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Post by HoyaAlum on Sept 18, 2004 19:46:40 GMT -5
Do you recall that it took Fordham 7 years to win a game in the patriot league. And because of G-towns academics that it is much harder to get players with low academics compared to all the other patriot league teams-
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Post by BostonHoya on Sept 18, 2004 19:55:07 GMT -5
Yes, Lurking Dog, it's all about blocking and tackling, running and throwing. To borrow a little of your sarcasm: silly me, I thought some people blocked and tackled better than others. I mean, my old high school jayvee team will be blocking and tackling on Monday, as will the NFL's Redskins tomorrow...it's just that some of us disagree with how you get the people that do it well to campus.
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Post by BostonHoya on Sept 18, 2004 20:13:23 GMT -5
I didn't realize that it took Fordham so long, and I see your point. As I understand it, you're implying that it takes time to win and with that sentiment, I agree. The problem is that Duquesne isn't a Pat League opponent. They're (theoretically) a lesser team from a lesser league. Last year's 69-0 loss to Lehigh was embarrassing, but I could write that off as Gtown being the little guy in the big league. However, against Duquesne, Gtown should be the big guy in the big league that hands out the drubbing (ala Week 1 Gtown v. St. Francis), not takes it.
By what program-development measuring stick does this loss show anything but an embarrassing step backward? Even when Gtown was on an even keel with Duquesne in the 90s, it was annually a good game (Gtown roughly split with them in the pre-Pat League era from 1994-2001, winning in 97, 98 and 01). Now that the big, bad Hoyas are in the Patriot League, home of 2 preseason top 25 teams and last year's 1-AA runner-up, they lose to Duquesne 38? What does a loss like this tell us about the direction of our program?
The people on the Pat League message board are joking that they should have invited Dayton and Duquesne to the league and left Gtown in the MAAC. As much as I'd like to disagree, I just can't blame them - this loss is an embarrassment to the league, the program and embarrasses me as a former player, an alum and someone trying to be a fan.
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DFW HOYA
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 5,753
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Post by DFW HOYA on Sept 18, 2004 21:20:55 GMT -5
Sure, it's parents and alums paying, but it's parents and alums that pay for everything else being built That's somewhat misleading. The last three major building projects at GU were debt-financed. The SW Quad raised less than a third of the money needed and borrowed the rest. You may have missed that one--it was called the capital campaign. That's the campaign that raised $350M for the endowment...which covered the $350M loss in the endowment over the same period. Again, disagree. Why is Penn so highly ranked and Princeton not so? Have you visited Fitton Field? Have you seen their facilities? Fitton is a series of bleachers from the good ol' days" at HC. There are no training facilities at the stadium, not even locker rooms, which are in an adjacent building. HC's student turnout is not what it once was. The large majority of attendance comes from the local community , something Georgetown has never aimed to reach. If you're not interested in politics and would like to be close to your home in Jersey, yeah, Bethlehem or Easton is not a stretch. A lot of good players have been there for years. That's the Duquesne model, actually. 56 players from their roster are from Western Pennsylvania. They grew up there, they'll move back and raise a family there, and Duquesne is close enough that the folks can see them and they can visit their buddies on the weekends. Some of these kids might be able to get into Georgetown or Holy Cross...and some might not, either. Regardless, they're at a place they're comfortable in. The original discussion was not a question of good versus better facilities, it's good facilities versus no facilities.
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Post by glory days on Sept 18, 2004 22:36:06 GMT -5
so wait...how did 56 players all recuited from Western Pennsylvania beat a team from a better league that recuits nationally?
To echo old school's sentiments, the georgetown football team has become an embarrassment. In case any georgetown-recruited high school players or their parents are reading this:
If you want to play football at a university where football is the lowest priority for the administration and georgetown students, if you want to deal with a coaching staff that considers thier job transitional while they look for better deals, if you want to work you a$$ off for four years of mediocrity and defeatist attitudes, come to georgetown.
