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Post by dundermifflinhoya on Jun 22, 2018 11:52:04 GMT -5
A fellow 1aa football alum recommended a book - A season in Purgatory: Villanova and life in College Football's Lower Class. Book has the same theme that courses through Georgetown - a school where basketball is king, a football team low on cash and recruiting power that must constantly justify its existence to a prestigious academic institution and the students/alumni who complain about the teams minor league status. The teams draws poorly on campus, the local town despises the students, and the school has all but eradicated tailgating/fun for the people who actually come to the games. What kills me is considering how similar Georgetown and Villanova are on paper. Both schools are Catholic, Big East Basketball schools, have proximity to big city, and value academics. Football wise, both schools have less than adequate stadiums (although Nova actually has a stadium), both had deplorable facilities up until the last year, and both suffer from the same student apathy. But, in terms of success, the results are not even comparable. Villanova announced this week they are playing Wake Forest in 2020 - in the same year the announced Georgetown foe is Dayton, a non scholarship school. Villanova plays in the best 1AA conference, is a perennial top 25 teams, has appeared on College Football Game Day and is a recent national champion. Georgetown is 13-42 in the last five years and consistently finishes at the bottom of the Patriot league.
I guess none of this is new information; but highlighted to me once again what Georgetown Football could be if given the resources and some direction by the administration. The truly sad part of this is that this same argument can now be made regarding Villanova/Georgetown Basketball. |
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Post by whitebuffalo on Jun 25, 2018 13:58:51 GMT -5
I still think Georgetown Football is one of the most peculiar sleeping giants in all of college sports. Take what Howard Schnellenberger did at Miami in the 1980's. Schnellenberger essentially put a net around Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade and brought Miami to the national stage in a matter of years. I'm not advocating we could ever be Miami, but just using it as a microcosm of using the abundant local talent. You do what Miami did on 1/10th the scale and we're a .500 club. The DMV isn't Miami but it's definitely better than most areas of the country. Couple this with the education of Georgetown, location of DC etc. there's ZERO reason we can't field a competitive team.
I know the internal red tape of Georgetown layered with an administration that seems to have no desire to provide any of the resources needed to start this process makes it virtually impossible to think something will change. I mean if a $50M donation can't get us a stadium better than the local high schools I don't know what to think about the future of our program.
If Villanova, whose football program won the FCS National Championship in 2009, is College Football's lower class then what does that make us?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 8, 2018 21:08:00 GMT -5
I still think Georgetown Football is one of the most peculiar sleeping giants in all of college sports. Take what Howard Schnellenberger did at Miami in the 1980's. Schnellenberger essentially put a net around Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade and brought Miami to the national stage in a matter of years. I'm not advocating we could ever be Miami, but just using it as a microcosm of using the abundant local talent. You do what Miami did on 1/10th the scale and we're a .500 club. The DMV isn't Miami but it's definitely better than most areas of the country. Couple this with the education of Georgetown, location of DC etc. there's ZERO reason we can't field a competitive team. I know the internal red tape of Georgetown layered with an administration that seems to have no desire to provide any of the resources needed to start this process makes it virtually impossible to think something will change. I mean if a $50M donation can't get us a stadium better than the local high schools I don't know what to think about the future of our program. If Villanova, whose football program won the FCS National Championship in 2009, is College Football's lower class then what does that make us? I think it should be pretty obvious to