ESPN on Georgetown and BCS

[H2Oya 05]

Andrew from California writes: In your questions with Big East head honcho John Marinatto you mentioned Villanova for possible expansion. My question is how come no one considers Georgetown for expansion? Philly already has Temple and the Eagles to compete for ticket sales, and Villanova only has about 9,000 students and very little money in the bank. Georgetown is bigger, has a lot more money and D.C. is a big tourist draw to help bring people in. They could easily bring their on-campus field to 35,000 seats with the available space and use RFK stadium for big games.

Brian Bennett: Sounds good on paper, but in reality Georgetown's program is really struggling at the FCS level. The Hoyas went 0-11 this past season and are just 5-38 since 2006. And my understanding is the school has had issues with its on-campus stadium. Georgetown just isn't in a position to move up to the FBS and compete anytime soon. Right now it needs to focus on trying to win at the lower level. Villanova, meanwhile is the reigning FCS champion.

[CAHoya07]

Georgetown is bigger (than Villanova)? Nope. In terms of undergraduates, they're about the same.

Georgetown has a lot more money? I'm not sure, but definitely not enough to move up to FBS, or at this point, even to commit to being competitive in the Patriot League.

Georgetown could easily bring its on-campus field to 35,000 seats with the available space? HA! There is no available space, and we've been "trying" unsuccessfully for years just to bring it to 5,000.

Georgetown could use RFK stadium for big games? Again, see above.

Comical. Clearly Andrew from California knows nothing about Georgetown football, or the university. Nice try though.

[jerseyhoya34]

We'd be one of the smaller high major D1 schools. Somehow, Wake Forest puts a respectable team on the field (off-campus) with a comparable student body (maybe even smaller than GU), but the path to high major ball is not an easy one for us to put it mildly.

[HoyaNyr320]

Feb 2, 2010 13:00:53 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

We'd be one of the smaller high major D1 schools. Somehow, Wake Forest puts a respectable team on the field (off-campus) with a comparable student body (maybe even smaller than GU), but the path to high major ball is not an easy one for us to put it mildly.

Wake Forest has two things that we don't - Space for a stadium and $$$$

Emphasis on the $$$$$

[DFW HOYA]

Feb 2, 2010 13:25:43 GMT -5 HoyaNyr320 said:

Wake Forest has two things that we don't - Space for a stadium and $$$$

The stadium issue is a red herring. RFK Stadium sits unused if this was a real priority.

And then there is the issue that intrigues and/or aggravates other schools' fans. Most schools would give their right..um, arm to join a BCS conference and the only two schools in the nation with an inside track show little (Villanova) or no (Georgetown) interest in doing so.

Let's look at your example of Wake. Net of football, the Deacs' athletic budget ($30 million) would be comparable to Georgetown's net of football spend ($27 million). The devil (no ACC pun intended) is in the details. To afford a $13 million football program, Wake maintains only 16 sports teams, two above the minimum and not even close to the 29 Georgetown carries, which means no lacrosse, no swimming, sailing, rowing, or softball. To run a more full-fledged program like Boston College or Duke takes a budget of approx. $60 million. ACC football money pays a lot of bills but Wake still runs a slight deficit averaging 20-30K a game at Groves Stadium.

The nightmare scenario a lot of other schools see for Georgetown is largely ignored by Georgetown fans. As long as JT III is around, it's the 1980s again and all is well. But what if the Big East leaves Georgetown and the struggling urban Catholic schools in its dust?

• The ESPN money, or a large part of it, goes away, assuming the Worldwide Leader would rather show the "Super East" than Providence and DePaul.
  
• Recruiting gets a lot tougher and so does visibility. There's a reason why almost all non-BCS conferences are essentially mid-majors and the top recruits want to play where the attention is. One need only see the talent disparity between an A-10 team (GW) and a Big East team like Georgetown as an example, and whatever TV deals are left are at best, regional. Not a lot of Mason-VCU games being seen by recruits in California.
  
• The ability to realistically afford 15 games at Verizon Center gets considerably more difficult if not untenable, and McDonough is really no longer capable of supporting 7-10 games a year with parking and setups. And how do you pay for a coach's salary at 2,400 a gme in McD? Because GU looked the other way on a McD replacement in the good times, it would be in a major bind if it had to leave Verizon Center and the red ink would be substantial. For a over-leveraged University, there's no guarantee that this would be a strategic priority.
  