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Post by Guest on Sept 18, 2004 22:41:47 GMT -5
You sound like one of those disgruntled parents from the board from last year. Give us a break...
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Post by Wes Coast on Sept 18, 2004 22:53:40 GMT -5
Thanks, coach, for preparing the team... and thanks for enduring the bad ref calls, fumbles, and dropped passes... one game does not a season make... good luck next week at Colgate...
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Post by glory days on Sept 18, 2004 22:54:50 GMT -5
im a little better connected to the program than some freshman kid's parent. It may sound like rants to you but I'm being serious.
why do so many coaches (except benson) come and go after only a couple years. how are players supposed to get better when they have 3-4 different position coaches during thier college career?
Georgetown athletics is satisfied with being middle of the road. the sad thing is, i wish georgetown football could be called a middle of the road team. that would be quite an improvement.
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Post by OldSchoolHoya on Sept 18, 2004 23:26:02 GMT -5
The bottom line, regardless of multi-sport facilities, rankings, patriot league, etc., is that Georgetown lost badly. Very badly. Georgetown has not had a winning season in a long time. The respect for athletics, in general, at Gtown is probably the lowest I've seen at any school I visited. Something drastic needs to be done to fix the bad things that are happening there, whether it is the drop in rankings or the dismal situation with athletics. Gtown has the potential to be a really awesome place. I hope that for its current students, and the future of the school as a whole, that the administration can use common sense and correct these problems.
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david
Century (over 100 posts)
Posts: 157
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Post by david on Sept 19, 2004 0:36:09 GMT -5
Remember, the university isn't building the facility--ALUMNI and PARENTS are. Being the best academic school in a conference is no guarantee of success. Ask Northwestern, Baylor, or Vanderbilt. Bring in a big city doesn't do it, either. If it were, Columbia would be a powerhouse. Georgetown does not compete at the same level as a lot of PL schools. Lehigh packages aid for far more players than GU--in fact, Lehigh and Colgate spend more money on football than Georgetown does on scholarship basketball. As late as last year, GU spent one-third of what most PL schools spend on the sport. One of the biggest draws is training and facilities. Unless and until the Multi-Sport gets off the drawing board, a lot of recruits are going to look elsewhere. How many I-AA schools that you have visited have anything that resembles Harbin Field? Or the locker rooms at McDonough? Facilities do make a difference--if they didn't, why is every other program investing so much in them? baylor is the best academic school in the big 12? not so fast. texas and texas A&M are way better, and several others have legit claims to being better. in austin, where i live, you only go to baylor if you cant get into Texas, A&M, SMU, TCU or Texas Tech,.
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Post by oldschoolfan on Sept 19, 2004 0:44:43 GMT -5
p.s. as a sidenote, i did not intend to insert smiley faces into my replies. that happened automatically. please forgive the crime.
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Post by BostonHoya on Sept 19, 2004 1:14:19 GMT -5
DFW, have YOU visited Fitton Field? You're right that the facilities aren't at the stadium - they're up the hill. When they recruited me in the 90's they had just re-done the locker room and it was beautiful. Their weightroom is nice too. If your complaint is that the seats are rickety at Fitton (as I recall, they're not - they're metal bleachers) or the cement is chipping, I am unimpressed. I'm guessing rickety seats aren't a big decision point for recruits or fans. In fact, the Red Sox are doing just fine in terms of player retention and attendance despite the smallest, crappiest park in the majors. Sox fans fans sit in seats no one even at Kehoe was ever subjected to sit in. If your claim is that HC students aren't going to the game any more, I suggest you sit on the HC side next year (as I did this year, since my cousin is a HC player and I sat with my Uncle while loudly rooting for Gtown) - there is a strong student section (as well as, like you say, many locals wishing their glory days would return). I have no statistical evidence about specific numbers of students, but having gone to their games for several years, I see no decline in student attendance. Do you have a source to cite that the students aren't going in the same numbers? You say the issue for Gtown isn't nice vs. bad facilities, you frame it as saying that Gtown has "no" facilities. I'm quite sure you're intentionally overstating that, as the fieldhouse actually has pretty nice meeting rooms and a nice foyer in the trophy area (I haven't been in there in a couple of years, so if there's new info, I'll stand corrected, but I don't think there's been any change to the fieldhouse). No doubt, the locker room is small, as is the weight room, but that hardly stands as "no" facilities. In fact, that facility was good enough to draw a team that won the MAAC championship in the late 90's, and those guys had to play on top of Yates instead of Harbin Field (you wanna talk about an embarrassing place to play?). The fieldhouse is the same crappy facilities where I regularly saw Ewing, Dikembe and Mourning working out in the summer and where such low budget operations as the Chicago Bulls did their shoot around when they were in town to play the Bullets/Wizards. Still think there are "no" facilities at Georgeotown?
