Do GTown-HC make for a football rivalry???

[indianhoop]

Just curious what you Hoyas think.

I can see it but I also can't see it due to distance, GTown's philosophy toward football scholarships etc

[DFW HOYA]

Three are three elements that make for a spirited football rivalry:

1) Close distance between the schools which draws interest from across the region, even from non-alumni (Alabama-Auburn, Cal-Stanford, Lehigh-Lafayette, etc.)

2) Absent a purely regional connection, a long history of competition (ND-USC, Army-Navy, VMI-Citadel), or

3) Sustained fan interest, particualrly through the media.

Some rivals have the first element but not the other two (BC-Harvard are regionally close but haven't played football since 1944 ), while some have a history between them but not enough recent excitement people and/or TV can rally around (Texas-Rice, Penn State-Temple, and to a lesser degree, Yale-UConn and Dartmouth-UNH).

Holy Cross has historic ties with Georgetown (its founder was a Georgetown alumnus, its earliest degrees were awarded by Georgetown when the Commonweatlth of Mass. had not approved its charter. etc.) but outside of the Jesuit connection the schools don't seem to share as much in common. The schools don't compete in the same pool for students anymore, and teams haven't played in other sports to any degree since the 1970's. Absent regular competiton, it's tough to build a rivalry with a school 400 miles away.

Georgetown has never been able to build strong series in football. There are no local rivalries (Howard doesn't draw interest), and regionally there are no teams in the area with any particularly competitive or historical ties (Towson, Morgan State). The schools it is academically compatible have little or no history of competition (e.g., the Ivy League), while the schools it has played regularly over the years engender less than exuberant fan interest (Fordham, Duquesne, Holy Cross).

Ironically, the best candidate for a I-AA football rivalry--Villanova--has consistently pushed back on a series with Georgetown in part because it would be at odds with their aspirations in the CAA. Obviously, if generations of local fans had all grown up with Virginia, Maryland, GW, and Navy every season, this would be a diferent discussion, as would it if Georgetown was playing Big East teams every Saturday.

Do scholarships change this dynamic? Not much, short of getting tossed from the PL for not playing in their sandbox. But outside of Lafayette-Lehigh, most PL "rivalries" are not well developed--it's not like Lafayette or Bucknell fans are counting down the weeks until they meet Georgetown again.

[thebin]

Well. That was depressing.

[indianhoop]

Looking at it from a Holy Cross perspective, in theory it would make a lot of sense. As DFW pointed out, there are a fair amount of historical and institutional (as well as familial in some cases) ties between the two schools. It's a league game which could have an impact some years. DC would be a good road-trip and there is a decent sized HC alumni-base in the DC Metro area.

Negatives would be the distance...really not a "day-trip" for most HC alums/fans. Timing of the game is also a little tricky in that it's a game that would be played the week before Thanksgiving most years and that would probably hinder how many people would want to make that trip.

Another negative is as the oldage goes "it takes 2 to tango." Does Georgetown really care enough about football to have a football rival? Are they ever going to put the $ in for scholarships, facility upgrades etc?

Hopefully it can work out somehow...one of the bigger gripes many (older HC alums anyway) have with the PL is the loss of a true football rival that we had with BC.

[3706R]

I vote yes, it is a spirited rivalry. The rivalry re-emerged in the modern era in 1998 when Georgetown was still a MAAC team and upset Holy Cross 13-12 on Kehoe Field. Georgetown upset HC again the following year when JJ Mont went up to Worcester and threw up 34 points on the Crusaders in front of 5,170 at Fitton Field. These were the seeds that planted the dream of leaving the dinosaur football programs like Canisius, Iona, St Peter's and Siena for the tar pits and allowed Georgetown to play and be competitive against perennial FCA powerhouses like Lehigh & Colgate. It was those wins that got the program to where it is today. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Never forget the sacrifices made to get Georgetown Football to where it is today. This is a great example of why we need to continue to move forward and advance this program as far as it can go and never, EVER, take steps backwards.

[indianhoop]

The biggest problem, as I see it from afar, is that there's really no "football culture" at Georgetown like there is at Holy Cross due to there being no D1 football at Georgetown for about 50 years (roughly 1950-2000). That's a lot of generations/classes at Georgetown who don't view/see coming back back to campus for a football game as sort of an option/thing to do like many still do at Holy Cross.

[thebin]

And yet thousands of alums do return to campus every year for homecoming- which is in fact scheduled around a football game. We may have the crappiest "stadium" in all of college football (d3 included), but all you can ask the alums to do every year is fill it for homecoming...which they do.

[RusskyHoya]

Of the teams that we actually play every year, Holy Cross is probably the best candidate as far as rivalry goes, narrowly edging out Fordham. The shared history has been elaborated on above, although it's worth highlighting just how similar of a space the Universities - and their student bodies - occupied for a long time. At the time of the Big East's founding, the two were basically considered peer institutions...

DFW already mentioned the two schools that might be better suited as rivals: Villanova and Howard.

It's hard to imagine Georgetown ever winning a game against Nova under current conditions, though. Then again, if you had told me back in 2007 (55-0) that the Hoyas would go 2-2 against the Crusaders over the next 4 seasons and would go into the fifth meeting with the records standing at 5-5 for GU and 1-9 for HC, I would have assumed that Georgetown had somehow benefited from an influx of mass transfers from multiple FBS schools after their schools had been hit with sanctions. The two programs looked oceans apart.

As a DC resident and partisan, the lack of a rivalry with Howard really bothers me. They're the only D-I teams in the city, the level of competition is roughly similar, and they're both institutions in which the city takes great pride. They are also considered to be right at the topic of their communities' academic pyramid (Catholic and African-American, respectively). Unfortunately, no mayor has seen fit to do anything to promote "The Mayor's Cup." Neither school really has either, for that matter. The fact that neither are "football schools," and the basketball programs are on very different levels, surely hurts matters. Also, while both schools draw big crowds for Homecoming (Howard's is in a category all its own), football is not the draw at either one. And while its alumni take great pride in hailing from The Mecca, Howard is such an administrative catastrophe that few students leave with really positive feelings toward the University's institutions, football team included. A giant wasted opportunity, but probably not all that much to be done.

Meanwhile, the Patriot League is going one way and Georgetown is staying put in terms of scholarships. The "on the same level" commonality that the Hoyas share with Holy Cross and Fordham may not last too much longer. The IAC will surely help Georgetown Football - not having to get dressed for games in McShain F'ing Lounge and do a Walk of Shame past Snaxa to get to the field will be a huge upgrade all by itself. But absent some other major developments sometime soon, this will be a lopsided rivalry (or bi-lopsided, if the basketball teams were to suddenly start playing), if it can be called a rivalry at all.