most folks that even 1/10th of Miami's strategy is not available to Georgetown... which side of the Catholics vs. Convicts dichotomy do you think we most closely identify with, anyway? *Ahem* Anywho, I'm a broken record at this point, but... you always have to look at something that is as big of a commitment (financially, reputationally, etc.) as a football program in the context of the school as a whole to understand how it fits in - and at what level of investment. The U was looking for a major profile boost, and John Green was able to convince the powers that be that football was a suitable vehicle. Villanova, likewise, had for many years set its sights on moving from the kids' table of "Regional University" schools in US News to full-fledged national status, and it viewed both its already-prominent (but way moreso after the last couple'a years, huh?) basketball program and, to a lesser extent, football as valuable prongs in the strategy. I've detailed elsewhere the salutary effect that athletic prominence has had on Nova's admissions rate and overall institutional reputation. Georgetown is... not in a similar position. Once you look at it from the systemic level, the lack of desire to sink resources into football makes a lot more sense. As does the choice of programs where the resource boost has gone in the recent past ( hint, hint). If it's any consolation, the Gridiron Hoyas' low profile also keeps them from being a prominent target. Expect to see more and more of our actual and aspiration peer schools' programs - and not only - starting to became targets of increasingly negative attention. I'll just leave items one, two, and three right here to offer a sense of which way the wind blows. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 8, 2018 22:07:04 GMT -5
I think it should be pretty obvious to most folks that even 1/10th of Miami's strategy is not available to Georgetown... Available? Sure, just that Georgetown chooses not to admit large numbers of local graduates, for many reasons beyond athletics. Miami was a major college team, albeit not a very good one, for years. One of just three Division I programs in the entire state, it had seen what dropping major college football at the University of Tampa in the mid-1970's did for that school. If your're asking what is the University of Tampa is, well, that's the issue. Miami was, and is, a private school that had the reputation of being out of reach (and out of touch) for most of the city. Schnellenberger went big after the urban kids and it rallied city support behind the team and the university. I question the assertion that football is underfunded because soccer is more politically correct. For 50 years, soccer was marginally funded at Georgetown and the results were thus so until the mid-2000's. When GU figured out that nine scholarships and more flexible admissions could elevate soccer to a national ranking, its fortunes turned literally overnight. Nine scholarships does not elevate Georgetown football because the league it competes in has supported an artificial and arbitrary admissions ceiling on its football programs that makes national competition infeasible. Frankly, senior leadership at the University uses the gilded cage of the Patriot League as an excuse not to more seriously consider where football could be a regional or national competitor. Do we really believe there are not 15 impact players a year nationally who would want to study and play football at Georgetown? But those 15 players either aren't considering the low-wattage PL or aren't being admitted because the PL is more concerned with standard deviations than national competition. And, to be fair, if Georgetown soccer or lacrosse competed under such limitations, it would be at the bottom of the list, too. Finally, I would ask who do you consider which schools measure up to aspirant and/or peer institutions in football. Maybe it's worth a larger conversation that the likes of Bucknell University or Lafayette College are neither aspirants nor peers, and the kind of schools Georgetown ought to compete among do not reside in the Patriot League. And maybe not the esteemed Ivy League, either. |
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Post by puppydog100 on Aug 9, 2018 9:15:50 GMT -5
If not the Patriot League, and not the Ivy League, then where?
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Post by augustusfinknottle on Aug 24, 2018 14:22:37 GMT -5
Anyone for dropping it altogether?