• Absent NCAA and/or TV major money, Georgetown either has to cut way, way back on basketball expenses or reduce expenditures in other sports as a result. This becomes a vicious circle.
  

The idea that Georgetown has no athletics money is also a canard of sorts--Georgetown has the largest athletic budget of any school outside I-A and its budget, as it is is comparable to a WAC or mid-level CUSA program. (Who would imagine Georgetown's budget is that of Fresno State, for example?)

The ability to have a budget that size is directly attributable to men's basketball--without it, GU would be hard pressed to support any semblance of a national athletic program at this level.

That's not a blanket endorsemement of I-A football at Georgetown (and Marinatto really doesn't want Georgetown anyway, which would lower the league's SOS) but just an observation that Georgetown is very, very lucky where it is and needs to be vigilant for what decisions may lie ahead of them. If football has to become a I-A loss leader to hold onto basketball revenues in a future where the BCS takes the money and the TV deals away with them, well, consider the alternative.

Does GU want to be the next Duke, or the next Duquesne?

[theexorcist]

I'm positive that DFW has six or seven football response templates. Wouldn't it be easier to post them to the top of the football board and remind people just to read template #3?

[CAHoya07]

I think that's excellent analysis, DFW.

[jerseyhoya34]

Feb 2, 2010 13:25:43 GMT -5 HoyaNyr320 said:

Feb 2, 2010 13:00:53 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

We'd be one of the smaller high major D1 schools. Somehow, Wake Forest puts a respectable team on the field (off-campus) with a comparable student body (maybe even smaller than GU), but the path to high major ball is not an easy one for us to put it mildly.

Wake Forest has two things that we don't - Space for a stadium and $$$$

Emphasis on the $$$$$

Wake plays off-campus at Groves. It is a 10-30 minute drive from campus depending on how you time it on game days. They do probably have space on campus for a stadium - huge campus for the population but many a parking lot for whatever reason.

Wake does not exactly through its non-revenue programs under the bus. It just focuses on a more limited set of them. Their soccer program is nationally competitive, and baseball is capable of a run every now and again. They put players in the majors, which is more than we can say, I think.

[theexorcist]

Feb 2, 2010 16:44:33 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

Feb 2, 2010 13:25:43 GMT -5 HoyaNyr320 said:

Wake Forest has two things that we don't - Space for a stadium and $$$$

Emphasis on the $$$$$

Wake plays off-campus at Groves. It is a 10-30 minute drive from campus depending on how you time it on game days. They do probably have space on campus for a stadium - huge campus for the population but many a parking lot for whatever reason.

Wake does not exactly through its non-revenue programs under the bus. It just focuses on a more limited set of them. Their soccer program is nationally competitive, and baseball is capable of a run every now and again. They put players in the majors, which is more than we can say, I think.

Cross-country, both women's and men's, and lacrosse, both women's and men's, are nationally competitive for Georgetown, as is men's and women's basketball. Track isn't too far off. Just because the quasi-revenue sports of baseball and soccer aren't that good doesn't mean that they're not that good. They may put players in the majors, but GU puts players in the Olympics.

[HoyaSinceBirth]

If we did become a I-A football team in the Big East One would think we'd be able to attract a lot of good recruits. I'd imagine there's a good crop of Recruits that want to play in a BCS league like the BE but have to settle for other I-A midmajor teams. I think a new BCS team would attract a lot of recruits. With no IA teams in DC I could see a football team being fairly profitable by that I mean not losing that much money. But it would take a huge investment to get it off the ground. Would casual college football fans in the district pay to see a Georgetown game in RFK? I don't know, i'd like to think they would, but I don't know.

[hoyawatcher]

Feb 2, 2010 17:09:16 GMT -5 HoyaSinceBirth said:

If we did become a I-A football team in the Big East One would think we'd be able to attract a lot of good recruits. I'd imagine there's a good crop of Recruits that want to play in a BCS league like the BE but have to settle for other I-A midmajor teams. I think a new BCS team would attract a lot of recruits. With no IA teams in DC I could see a football team being fairly profitable by that I mean not losing that much money. But it would take a huge investment to get it off the ground. Would casual college football fans in the district pay to see a Georgetown game in RFK? I don't know, i'd like to think they would, but I don't know.

