship/fostering of their recruited athletes. For instance, only 5 or 6 universities would be focused on tennis, recruiting the 10 odd players every year into their teams (with NCAA-like govt scholarships). They would have tennis facilities set up. Maybe all of them would have football teams (and hopefully NONE will have cricket teams; the one sport the government MUST stay away from - but that is just my personal opinion )

7) Institute industry trophies for each sports championships, runners-up etc. "Infosys National Football Championship for Mewalal Trophy, won by Shillong University" or the "Bajaj Auto National Swimming championship for the Shamsher Khan Trophy, won by MG University, Kottayam".

Can some version of this be possible? The key is that athletes and players can generally continue in the current system, as the universities build up their facilities. They are just drafted in for names' sake and remote education by Universities. So, players of top national abilities from all over India can be in some team somewhere, and they may visit the university itself only for say a month every year for course purposes. The universities' sports team training need not even be at the university facilities until they are built up to good standards. IITM's tennis team may well train at the Sania Mirza academy in Hyderabad and JNU's tennis team may be at the AITA academy -- so it is up to the Univs to set up the right MOUs for all this.

But the existing university alumni can latch on to their colleges' athletes and players, as they are national names! (We don't have enough athletes of quality in the local catchment basin of each college, which is the key problem I am trying to address here)

We can imagine, for instance, Maaya Rajeshwaran's being recruited heavily as the national top-5 all-sports recruits for the 2026 class of tennis admits by IIT Madras (who can have a "sports technology BTech" available) or JNU (who can have a "sports political science" degree).

Can something like that work?

[prasen9]

Kalyan Choubey as we know him just gives high level thoughts. Meaning he does not think of things more than 4 minutes. So, you have possibly gone way beyond what he can even comprehend. I have no hopes he will do anything like this. It sounds like a great suggestion. I will, of course, have to digest this, think, and then nitpick. So, stay tuned. Thanks for the writeup. Do you want to write this as an op-ed to a top Indian newspaper? They publish a lot of junk. So, something useful like this would be ... well, useful.

[jayakris]

^^^ Hmmm... Yeah, why not? Do pick holes and see if this would work, and what problems you see. If it might work, perhaps it can be written as a newspaper article.... Of course, I need to work out how much Union ministry money we are talking about. Federations that waste out sports budget will of course complain vehemently and would want no part of this.

One more explanation. One reason behind it is that the inter-state rivalry setup we currently have is not really working at all - because most states do not have a critical mass of quality players/athletes to create top level national competition. My scheme would cause universities (at least in sports) become national in their character/appeal and rivalries. Focusing the national talent in any sport to basically some top 5 to 10 universities with national sports appeal might do the job and create appropriate competition in sports. Giving a certain level of education with easier degrees to sportsmen is helpful for them too.

[il_fenomeno]

Looks like Mr. president has another brilliant idea.

"FIFA World Cup In India? AIFF President Kalyan Chaubey Proposes Plan To Co-Host 2034 Football Showpiece:"

https://www.outlookindia.com/sports/fif ... ews-337068


Not sure if we would qualify automatically as a smaller Co-Host in this case but 2034 is basically just 10 years away and too early considering where we are standing right now despite the progress we made in the last years.
I would prefer qualifying based on our own merits anyway.