RusskyHoya
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In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 27, 2017 21:29:20 GMT -5
Our football peers remain the pioneer league teams. Does the following article sound familiar: www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/13356The problem is the institution. Leadership has failed to identify a strategic vision of what the program should be or make any sort of long term commitment. This post is debating issues that were being debated 20 years ago and no clearer picture exists. The President has stated the wish to follow the ivy model, but Ivy League schools have made a commitment to providing the economic ability for all students to attend - Georgetown has not. It’s a little disengenous for him to make that comparison. Lordt. I wasn't sure where to start with this thread, but many thanks to dundermifflinhoya for providing the perfect jumping off point for me. I've been a fan of football for much longer than a fan of strategy, but as someone who now spends a fair amount of time on both (the former as a fan, the latter as a practitioner), it's exciting to see them in the same place! And I mean real strategy, not the kind that is imagined in overwrought war metaphors as applied to sports. What makes the case of Georgetown football particularly challenging is just that idea of "strategic vision." In most enterprises, the vision of success - the idealized to-be state - is more or less shared by most of the key stakeholders. The particulars may vary, but people generally agree on where they would like to go. The devil, then, is in the details of execution and identifying what is the best path to get there. That's typically where most disagreements lie. Here, the problem is actually not that there is no strategic vision or commitment to it. If anything, we've stuck to the current path for quite awhile. But what that path is, and where it is supposed to lead, has not been well-articulated, especially not publicly. So, once more, with feeling: Georgetown athletics is understood to generally operate according to a three-tier framework: 1. Teams that are competitive nationally - it is realistic for them to compete at the highest levels 2. Teams that are competitive regionally - it is realistic for them to be one of the top programs in the region (this is largely a holdover from the ECAC days and the era when sports were more regionalized, but it is still applicable to things like rowing, golf/tennis to some extent, and the particularly weird case of track & field, which is nationally elite in some areas but non-competitive in others in a way that makes true national competitiveness impossible) 3. Teams that are competitive in the conference - it is realistic for them to compete in their conference The (realistic) vision of success can be derived from what tier they are in. For the most part, the tiers track with scholarships and other types of funding. Looked at through this lens, the problem is immediately apparent: Georgetown football is not even competitive in its conference, and at this point, it structurally cannot be, short of a tremendous boost in general student financial aid that makes a need-based packaged from Georgetown more attractive than a scholarship to Holy Cross or Lafayette. So why do we have a football program, if they're not in it to win it (at whatever level "it" may be)? The answer is that the football program is a college tradition, one we share with our peer schools, real and aspirational. It's the sort of thing that schools like ours have, it keeps the old (and donating) alums connected, it gives you something to center all the homecoming festivities around. Hell, even Williams, Amherst, MIT, and Hopkins have teams! It's an old timey tradition in a part of the country that has ceded dominance to other parts of the country, meaning that it can be managed as an old timey tradition and not too much more. Sure, the team isn't competitive... but the average student/alum has so little invested in them that it hardly matters. For the many years that Columbia football was so bad it became a twisted point of pride, how many people did it actually turn off of the school? A dozen? We can't pull off the Ivy model as effectively as they can from a financial perspective - although there's significant variation in resources among the Eight, and on-field performance doesn't always track exactly. But that is indeed the inspiration and the aspiration, however distant. Which means... At this point, the IL is not aiming for associate members in football but Georgetown is waiting patiently at the door should they decide that an extra league opponent shields them from either unnecessary (Pioneer) or untenable opponents going forward. ...not only is the above true, but its converse is also true. If the Ivies dropped football, we'd probably make a show of forming a working group to study the matter, but the writing would be on the wall. Once the tradition stops benefiting the brand and starts harming it...well, as much as universities love traditions, they haven't survived for centuries without learning how to evolve. In sum: we do have a strategic vision, ladies and gentlemen. I've laid it out. It ain't new. It shouldn't surprise anyone. The problem is that it's an utterly uninspiring one. It's not the sort of thing that gets you pumped up before a game or gets you to sign on the dotted line when you're weighing your options. It's not an impossible vision to sell, when packaged as part of the larger value proposition. If you can sell West Point football, you can sell football practically anywhere. But it requires a level of transparency - and, dare I say, honesty - that we've never been able to stomach. So, now that we know what the vision is - how do you envision it being best realized? I don't have anything better than DFW's Ivy Light model, not least because it hews closest to the actual vision from on top.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Oct 27, 2017 22:48:08 GMT -5
Russky - you always elucidate this well, the problem is it just isn't what people want to hear.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 28, 2017 8:03:15 GMT -5