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 24, 2018 14:24:59 GMT -5
Anyone for dropping it altogether? Father Guthrie has left the building. |
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Post by CountAardvark on Aug 25, 2018 10:31:05 GMT -5
Anyone for dropping it altogether? Maybe not a popular opinion on this board, but I certainly am. Look, I like football, and I appreciate the value of having a scholarship team, but its so damn expensive and honestly the school could really use the money elsewhere. The food still sucks, the dorms are falling apart, and tuition keeps increasing every year. I think the school should think long and hard about whether the money thats going into the football program is really worth investing there as opposed to somewhere else. It ultimately comes down to what's best for the students. Yes, it's possible for the school to actually (re?)build the football team into something worth having, but that would cost even more money that the school needs to be putting elsewhere. Just let it go. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 25, 2018 15:17:57 GMT -5
Anyone for dropping it altogether? Maybe not a popular opinion on this board, but I certainly am. Look, I like football, and I appreciate the value of having a scholarship team, but its so damn expensive and honestly the school could really use the money elsewhere. The food still sucks, the dorms are falling apart, and tuition keeps increasing every year. I think the school should think long and hard about whether the money thats going into the football program is really worth investing there as opposed to somewhere else. It ultimately comes down to what's best for the students. Yes, it's possible for the school to actually (re?)build the football team into something worth having, but that would cost even more money that the school needs to be putting elsewhere. Just let it go. I question the assumption that the marginal costs are anywhere as much as you think. With a marginal investment, football could change remarkably at GU. With one simple change in recruiting, even more so. Would you have said the same thing about a Georgetown men's lacrosse program that did not post a single winning season from 1972 to 1989? How did that turn out? |
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Post by CountAardvark on Aug 25, 2018 17:00:59 GMT -5
Maybe not a popular opinion on this board, but I certainly am. Look, I like football, and I appreciate the value of having a scholarship team, but its so damn expensive and honestly the school could really use the money elsewhere. The food still sucks, the dorms are falling apart, and tuition keeps increasing every year. I think the school should think long and hard about whether the money thats going into the football program is really worth investing there as opposed to somewhere else. It ultimately comes down to what's best for the students. Yes, it's possible for the school to actually (re?)build the football team into something worth having, but that would cost even more money that the school needs to be putting elsewhere. Just let it go. I question the assumption that the marginal costs are anywhere as much as you think. With a marginal investment, football could change remarkably at GU. With one simple change in recruiting, even more so. Would you have said the same thing about a Georgetown men's lacrosse program that did not post a single winning season from 1972 to 1989? How did that turn out? There are a lot of things wrong with that comparison. First of all, a solid D1 football team will have 2-3 times ye number of players, which means a lot more scholarships, a lot more equipment costs, and a lot more staff on retainer. I won't hazard a guess as to how many football staff Georgetown pays as compared to the lacrosse staff, but I'll bet the numbers aren't even close. Not to mention, of course, the costs of maintaining a fully fledged football field are nowhere close to those of a lacrosse field.The price of running a top football team are massive compared to the costs of running a top lacrosse team. Also, building a successful lacrosse program is much easier than building a successful footballl program. As you know, a football team needs a ton of moving parts to work. A lacrosse team only fields 10 players at a time. You only need a handful of great players to make a team many times better than it was before (this is especially true in basketball). This isn't true in football, where a school needs to invest a lot of time and effort in getting strong players for all parts of the game. Georgetown already has one of the lowest football budgets in D1 (around $1.6 million) and it won't improve without a sizable increase to that budget. There are many things that I, as a current Georgetown student, would like to see the school put that money into other than a failed football program that almost nobody even pays attention to. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 25, 2018 17:44:46 GMT -5
