'I'm excited about this': Tim Tebow, JAXUSL group plan next steps for Jacksonville soccer

Tim Tebow needed two words — well, maybe more than two — to describe what motivated the First Coast's most famous 21st-century dual-sport star to add soccer to his athletic checklist.

"Ted Lasso," he said, referring to the Apple TV series, as the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse erupted in laughter.

Then, more seriously: "Friends, family, relationships and home. ... A friend shared this opportunity with me. I love it because this is home, and we have so many kids that love [soccer]."

The Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback is now officially part of a prospective soccer ownership team, after the United Soccer League formally announced its franchise agreement Tuesday with the JAXUSL group.

It's a goal: Pro soccer returning to Jacksonville with Tim Tebow-backed USL franchise

The Jacksonville team — still in search of a name, a logo and a place to play — is scheduled to begin competition in the USL Championship, part of the second tier of American professional soccer, for the 2025 season. The club, which is forming a partnership with the Florida Elite Soccer Academy, is also seeking to start a professional women's soccer team in a USL-organized league that's still under construction.

For JAXUSL, a group that includes lead investor Ricky Caplin, Jordan Graumann, Steve Livingstone and Tony Allegretti in addition to Tebow, the first step is in the books.

"Life goes by so fast, and it seems like we were just having discussions [about starting JAXUSL] months ago," Caplin said. "I think this is a major milestone."

Much of the crucial work begins now.

Finding solid ground for Jacksonville's USL team

Developing a team name — Livingstone said the club will be holding town hall meetings and surveying fans to chart a course for its new identity — is only part of the mission, particularly considering the city's soccer track record.

Two of Jacksonville's professional soccer ventures, the Tea Men in the 1980s and the Cyclones in the 1990s, went extinct before the five-year mark. The Armada, founded in 2015, remains active but outside the professional ranks.

Those clubs saw their dreams hampered by venue problems, unstable leagues or combinations of both. For Caplin, the goal is learning from those experiences to construct a lasting foundation for the JAXUSL franchise.

"From everything I've learned, it starts with the right partnerships, whether civic or corporate," he said.

A lifelong Northeast Florida resident who graduated from the University of Florida with a master's degree in accounting, Caplin said he followed World Cup soccer while growing up, although it wasn't until more recently that he developed a closer interest in the sport.

But athletics haven't been far away from his life. While he played competitive basketball growing up, his greatest success occurred on a different kind of court. Caplin particularly excelled in table tennis and competed at Junior Olympic level.

"It's just a really exciting, grateful moment for me," Caplin said. "I know we're not there yet. We've got a lot of things that we still need to happen in a good place, but I would say a heart full of gratitude."

The stadium search

With the first kick more than two and a half years away, JAXUSL's first task — long before the work of hiring a coach or assembling a roster — is finding a place to play.

That proved easier said than done for the Cyclones, who moved from Mandarin High School to the Jacksonville Suns' Wolfson Park, and for the Armada, who have sailed from the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville to the University of North Florida's Hodges Stadium to several other venues since exiting the North American Soccer League.

Livingstone said the club's ultimate goal is developing a stadium that holds about 15,000, along with a larger complex that can accommodate youth tournaments.

For Caplin, the criteria are twofold: identifying the right location that best accommodates the club's fan base, and finding an ideal public-private partnership with local government, whether inside or outside Duval County. He believes the ownership group's efforts will bear fruit soon.

"We've done a lot of work, and I think we're close," he said. "But it's not to say that if it doesn't work out, we've got to reset."

The owners declined to discuss details regarding potential venue locations, including whether the Eastside site north of the sports complex might ultimately be an option. The Jacksonville Armada received City Council approval for a land-option agreement for potential soccer development along A. Philip Randolph Boulevard in January 2020, immediately before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, but that project has yet to take shape.

Caplin said JAXUSL is leaving its options open.

"There's been a lot of discussions put in," he said. "We kind of know the geographic radius that it has to be, so we've got several options for speaking with or negotiations with, and we've got to see how things play out. I don't want to get ahead of myself in case it takes longer than I hope."

Building the women's game

JAXUSL's ambitions include more than membership in the USL Championship, the Division II men's league that includes 27 teams as of the still-going 2022 season.

The group also intends to place a team in the Super League, a planned USL women's professional league that's still in its formative stages. Such a team would join a short list of women's professional sports franchises to operate in Florida, particularly Northeast Florida.

"That was one of the things that took me from excited to really excited," Caplin said.

At present, one women's soccer team, the Orlando Pride, already operates in Florida within the National Women's Soccer League, which is a Division I league.

The U.S. Soccer Federation has not yet formally announced a status for the Super League, but USL's launch announcement last September projected the new association as Division II. Unlike most American professional soccer leagues, the Super League intends to use a European-style calendar, beginning play in fall and concluding in spring.

While the women's league is a work in progress, there's no doubt about Northeast Florida's potential talent pool. The area has regularly ranked among the nation's deepest in girls soccer at the youth level, particularly in the high school ranks, where St. Johns Country Day has earned three national titles in the past six years and Bartram Trail, Bishop Kenny, Bolles, Creekside, Fletcher and Ponte Vedra have all won Florida High School Athletic Association girls championships since 2020.

"With [Northeast Florida] players going on to feature at the collegiate level or on the national team, it's a good demonstration of the opportunity to come," said Super League president Amanda Vandervort.

The Super League, Vandervort said, would open up new opportunities in a women's soccer world that currently includes tens of thousands of athletes in college soccer but only a few hundred with opportunities to compete in the American professional ranks.

"We are going to change that," she said.

Tebow time, soccer style

While the project of returning professional soccer to the city has been in the works for years, Tebow was a relative newcomer to the team. He said the connection developed  over time after meeting Caplin through events connected to the Tim Tebow Foundation.

"I really think about it three ways. The people matter: who do I get to do business with? The product, the product's got to matter, and then it's got to have purpose," Tebow said. "And we think with this, all three of them are going to be there."

Fewer than 10 miles northeast of the Nease High School field where he won Florida Dairy Farmers Mr. Football honors on his way to Gators fame, Tebow said his mission with the new club is to inspire Northeast Florida's next generation to work toward their dreams.

"I believe that there's going to be 10,000 young people that do get to inspire every single day, that are going to be able to look and see a dream, see a vision, see a goal and be able to go after it," he said. "That's why I'm excited about this, because this is where I call home."

And, if the athletic bug bites again, Florida Elite President Steven Mail offered another light-hearted suggestion for the quarterback-turned-outfielder-turned-tight end, still muscular at 35 years old.

"Anyone think Tim might make a great goalkeeper for the new team?" Mail joked.

Clayton Freeman covers high school sports and more for the Florida Times-Union. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville soccer owner group seeks stadium, stability for 2025 launch