So, once more, with feeling: Georgetown athletics is understood to generally operate according to a three-tier framework: 1. Teams that are competitive nationally - it is realistic for them to compete at the highest levels 2. Teams that are competitive regionally - it is realistic for them to be one of the top programs in the region (this is largely a holdover from the ECAC days and the era when sports were more regionalized, but it is still applicable to things like rowing, golf/tennis to some extent, and the particularly weird case of track & field, which is nationally elite in some areas but non-competitive in others in a way that makes true national competitiveness impossible) 3. Teams that are competitive in the conference - it is realistic for them to compete in their conference Actually, the third tier was called "local" sports. A local sport was those to whom, and to paraphrase, "a conference title is an accomplishment, but not necessarily a program goal". This generally referred to teams such as field hockey, tennis, and swimming that generally did not schedule outside the DC-Baltimore area. It was not uncommon for these teams to compete against the likes of Loyola, Goucher, Mary Washington, and Salisbury State, particularly in the years before Big East play extended to all sports. The rough breakdown of sports at that time (pre-women's soccer and softball) was: National: M/W Basketball, M/W Track/CC Regional: Football, M/W Lacrosse, M/W Rowing, M/W Sailing, Soccer, Volleyball Local: Baseball, Field Hockey, M/W Golf, M/W Swimming, M/W Tennis Bernard Muir scuttled the tier approach, claiming all Georgetown teams were national--neither accurate nor realistic. The rough order of tiers, if they exist today, are: National: M/W Basketball, M/W Track/CC, M/W Lacrosse, M/W Soccer Regional: Everyone else
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
Posts: 4,607
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 28, 2017 9:19:42 GMT -5
So, once more, with feeling: Georgetown athletics is understood to generally operate according to a three-tier framework: 1. Teams that are competitive nationally - it is realistic for them to compete at the highest levels 2. Teams that are competitive regionally - it is realistic for them to be one of the top programs in the region (this is largely a holdover from the ECAC days and the era when sports were more regionalized, but it is still applicable to things like rowing, golf/tennis to some extent, and the particularly weird case of track & field, which is nationally elite in some areas but non-competitive in others in a way that makes true national competitiveness impossible) 3. Teams that are competitive in the conference - it is realistic for them to compete in their conference Actually, the third tier was called "local" sports. A local sport was those to whom, and to paraphrase, "a conference title is an accomplishment, but not necessarily a program goal". This generally referred to teams such as field hockey, tennis, and swimming that generally did not schedule outside the DC-Baltimore area. It was not uncommon for these teams to compete against the likes of Loyola, Goucher, Mary Washington, and Salisbury State, particularly in the years before Big East play extended to all sports. The rough breakdown of sports at that time (pre-women's soccer and softball) was: National: M/W Basketball, M/W Track/CC Regional: Football, M/W Lacrosse, M/W Rowing, M/W Sailing, Soccer, Volleyball Local: Baseball, Field Hockey, M/W Golf, M/W Swimming, M/W Tennis Bernard Muir scuttled the tier approach, claiming all Georgetown teams were national--neither accurate nor realistic. The rough order of tiers, if they exist today, are: National: M/W Basketball, M/W Track/CC, M/W Lacrosse, M/W Soccer Regional: Everyone else As recently as 2014, DeGioia used that exact three-tier construct to describe Georgetown athletics. The occasion was his State of the University town hall at reunion. "Conference" certainly did not make sense as a lower tier when we were co-located with the likes of Notre Dame, UConn, Syracuse, and West Virginia (and, earlier, Miami). Now that our primary conference consists of schools who all have smaller endowments than we do (our endowment is 6x that of Seton Hall or Providence!)... that's as modest a bar as we're willing to set. Except, of course, for football.
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Post by reformation on Oct 28, 2017 9:36:43 GMT -5
Couple of observations: Georgetown does not seem to have any serious objective competitive benchmarks regarding its athletic programs no matter how they are classified. This leads to no accountability and makes it hard to correct things when they are not going well. Georgetown complains that alums do not support their programs like other schools--part of this stems from the fact that univ does not impose any benchmarks/accountability on its programs-the amount of support for programs with limited objectives is going to be less than it otherwise would be for programs with meaningful competitive objectives.
The ivies have it easier than georgetown in setting their athletic strategies because their academic peers are also their main athletic competitors for the most part. Georgetown's struggles with aligning its academic peers and athletic competitors.
Taking the Columbia football example, Columbia has tried to improve many times in the past with new coaching regimes--it just didn't work. Now the combo of new coaching, increased relative attractiveness of the school and its financial aid have changed the situation--things change--people adapt--Gtwn is generally glacially slow to adapt to change--football is just an ex of this
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 28, 2017 12:02:45 GMT -5
Now that our primary conference consists of schools who all have smaller endowments than we do (our endowment is 6x that of Seton Hall or Providence!)... that's as modest a bar as we're willing to set. Except, of course, for football. Football is not alone. Field hockey will finish with its 15th consecutive losing record in 2017, volleyball is a combined 15-40 over the last two seasons (with six straight losing seasons), and baseball has not only been under .500 since the Big East reformed itself, but has not had a winning season since 1986. Leaving men's lacrosse out of the discussion, what bars do you set for those programs?