Also, building a successful lacrosse program is much easier than building a successful football program. As you know, a football team needs a ton of moving parts to work. A lacrosse team only fields 10 players at a time. To be fair, a football team fields 11 players at a time. Georgetown already has one of the lowest football budgets in D1 (around $1.6 million) and it won't improve without a sizable increase to that budget. As a student, you may be unaware exactly why Georgetown is not very good in football right now as opposed, to say, 20 years ago, when it was 9-2, or 1995, when it fielded the #1 ranked defense in all of Division I-AA. (Both are true, by the way). It's not budget and it's not coaches. It's an arcane rule in Patriot league football which states that schools can only recruit based on their school's SAT range. In every other sport, from men's basketball to women's softball, admissions is based on the decision of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and while not every athlete comes in with a 1470 SAT, those that apply below that are given an objective look at their opportunity to make it at Georgetown and graduate. The Patriot League requires football players to be within one standard deviation of the school's average SAT range, regardless of skill or academic background. Georgetown has the highest "academic index" in the conference and it's literally steering recruits elsewhere. Further, it allows for certain numbers per SAT "band"--for example, GU might only be allowed three recruits between a 1300 and 1350, while Bucknell could get in six and a school like Villanova (outside the PL) can recruit whoever they'd like. Is an extra kid admitted with a 1330 somehow not going to graduate? And, as we all know, is an SAT score really a judge as to graduation rates? Recruits that are accepted to Fordham, for instance, may not even reach Georgetown's standard deviation. The answer is not to walk away but to admit football recruits under the same criteria as Georgetown's 28 other sports. If a kid with a certain GPA and SAT can be admitted to play baseball or women's soccer or cross country, but not be admittable simply because he plays football, it's fundamentally unfair. Fix this, and this team gets a whole lot better without spending another dollar. There are many things that I, as a current Georgetown student, would like to see the school put that money into other than a failed football program that almost nobody even pays attention to. You may also be unaware that football has the largest average attendance of any on-campus GU sport. Football drew 2,166 a game last season, men's lax 749, soccer, 695, women' basketball 648, women's soccer 512, women's lacrosse 403, volleyball 254, field hockey 228. Nothing personal, but students don't seem interested in many sports these days, even basketball. If the University would have built the facility it promoted 15 years ago, maybe more people would show up to watch football.  (Obviously, they aren't showing up this season without a place to sit.) No one asking Georgetown to compete with Alabama in football. Can it compete where it is? Absolutely, but before it pulls itself up by its bootstraps, it needs to be able to have the boots. |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 25, 2018 23:00:59 GMT -5
As a student, you may be unaware exactly why Georgetown is not very good in football right now as opposed, to say, 20 years ago, when it was 9-2, or 1995, when it fielded the #1 ranked defense in all of Division I-AA. (Both are true, by the way). It's not budget and it's not coaches. It's an arcane rule in Patriot league football which states that schools can only recruit based on their school's SAT range. In every other sport, from men's basketball to women's softball, admissions is based on the decision of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and while not every athlete comes in with a 1470 SAT, those that apply below that are given an objective look at their opportunity to make it at Georgetown and graduate. The Patriot League requires football players to be within one standard deviation of the school's average SAT range, regardless of skill or academic background. Georgetown has the highest "academic index" in the conference and it's literally steering recruits elsewhere. Further, it allows for certain numbers per SAT "band"--for example, GU might only be allowed three recruits between a 1300 and 1350, while Bucknell could get in six and a school like Villanova (outside the PL) can recruit whoever they'd like. Is an extra kid admitted with a 1330 somehow not going to graduate? And, as we all know, is an SAT score really a judge as to graduation rates? Recruits that are accepted to Fordham, for instance, may not even reach Georgetown's standard deviation. The answer is not to walk away but to admit football recruits under the same criteria as Georgetown's 28 other sports. If a kid with a certain GPA and SAT can be admitted to play baseball or women's soccer or cross country, but not be admittable simply because he plays football, it's fundamentally unfair. Fix this, and this team gets a whole lot better without spending another dollar. I'm not so sure that meaningful improvement is just a matter of hitting the abort switch on the Patriot League Academic Index. It's unquestionably true that the Academic Index hits Georgetown the hardest because the school has by the far the highest average SAT range of the PL. However... well, first, this is where I have to start talking in somewhat roundabout fashion, but you're the author of the Vault book, so you can probably just call on Charlie Deacon next time you're in town and talk through the scenario under the cone of silence. Anyway, the... let's call them 'allowances...' afforded to each sports team when it comes to admission de facto also function as a set of bands. Varsity athletes make up ~10% of the student body, and while not all of them are recruited/recipients of special admissions consideration, most of them are. Heck, for a not insignificant number of them, the admissions thumb on the scales is practically the only benefit they get from being on a varsity team, aside from the swag, medical care, and lovely parting gifts. Anyway, 10% isn't a ton, but it's statistically significant enough that if you were to simply open the floodgates and admit any recruited athlete who you believed could be dragged across the graduation finish line, it would have an impact on the school's overall quantitative measures of incoming classes. And that's not