That 1982 NCAA final, played on “one of those unbelievably muggy nights in Florida” is a good example of the differences Jeffries points out – from then to today. With the game tied 1-1 after 90, the refereeing team scratched their heads and came up with a plan, sort of. “Honestly, there was no organization at the time – so we played a couple of tens [minute-periods of over-time] and a couple fives,” said Jeffries. “They were just almost winging it as we went along.”
And along they went until, finally (and mercifully for the players) Thompson curled his free kick into the top corner to seal the win for Indiana. It was in the 159th minute of the game and the eighth period of improvised over-time. That was 44 years ago, folks.
A road forward for the American game, following the collapse of the NASL in 1984, was not bumpy. It simply didn’t exist. It was obscured and unkempt and buried under leaves and debris. Jeffries traded the shin guards and cleats he wore in his three caps with the U.S. Men’s National Team and became a “suit-and-tie guy.” But his stockbroker job at Smith Barney didn’t stick. “I wanted to get over to the financial side,” he said about his decision to attend business school. But newly married, he needed a paying job. “So, I started coaching, ended up loving coaching, and I’ve stuck with it since.”
“It became a passion.” added Jeffries, who grew up loving the game in Maryland but scoffs at the suggestion he might have known he wanted to be a coach from early on.
Four decades have passed. And Jeffries moved along as the game in this country dug itself out from its own grave. He moved a lot of dirt himself. And his long road to a one-time second division team, now in the third division known as USL League One, has provided him with more experience and raw material than any coach can credibly hope to have. And along the way, he became a reluctant oracle of sorts – a man who knows the pitfalls and potential facing the game in this country.
Many of his experiences line up with the Open Cup. It's the only tournament in the U.S. that connects the top (MLS) and the bottom (Open Division) and all points in between. With the 111th edition of the tournament set to begin next month, Jeffries’ Independence face a potential banana skin with a 2026 tournament opener at home against Baltimore-based amateur debutants Ristozi FC on March 19th (LIVE on U.S. Soccer’s YouTube Channel).
Up against a team full of part-timers, many desperate to make a name or to prove they’ve still got it, the Independence will have to fight tooth and nail. Matching the intensity of the lower-ranked team is part of the essence of our single-elimination tournament, first contested in 1913. “It’s the Open Cup, so some of the standard rules don’t necessarily apply,” smiled Jeffries when asked about the general vibe of games in this country’s most beloved and historic soccer tournament. “You get crazy games in the Open Cup. You have to expect anything.”
Anything and everything – Jeffries has seen it. Trust us. Ever heard of the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers? No? Well, he played for them in the old USISL between 1993 and 1994. And after his knee finally gave out, he coached the club through 1997. “You’re going all the way back now,” he chuckled at the mention of his first coaching position – and his first run out in the Open Cup.”
Round one at our house.
— Charlotte Independence (@Independence) January 27, 2026
🔗 https://t.co/EkjJN0nWVe pic.twitter.com/Rda9JNnGEw
“We didn’t go too far, if I recall,” he said of his run with the Gamblers in 1997, and a Third Round loss to that year’s eventual champions Dallas Burn (of MLS, the league that brought top-flight soccer back to the USA when it launched in 1996). He did go far, though, with the Chicago Fire. “Those were special moments,” he said of the two Open Cups he won in the Windy City as assistant coach to American legend Bob Bradley. “1998 was probably the most special – it was our first year and we were at home and it was just a really special night.”
It’s not just the pinnacle of the game where Jeffries takes his vantage in the Open Cup. He led the all-amateur summer leaguers, the Des Moines Menace, to a win over NASL (the then-new second-division league with the same name as the old one) pro side Minnesota United (now in MLS) and a loss away to four-time Open Cup winners Sporting Kansas City (also of MLS). “What that meant to those kids who played there that night, I was so happy for them.”
“I had a few bad nights with the Burn,” he smiled, moving quickly past the losses to PDL amateurs Seattle Sounders Select in 2001 and semi-pro Wilmington Hammerheads in 2003 (with a Semifinal run in between, in 2002) he suffered as head coach of the MLS club now known as FC Dallas.
It's been a long road for the coach, but he’s a man who’s happy where he’s at. All the roster turnover in the third tier of American pro soccer won’t rattle him. How could it? Jeffries has seen things in his career that would make a youngster’s head spin.
The Independence’s farthest run the Open Cup came back in the club’s inaugural year of 2015, when they were part of the second-tier pro system of USL, with a place in the Round of 16. They beat fellow Div. II side Carolina RailHawks and MLS’ New England Revolution (both 1-0) that year when they were led by Paolo DelPiccolo and Colombian ace Jorge Herrera.
It was a string of results that earned the North Carolina club the then-$15,000 prize as the farthest-reaching second-division club in the tournament (that same achievement now nets you $50,000).
Jeffries, the steady hand on the tiller in his 12th year with the club, is ready to take up the challenge once again. After a 2025 USL League One campaign that that saw the Jacks (as the Independence are known to their fans) scrape into the Playoffs and reach the Third Round of last year’s Open Cup, Jeffries appreciates the possibilities alive in a clean slate.
“You always have to be ready to battle in the Open Cup – to fight all the way every time, no matter who you have in the side,” said Jeffries, who’s seen American soccer fall and rise again – and who knows, better than anyone perhaps, that nothing is over until it’s over. “Just because a team is from a higher league, or has a reputation, doesn’t give them the right to walk away with a win without working for it.”
Fontela has been a ussoccer.com contributor since 2017. Follow him @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.
The year was 1984, and soccer in this country was dying.
It was also the year a young Mike Jeffries, winner of the prize given to the top college player in the country, the Hermann Trophy, in 1983, was drafted to play in the old North American Soccer League (NASL). Gone were the record crowds, the bright shining future of the world’s game dressed up in American glitz. Beckenbauer and Pele and Cruyff and George Best had all left – the league was on life support and circling the drain.
Feels good to be back 😁 pic.twitter.com/odW5iZ7ALv
— Charlotte Independence (@Independence) January 28, 2026
“Soccer in this country at that point was in a very different place than today,” said the 63-year-old Jeffries, coach of today’s Charlotte Independence, who was called into that era of the NASL to play for the Minnesota Strikers (who a few months before were the Fort Lauderdale Strikers) and who would, in a matter of months, become an indoor team – and then not a team at all. “The environment, for anyone who didn't live through it, was something you wouldn’t recognize.”
The first person young Jeffries – an old-fashioned sweeper, with a keen eye for the game – met in the locker room when he got to Minnesota was Gregg Thompson. “He didn’t waste any time rubbing it in,” Jeffries smiled about that reunion with the man who scored the goal that beat Jeffries’ Duke University and delivered the 1982 national college title to Indiana. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, but he made sure to remind me of it.”