Hello Mr. Eason, thanks for joining us at Soccer ‘n’ Sweet Tea! First question is a personal one: what’s your soccer background?

I grew up and played soccer in Atlanta (editor’s note: we don’t hold that against him). I received a scholarship at William Cary College in Mississippi. During that time, I played in the summertime with the PDL. After college, I continued with the Jackson Chargers who were a PDL team, and then got an opportunity to play professionally for the Charlotte Eagles.

Todd Eason (number 24) with the 2000 Charlotte Eagles (Photo courtesy of the Charlotte Eagles)

After my time with the Eagles, I got into coaching college soccer throughout the Southeast, finishing my coaching career at Jacksonville University in Florida. Then in October 2014, I moved down to Tampa to take this job with the PDL.

What does the job of the director of the PDL entail?

I oversee a lot of different departments. With our clubs that play in the league, the focus on Operations and Standards is very important to us. We focus a lot on operations, which entails creating a competitive structure. We also help teams meet standards and monitor them as they go through the season.

Another big department is expansion, overseeing what markets we want to go to, what directions we want to go in. We also oversee digital aspects, PR, club services, video, and graphics. With club services, we try to assist teams in being successful in trying to generate revenue each season — that’s a big part of it — and overall the strategic direction of the league.

You mentioned expansion as being a big department. How many teams do you think can fit in the PDL?

I don’t think there is a real number on what we are trying to do. What we want to do is expand at a manageable rate. We want to be able to provide the same level of customer service that we have been, so we don’t want to get overpopulated to where that could lessen.

When we expand, we aren’t looking to just count how many teams we have. We are looking to be hands-on by helping them move forward with being a stable team in their communities. Helping teams generate revenue is something we take a lot of pride in, and we want to do it the right way. We want to get more teams in areas to reduce travel costs, but we also have to make sure we can handle that growth.

So do a good number of teams make a profit?

We are seeing more teams break even, or lose less. There are a handful right now that are doing well with ticket sales and sponsorships, and that is something we want to see continue to grow. That can be difficult in an amateur league, but we do have some teams who are very successful, so it’s just providing assistance and sharing best practices. It’s a slow process, but we are getting there year after year.

What attracted you to leave coaching and move over to the administrative side of things in the PDL?

I’ve always been attracted to the administrative side of things. It’s always been a dream of mine to work with a soccer-specific company, and be a part of growing the game in North America. The PDL provides a platform for better players to come through, and that’s also attractive to me — being able to help guys move on and do something they probably didn’t initially think they were going to do.

I came from a small school, and always heard you have to be in Division I if you want to be seen for pro clubs. I went against the grain and was exposed by being able to play in the PDL. That’s how I got to play for the Charlotte Eagles when they were a pro team.

I’m essentially here for the little guy who may not play in DI but is just as talented.

How does the PDL work with the USL?

A lot of different ways. One thing is: We share a lot of the same resources. We work out of the same office. How we fit and work together is pretty seamless. We even share some of the same people in different departments. We work together to make our properties better each year. We are able to expose our guys playing in the PDL to the USL clubs, and we make the transition as easy as possible. If you can play in the PDL, you could get a shot in the USL.

Even on a business standpoint, we groom a lot of our PDL clubs to perform at the same level as our USL clubs. So, in sharing resources our clubs are very aware of what it takes to play or operate in the USL, and we take a lot of standards and operations from the USL and apply it to the PDL.

Will the new USL Division III league affect the PDL?

It will mostly affect our players positively. Establishing another league under the USL umbrella just presents another opportunity for our players to play professionally. As it stands now, we have more than 370 players playing in the USL with PDL experience. Having another league for our players to move into will raise those numbers. Outside of that, it really doesn’t affect us negatively.

I know there will be a lot of clubs that feel they can operate at a Division III level, which many of our clubs can. We leave that to the leadership of those clubs, and if that’s something they are aspiring to do, we will assist them with that. But honestly, we mostly just see USL Division III as a player’s benefit.

Every PDL team I’ve talked with praises the high standards you set. Could you tell me about that?

As far as players are concerned, we make it very clear we are a ‘Path to Pro’ model. We are looking to attract the best players in the country. Our platform, being a preeminent Under-23 league, I think we do a great job identifying the best college players on each team. A lot of our teams see that as a competitive edge within the league — to be able to attract the best players.

Players want to come to the PDL not only because of how they will be treated by their club, but also because they know they will face some of the best players in the country. And to compete against that with a different group of guys year after year is both fun and challenging.

On a business standpoint, there are a lot of standards we expect our clubs to adhere to. We want all of our clubs to be able to travel to other clubs, and be able to expect the same treatment they would give to clubs visiting them. Having that continuity throughout the league is a big strength of ours. You know what you are going to get each time you play a club. The facility the teams are playing at is going to have a nice surface, how they operate on and off the field, we want them all to be similar.

What are the goals of the PDL for the future?

The big thing for us is to continue to provide a platform for players to develop and be seen by pro clubs. The more players of ours we can see move on to the pros, the better. On the club services side, we are doing more now in creating programming initiatives to help these teams perform better and being able to find ways to get the word out in their community as efficiently as possible.

Helping teams be more stable year after year is big for us. It is very important for us that our teams never become stagnant. We don’t want them to be in the league just to be in the league. That goes for our office here as well. We never want to be satisfied with what we have done. We want to be proactive and try to do it better each year. Also with expansion, we want to keep finding good investors to help grow the league and bring the quality to a higher level.

The divisions in the league vary in size. The South Atlantic has 11 teams. What is the thinking behind that? Is there any desire to balance it out?

In an ideal world, each of our divisions would have eight teams that each play a home and away game as our seasons are 14 games long. But, realistically, it just isn’t possible. What we do is try to group the teams together in a way that makes the most sense geographically. We get the assistance of the executive committee board, which is made up of one executive member of each division. We mostly align the divisions geographically so no team is strained too much with travel costs.

We actually have divisions as small as five teams. Teams in those divisions may play some opponents outside their division to avoid playing any one team more than three times. We find the excitement and competitive aspect would be affected if you play the same opponent too many times.

Then, we have some divisions that are so big not every team can play each other — like in the South Atlantic Division (where the Carolina teams are). There are 11 teams so they can’t all play each other. We try our best to make sure teams play their closest opponents more often in those situations.

So then how do the playoff qualifications work with the different-sized divisions and some teams not playing each other?

For your area, there are three divisions in the Eastern Conference. The South Atlantic Division has 11 teams, and the Northeast and Mid Atlantic Divisions each have seven teams. Since the South Atlantic Division has the most teams, we felt it was only fair they have a higher percentage of teams coming out of that division. They get two playoff berths. The other two divisions each have two teams that come out of their divisions as well, but they actually have crossover games with each other in a playoff play-in game.

The winners of those two games will join the top two from the South Atlantic Division in Statesboro, Georgia, for the conference final four. The winner of that moves on to the PDL National Semifinals. We base it on percentages in a lot of ways as far as determining how many teams advance.