Recruiting for Big East football would bring a whole nother set of issues to GU. Very few schools can win and keep recruiting standards as high as the university would like. Or stated another way to compete in BE and BCS football you have to be willing to look at DTs with 2.5 GPAs and 850 SATs. Slightly overstated but the nature of the beast. Wake, Duke and GT struggle with this in the ACC. Stanford really struggles with it in the PAC 10 - same for NW in the Big 10, 11, 12+ or whatever it is called now.

My exposure to the athletic and academic infrastructure is for sure more limited than others on this board but I don't see a big appetite for taking on the pressures that a BE FB team would bring. Even if you could manage the access, parking and other issues around a 40 K on campus facility.

And we haven't even begun to approach the issues of support staff, weight training facilities, academic support, majors to hide kids in, etc. that most other schools put up with.

[hoyaparents]

Big East football has other issues it may have to confront.
With the talk of expansion in the Big 10; Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse would be prime targets. I would even throw Cincy into the mix.

We saw an exodus not too long ago.

Georgetown football moving into a softer Big East Conference after a group of defections, why not.

[The Stig]

If we moved up to D-1A, we'd basically have to start a new program from scratch. Besides the equipment, there really isn't anything from our current program that would be usable in a D-1A program.

Our current players and coaches just came off an 0-11 season in D-1AA, there's no way that any of them would be usable on a BCS team. We'd need to replace everybody, plus get an AD who knows how to deal with a D-1A program. The MSF could be used as a practice field, but for a wide variety of reasons we'd have to go off-campus for games. The entire infrastructure of a BCS conference program would have to be built from scratch, from the recruiting to the marketing to the ticket sales (the current people already have their hands full with basketball).

So basically, insofar as building a BCS program is concerned, we're basically in the same boat as schools like Marquette and Providence that don't have teams.

[CTHoya08]

Feb 2, 2010 17:09:16 GMT -5 HoyaSinceBirth said:

If we did become a I-A football team in the Big East One would think we'd be able to attract a lot of good recruits. I'd imagine there's a good crop of Recruits that want to play in a BCS league like the BE but have to settle for other I-A midmajor teams. I think a new BCS team would attract a lot of recruits. With no IA teams in DC I could see a football team being fairly profitable by that I mean not losing that much money. But it would take a huge investment to get it off the ground. Would casual college football fans in the district pay to see a Georgetown game in RFK? I don't know, i'd like to think they would, but I don't know.

I think that, for recruiting/exposure purposes, UMCP is pretty much "in DC," no?

[redskins12820]

Ok this thread is absurd. We just went winless in 1-AA. The conversation is whether to abandon football altogether, or try to revamp and try to be decent in 1-AA. If we're terrified of Richmond, I think we have a looooonnnnnngggggg way to go before even discussing 1-A. In the next ten years, there's a better chance of Gtown selling its campus and moving to Idaho than having a 1-A football team.

[hoyaparents]

Reskins 12820, yes, it is absurb, as are most of the postings on this site.

But on a cold, snowy winter day in February, it's always fun to fantasize.

[redskins12820]

Feb 3, 2010 10:25:08 GMT -5 hoyaparents said:

Reskins 12820, yes, it is absurb, as are most of the postings on this site.

But on a cold, snowy winter day in February, it's always fun to fantasize.

Ok. Fantasize away. What BCS bowl do you think we'll be in next year? I'm hoping for an at large to the Rose Bowl because a winter trip to LA is never a bad thing. When does Seantrel Henderson's NLOI come in today?

[PhillyHoya]

Hey, we were in the Orange Bowl...once...in the 1940s...

[hoyaparents]

How about the Toilet Bowl?

It could be for the two worst teams in America to square off, or for fans and alumni who don't give a crap.

Now that the NCAA is considering expanding the basketball tournament to 96 teams, why not a football bowl game for every team.

[HometownHoya]

If you need to do a complete overhaul whens a better time to do it then after a 0-11 season. Itll be like we are having a brand new team