really an acceptable outcome - the allowable margin there is quite slim. You have noted before that the different position groups on a football team have significant differences between them when it comes to the academic profile of the recruiting pool, at least as measured through quantitative indicators like standardized tests. Some positions tend to have higher averages and more athletes at higher ranges than others, even adjusting for athletic skill (in other words, it's not a linear inverse function where the quote-unquote 'smarter' players are necessarily less athletically skilled than the 'less smart' ones). In practice, this means that Georgetown has an easier time recruiting higher-caliber athletes at certain positions than at others. In the context of the PL, it has also led to - as you've also noted - the slightly absurd spectacle of Georgetown loading up on players from the higher-stats pools to fill up the bands and offset the recruits in the lower-stat bands. QBs, kickers, punters, and offensive linemen galore!! The problem is that, were the Academic Index to go away tomorrow, the football team would still be left with the need to offset the lower-stats recruits so as to avoid having a measurable impact on the overall university numbers. And the football team is big enough that it actually could have that sort of impact if you suddenly went from AI to open season. Now, definitively answering this question requires facts not in evidence. I can't sit here and tell you how much added recruiting leeway Georgetown would get sans Academic Index, relative to the status quo. Maybe you have more information at your disposal, I don't know. But I can say that, comparing across sports, football tends to be at the low end of the quantitative range as a whole. The Academic Index mitigates that significantly. Doing away with it would require to some extent re-balancing the entire athletics admissions model of 'allowances' - not a straightforward undertaking by any means. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 26, 2018 9:10:22 GMT -5
Well said. It's not an easy fix, and no one suggests that the AI is holding back Georgetown from conference titles.
Georgetown Football does not need, nor can expect, the perception of open admissions that applies to men's basketball. That perception (not always seen inside the gates, but certainly outside it) does not serve Georgetown well. My point (admittedly one of many, but specific to this discussion) is that the confines of the Patriot League AI is applied to football disproportionately at Georgetown vis a vis the admissions standards and practices applied to other sports, standards which I fully support.
To have an honest discussion about this would involve some potentially uncomfortable conversations with the Patriot League leadership, conversations that both sides have avoided over the last six years.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 26, 2018 19:52:31 GMT -5
My point (admittedly one of many, but specific to this discussion) is that the confines of the Patriot League AI is applied to football disproportionately at Georgetown vis a vis the admissions standards and practices applied to other sports, standards which I fully support. To have an honest discussion about this would involve some potentially uncomfortable conversations with the Patriot League leadership, conversations that both sides have avoided over the last six years. I suppose it's possible that those conversations have happened - if so, it's pretty unlikely we would've heard about them, unless your level of institutional access grants you some pretty choice intel (not impossible, certainly). My read of the dynamic is along these lines: the other football-playing Patriot League members like the topcover that the AI provides. They, too, have their institutional currents to navigate, and the AI conceptually tells a nice-sounding story for folks with a PL kind of mindset: it ensures that the student athletes are representative of the student body as a whole. It's a simple, straightforward message. In practice, it would probably work fine if all the schools were comparable in their admissions profiles. When they are not, as in Georgetown's case, the system starts breaking down. If I'm the league, and I recognize that most of my members are invested in the AI, my message for Georgetown would go something like this: yes, you are most impacted by the AI because you have the most stringent admissions profile for your student body as a whole. However, that fact is inextricably tied to your high level of institutional resources and the corresponding the high level of demand for your brand. Georgetown's endowment is right around $1.5B. By comparison, we have Holy Cross at $748.9M, Colgate at $910M, Bucknell right around $800, Lafayette around $810M, and Fordham at $728M. Lehigh is closest to Georgetown with $1.3B. Much like the common, semi-ironic rejoinder about 'affordable housing' - "all housing is affordable for someone" - all admissions bands are effectively recruitable by someone. If the Ivies can do it, then so can Georgetown... assuming it is willing to apply enough of its superior resources. Especially now that scholarships are an option, the structure for which Georgetown already has in place as a Big East school that has many existing scholarship sports. That is, ultimately, what would allow Georgetown to compete for the Patriot League title, Academic Index or not. And now that the PL is committed to that path, they have no incentive to make it easier for Georgetown to avoid going scholarship. Ultimately, while I'm sure neither side is particularly happy with the status quo, the prospect of open conflict is even more unappetizing. |
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