As for the $350m capital campaign making everything right...didn't The Hoya just report that the medical center is going to lose $29m in 2005? That's the bailout I was referring to when I said that instead of wasting $$$ for a field the team doesn't deserve, we should worry about bigger issues ($29m anticipated debt for 2005 at the medical center, as reported by The Hoya and on the HoyaSaxa BB site). I'm sure the 65 people that recently got laid off from the Medical Center due to the budgetary woes are interested in watching the football squad go 3-8 at the MSF while they're unemployed next season, but if the team is going to stink anyway, I think maybe we should put first things first and get the school's finances in order before building a stadium where the Hoyas can get romped by 38 by Duquesne in years to come.
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Post by JoltinJoe on Sept 19, 2004 6:40:21 GMT -5
Do you recall that it took Fordham 7 years to win a game in the patriot league. Fordham's first PL victory came on 10/31/92, at Bucknell, 21-1. It was Fordham's third PL season. But the point being made is a fair one. Fordham's first winning PL record came in 2001, its 12th PL season, and its first conference title came in 2002.
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Post by JoltinJoe on Sept 19, 2004 6:42:14 GMT -5
Correction. The Rams' first winning PL season came in 1997, their 8th PL season.
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thebin
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,848
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Post by thebin on Sept 19, 2004 14:46:11 GMT -5
In happier news, I was at former WR Matt Mattimore's wedding in Long Island yesterday- so many members of the hoya class of 99 got to miss that mess of a game. I saw this coming, not sure the PL era Hoyas had enough respect for the Dukes. I think we can step back from the ledge a bit though-we can still win a couple of PL games this year yet and see some progress. But I agree we need to stick with a qb, preferrably one with two or more years of eligibility left and season him.
I agree with the spirit of DFW's rehtorical flourish- when it comes to the stadium- we have none- not a bad one. If today's PL recruits are anything like we were in the mid 90s, the stadium is the ONLY facility that matters. They don't care about the weight room or the locker room. But they do care about playing in a stadium that feels collegiate. We must lose good recruits all the time who just can't stomach the sight of Harbin. Fitton is large (about 10,000 seats more than it will ever fill again) but its a dump that is always empty. And you know what? Its ten times better than Harbin still. That is sad. Its a university-embarrassment- total Bush League. Even if I hated football I would want my school to have a decent stadium. -I have gone to games on campus at Gtown with friends from other schools and its something you feel you have to make excuses for its so underwhelming- what do you think recruits think about that? Seriously, even if GU dropped football altogether (will never happen on DeGoia's watch) they should build the thing for lax and soccer and general university use-- like commencment.
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,083
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Post by GUHoya07 on Sept 19, 2004 14:58:25 GMT -5
I completely agree with you
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Post by OldSchoolHoya on Sept 19, 2004 16:13:23 GMT -5
yea, do you think that is a possibility? (dropping the football program)?
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Post by Guest on Sept 19, 2004 16:48:16 GMT -5
Uh, no.
What about dropping the basketball program?
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thebin
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,848
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Post by thebin on Sept 19, 2004 16:53:06 GMT -5
The football program is not going anywhere. The president of the university, who is young, is a football alumnus.
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