Fans who showed up on a late summer night to see Notre Dame take on the University of Connecticut got a rude awakening at the gates: they were closed.

Notre Dame’s other football program, the one that calls the shots in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus, was holding a closed practice on a neighboring field. Spies might attempt to glean formations from Alumni Stadium’s seats, so the soccer fans were held back until the gridiron men shuffled off into the dusk.

That seemed as apt a metaphor as any for where college soccer – a vital, if often decried, brick in the American development pyramid – is in 2016.

College soccer has long been mocked as sub-par in comparison to the big money-making university sports in the USA, a missed opportunity on multiple levels. A combination of peculiar scheduling and almost indefensible substitution rules – you are not limited to three players, and you can effectively platoon people in and out of a game – has made the college game an unlovely hybrid with a terrible track record at developing top-caliber talent.

And yet: in the shadows of the bigger boys, college soccer has improved.

Buoyed by a growing Hispanic population, a flood of overseas students, and the emergence of MLS as a viable career path, at its best the college game resembles what one might see in a League One match, or perhaps a reserves game. The play has become increasingly technical and more athletic; players actually know what they are doing when they have the ball at their feet. College players have also become more sophisticated in the past 20 years, clear beneficiaries of US television’s 24-hour coverage of the world game and the massive expansion at youth level.

There are significant caveats. Most professional teams have given up on American universities; Major League Soccer’s academy system is an explicit rebuke to the college game. The collegiate product is also tactically naïve and coaching poor, with only a handful of elite programs actually offering anything close to quality training. And, a great question left unanswered is: with all the American kids playing soccer, shouldn’t there be more elite players?

Connecticut coach Ray Reid thinks so, and sees the glass as half full. Reid, who has sent as many players to the pros as any program, says there are 10 college programs playing the game the right way, although the substitution rules remain a major impediment to improvement.

“I think the college game has improved, simply from more kids playing soccer, and more coaches have an idea – but the substitution rules leave a lot of room for improvement. The sub rules, where some guys run 15 players in and out in a game, allows people to press and just run bodies all game long at you. I’d like to change that, but there is resistance from other coaches – it’s a crutch. The fact is, if you can’t sub, you have to teach kids how to play the game.”

Those substitute rules are in place due to a famously compact schedule that sees teams playing twice a week to cram in a full season. Stretching the season out would make a big difference. And still, Reid thinks it’s not quite enough.

“We have kids coming from overseas, and it’s an eye-opener for them, you know – the American game isn’t as bad as they think it is. However, you still see a lot of programs that are based around pressing, around long throws, over winning by playing with your mind,” says Reid, with more than a trace of exasperation.

“People wonder why the USA doesn’t play the right way – and it’s our fault, because we haven’t given Jurgen [Klinsmann] enough guys with technique. We should have more guys playing good soccer, but you have to be willing to sacrifice early on and a lot of guys aren’t. More guys concentrate on wins and losses than on development.”

The college game can produce standout talent: American soccer’s latest darling, Jordan Morris, famously turned down overseas offers to remain at Stanford as a senior. Now at Seattle and producing, he is considered a rising talent.

Clint Dempsey and Brian McBride came through the college ranks and enjoyed successful spells in England. Premier League fans are about to get a look at the coaching side of the college game, albeit at a remove: new Swansea manager Bob Bradley cut his teeth at Virginia and Princeton before moving on to the pros in the mid-1990s.

But many American players follow the path taken by Sunderland’s Lynden Gooch, jumping right from a top-tier development program or academy to a professional team. There is a good reason for it: with many players graduating from university at 21 or 22, it is thought that some of the best years for player development are well behind them – and the spotty track record of American players overseas might bear that out. For every Dempsey there is a Tim Ream or an Eric Lihaj.

To be fair, academy trained players often fare no better: just ask Jozy Altidore. And for all the fingers pointed at the college game, American academies’ track records aren’t great. After an initial burst of talent provided by Florida’s IMG, academies in MLS have had occasional, low-level successes – but they aren’t going to be mistaken for La Masia any day soon.

The fact is, not capitalizing on the college game is a huge loss for the sport as a whole in the USA.

Consider that the best college soccer in the nation is currently played in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), one of the so-called “Big Five” conferences that dominate American college football and basketball. The names are bold-faced ones for American sport: Syracuse, Notre Dame, Clemson, North Carolina. And yet, while alumni follow their American football and basketball teams post-college, the drop-off is stark for soccer teams.

About 900 fans showed up to see Notre Dame beat UConn – and that was a decent house. Eighty-one thousand fans will show up to see Notre Dame football the following weekend, and they are expanding the stadium in hopes of accommodating 20,000 more. Part of this is cultural – football and baseball rule the roost in the USA. But it is striking how few soccer fans follow college teams at all in a country that loves collegiate sport.

Still, college soccer has made progress in a brave new world for the sport in the USA. What remains to be seen is if the coaches and administrators that oversee the game will be brave enough to make the rule changes needed to take the sport to the next level.