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Jo Dawkins was not looking for a college offer when he found one.
He was seventeen, playing for the New Zealand age group side against Ireland schoolboys, and the only thing on his mind was the opposing striker. Specifically, the opposing striker's boots. Pink Nike Vapors. Dawkins turned to his centre-back partner Anthony Hobbs and the two of them made a quiet agreement: there was no way someone wearing pink boots was going to score against them.
They kept him scoreless. And as they walked off the field, an assistant coach from Florida International University pulled them aside and said he wanted them in his programme.
"Right time, right place," Dawkins says now. "We knew nothing about college. We hadn't looked into it."
What followed was a rapid sequence of SAT preparation, NCAA Eligibility Center clearance, and a flight to Miami that would eventually shape not just Dawkins' athletic career, but the way he thinks about what the U.S. college pathway can do for a young athlete from New Zealand. Dawkins, now the driving force behind Auckland United's player development programme and a key figure in helping Kiwi footballers navigate their options, joined Platform Sports' podcast to talk through his journey, his experience on the other side of it, and what families and athletes should understand about a system he knows from both ends.
Dawkins arrived at FIU with little context for what he was walking into. The university carries a student body of more than 46,000, with 12,000 students living on campus. Golf carts move people from one end to the other. A college football stadium seats 50,000. Athletic trainers, full facilities, and everything that comes with a properly resourced Division I programme were simply part of daily life.
"I got lucky going to a proper Division I school," he says. "Honestly, best four years of my life."
But the thing that stayed with him most was not the facilities or the campus. It was the calibre of his teammates. Germans, Brazilians, Argentinians, Scandinavians, players from programmes and academies across the world who were, by his assessment, better than anyone he had played with in New Zealand.
He has been to Germany for Christmas since graduating. He still talks to those teammates every week. One of his former fullbacks is now an MLS referee at the highest level. The connections made over four years of competing, travelling, and living together turned out to be among the most durable of his life.
"Real life changing," he says. "Friends for life."
Not every athlete Dawkins played alongside was there to go pro. Two of his German teammates were, by his own assessment, good enough to attract serious interest from professional football but not quite Bundesliga standard. For them, the college system was a means to something different: a world-class degree, four years of genuine development, and a life experience that would not have been available to them otherwise.
"They weren't going to college to make it pro," Dawkins explains. "But using their ability to get a good degree and a world-class education."
That distinction matters, and it is something Dawkins comes back to repeatedly in his work with young athletes. The college pathway is not a single thing. It is a decision shaped by individual goals, academic ambitions, sporting potential, and personal circumstances. For some athletes, it is a direct route toward professional football. For others, it is the foundation for everything that comes after sport. For most, it is both.
What Dawkins is clear about, having lived it and watched many others go through it, is that athletes who leave New Zealand for college come back different. He has been doing this long enough now to see players return after four or five years with degrees, perspectives, and maturity that the domestic system simply cannot replicate in the same way.
"I've seen players leave and come back as different human beings," he says.
Dawkins had a year out between high school and college, and arrived on campus already out of the academic routine most students carry through. It could have been a difficult adjustment.
What he found instead was a system built to support athletes through exactly that kind of transition. Mandatory study hall. Flexible first-year curriculum that allowed him time to work out what he wanted to study. Academic advisors who understood what his schedule demanded. When a hip injury during his junior year took him off the field for a full year, the university encouraged him to load up his academic workload to stay engaged. He came back to competition with fewer classes, allowing him to focus fully on the season.
By the time he graduated, Dawkins held two degrees: one in sports management and one in business administration.
"The US system has quite a nice balance," he says. "And the universities have a lot of support systems in place."
For families worried about whether a student-athlete can genuinely manage academics alongside Division I football, Dawkins' experience is worth sitting with. The system is demanding. It is also resourced in ways that many athletes from New Zealand and Australia do not expect until they are inside it.
The college pathway's capacity to create professional footballers is not theoretical.
Michael Boxall is perhaps the clearest example from the New Zealand men's game. Four seasons at UC Santa Barbara, first overall pick in the 2011 MLS Supplemental Draft by Vancouver Whitecaps, and now a decade-long career at Minnesota United where he holds the club record for appearances and has represented New Zealand at the highest level including the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The college system did not divert Boxall from a professional career. It launched one.
Dawkins sees the same pattern continuing through Auckland United's current pathway. Boyd Curry, who had a strong college career, has returned to the first team. Penny Brill recently departed for Xavier. A young female athlete from the programme signed with the Wellington Phoenix after developing through the Auckland United academy and has already made a significant impact in the A-League Women's competition.
"Whether they're gone for four years and come back, whether they come back during the break," Dawkins says. "It's just awesome to stay connected with these kids and help them through their journey."
Dawkins is direct about what advice he gives to families with players at thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen who are starting to think about what comes next.
Start by exploring. Not committing. Not signing. Not paying. Simply finding out what the process requires: the academic preparation, the timing, the footage, the communication habits. The athletes who know this early are the ones who arrive at decisions with clarity rather than pressure.
"Earlier is better," he says. "And you don't need to commit or sign or pay. You just need to actually find out what the process is."
He is also emphatic about something that still circulates in parts of the New Zealand football community: that leaving for college means losing visibility for national team selection or professional pathways. The reality, he argues, has changed significantly. Players who perform well in the U.S. college system are being tracked. The eyeballs are there. And the alumni list of players who have come through college and into the professional game, men and women, is long and growing.
Some of the paths are rapid. Some take years of development before the right opportunity arrives. But the athletes who go over prepared, with the right support and a clear understanding of what they are entering, consistently give themselves the best chance of making something significant out of the experience.
"I'm still a firm believer," Dawkins says, "that pathway is fantastic for Kiwis. Not just for the sport. But for academics, for engineering, for life experience, for leaving home and travelling the world."
To hear the full conversation with Jo Dawkins, listen to the Platform Sports podcast on Spotify.