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 28, 2017 12:34:36 GMT -5
Now that our primary conference consists of schools who all have smaller endowments than we do (our endowment is 6x that of Seton Hall or Providence!)... that's as modest a bar as we're willing to set. Except, of course, for football. Football is not alone. Field hockey will finish with its 15th consecutive losing record in 2017, volleyball is a combined 15-40 over the last two seasons (with six straight losing seasons), and baseball has not only been under .500 since the Big East reformed itself, but has not had a winning season since 1986. Leaving men's lacrosse out of the discussion, what bars do you set for those programs? I mean, remember how I defined the bar: "it is realistic for them to compete in their conference." It *is* realistic for those teams to compete in their conference. That they fail to meet that bar is not due to massive structural/competitive imbalance, as is the case with football, but rather a combination of other factors that could be more readily addressed. There's also the fact that we by and large do not hold coaches accountable for on-field performance, so the sense of urgency just isn't there for someone like Pete Wilk or Arlisa Williams. Without diving too deeply into them... field hockey was homeless and forced to play at Maryland and American for several years and now gets awkward gametimes on an undesirable field surface for their sport. They are nowhere near the scholarship limit, to the best of my knowledge, which is also a major issue, and their coaching staff is paid such that, when you factor in DC cost of living, they'd probably make more at Towson or Loyola. Baseball spent most of those 30 years undergunned scholarship-wise in a conference with nationally relevant baseball programs. Within the last decade, they've been exiled to a rec league field out by Mongtomery Mall (the Shirley Povich Press Box at Nationals Park probably cost several times more than Shirley Povich Field). They got closer to breaking 500 last year than they have in awhile and will probably continue to very slowly inch upward, as the consequences from the work-study imbroglio fade away. Volleyball was discussed in depth in another thread.
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Post by reformation on Oct 28, 2017 20:10:35 GMT -5
The "bar" you defined above is really pretty meaningless, i.e., way too vague (I assume you are really highlighting the univ view, not necessarily your own btw so no disrespect intended) That's part of the reason we never seem to advance other than randomly getting great coach for a particular sport like men's soccer.
My take is that Gtwn should rethink what sports it can be good at an focus on them--add extra resources, change coaches who don't perform etc and perhaps reallocate resources from sports where there are structural impediments to success for Gtown. To see what sports we can be good at just take a look at our academic/admissions peers that actually play D1 sports-throw in a few sports where Gtwn has some history and that's a good starting point. Gtown will be competitive in sports where recruits view their sport as a way too get into a top academic college, where that is not the case we will struggle for top recruits. Men's Ball is an exception due to our history and willingness to make a substantial resource allocation to it.
Sports where we could be elite (have had success with the right resources including scholarships and top coaches include I would think M/W Lax M/W Soccer M/W Track Rowing Sailing maybe Field hockey if they played on campus. Sports that could be nationally competitive top 25 recruiting classes and perf go a couple of rounds in NCAA tournament with a few high elite individual would include tennis and golf. Of these probably coaching plays a big role in M/W Lax's issues + scholarships & coaching for women's hvwt rowing. Track Mens rowing m/w soccer perform at or above expectations(M/W soccer.)
Sports that face a lot of structural impediments include volleyball, baseball, softball, swimming. We can pour more resources into these but have little prospect of success due to demographic of recruits resource constraints etc.
For football specifically there are a lot of unique considerations--new structural impediments due to fin aid boost at ivies and scholarships at PL. Considerations Russky mentioned re a potential source of school spirit--Very high academic costs due to size and turnover of team--I guess I'd actually want to see the real cost benefit analysis and actual alternative uses for the resources both academic and financial before taking a view on whether to either upgrade or eliminate the program-of course I will never see them since its never going to be my call.
I do suspect that whoever takes over after DeGioia will take a hard look at this.
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Post by happyhoya1979 on Nov 1, 2017 20:08:27 GMT -5
There are ten schools in the FCS without scholarships -the 8 Ivies, Marist and us. We can't play competitively with the scholarship schools period. We can't play Marist ten times a year. It seems to me we need to play the 8 Ivies and Marist or quit the enterprise. Even if we are a step child of the ancient 8 and not included in its standings, its schools are the ones we need to schedule or we are doomed. The Patriot League is not helping or advancing the program.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Nov 1, 2017 21:54:50 GMT -5
There are ten schools in the FCS without scholarships -the 8 Ivies, Marist and us. We can't play competitively with the scholarship schools period. We can't play Marist ten times a year. It seems to me we need to play the 8 Ivies and Marist or quit the enterprise. Even if we are a step child of the ancient 8 and not included in its standings, its schools are the ones we need to schedule or we are doomed. The Patriot League is not helping or advancing the program. There are more than 10 non scholarship FCS schools, it's just that no one on campus will come to see us play most of the non-Ivy schools. It is not feasible, without associate member status, to schedule all 8 of the Ivies every year.
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