thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 4, 2013 11:22:59 GMT -5
I'm not defending Kelly's job BTW. Its just that I think replacing the coach will be a bit like putting a band aid on a gaping wound. Especially since we don't have the money to pay or retain a good coach. We could take a gamble on an unknown sure. But with no facilities or scholarships it would be folley to think that's the long term solution this program so badly needs.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Oct 4, 2013 11:26:42 GMT -5
I'm not defending Kelly's job BTW. Its just that I think replacing the coach will be a bit like putting a band aid on a gaping wound. Especially since we don't have the money to pay or retain a good coach. We could take a gamble on an unknown sure. But with no facilities or scholarships it would be folley to think that's the long term solution this program so badly needs. I think the only thing we can afford is a band-aid, however. And winning a little bit (more than we have under Kelly) might get the wheels greased on other things happening with the program. No one will invest in a program that is led by a failure of a coach.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 5, 2013 0:52:07 GMT -5
As to the Jimmy's and Joe's argument: I don't agree that is a seperate argument to the facility problem: I think they are very much two sides of the same recruiting coin. Especially in a segment of the college football world where if your parents don't have a lot of money you're not going to be paying much tuition anyway. I think they are both major roadblocks to recruiting top tier fb players from this point on. Scholarships are not the only thing that attract top notch student athletes who are being recruited by several IAA programs: stadiums (and the attending sense that this is really A COLLEGE program) do too. And while we can already currently grant top athletes virtual scholarships, we can't offer them virtual real facilities yet. No smart kid could possibly look at the MSF at this point and not have some doubt that the program will even be around for the next 4 years. Furthermore they are justified to want some baseline college-level facility like a stadium that isn't smaller and worse than the one they were playing in when they were still going through puberty. Any of these kids who we will want to land with a scholarship will have several other scholarship offers from schools with real college stadiums. If they are academic minded and very good players with decent grades, you can be sure they will have offers from Ivies who already offer much more generous aid packages than we ever will and also have real stadiums. You don't really think that Harvard or Penn or Brown's top football talent are paying much of anything in the way or tuition or room and board do you? I assure you the top guys in the Ivies are already on virtual scholarship unless their parents are loaded. That said, the student athletes we want will have full scholarships offers from schools with real stadiums AS WELL as acceptance with virtual scholarship from schools ranked ahead of us academically who also have real stadiums. You see what I'm getting at here? We have the edge on NOBODY if we continue to play in a temporary high school dump- EVEN if we did have scholarships. Unless the plan is to build this program around the elite scholar athletes of America who are determined to see a career as a career foreign service officer. We've got that niche locked up tight as a drum until Tufts steps up to the NEC. Then we'll have a dogfight on our hands but until then...... This is a good post and touches on a lot of important points, so I think I'll use it as my jumping off point. I actually don't agree with the idea that we wouldn't have the edge on anybody even with scholarships - a free Georgetown education is a huge draw, especially for people with FCS-level talent. But everything else is basically on the mark, I think. It's been clear for a long time that the football program itself is effectively rudderless. This goes far beyond Kevin Kelly, whose best chance to Win the Day is probably to just embrace his destiny and become Bruce Greenwood's stunt double. At the risk of lapsing into consultant-speak, what's been needed for a long time is some sort of strategic plan and roadmap (this doesn't apply just to football, btw). This isn't exactly revolutionary stuff: identify your goals and desired end state; formulate the pathways and actions necessary to arrive at that end state; ascertain the resources and other trade-offs that pursuing those paths and actions will entail; apply existing and projected resource constraints; arrive at a feasible roadmap for getting where you want to be. There's all sorts of roadblocks that might get in the way, of course, but as long as you know where you are on the roadmap, you're not truly lost. 'Lost' and 'adrift with no direction' is exactly how many people feel about the program today. The problem here, I think, goes to the very roots. If you were to ask people on this board what their goals and desired end state would be, it likely would be something along the lines of: "a competitive Patriot League program that also holds its own against Ivy League schools." More ambitious people might go further and want a program that is nationally competitive at the FCS level, but I think we can all agree on the former as a desirable state of affairs that would be far superior to the situation today. Are those the goals of University decision-makers and resource-allocators? In the abstract, maybe, but not in any real way that would entail making significant commitments, investments, or tradeoffs in football's favor. As best as I've been able to decipher it, the thinking at the higher echelons goes roughly like this: "We want to keep a football program, because it's historic and Georgetown has lots of sports and it would be embarrassing to throw in the towel (again). However, big-time college football is a cesspool, and with the concussion issue gaining steam and making the entire sport seem like borderline immoral modern-day gladiatorial combat, the safest thing to do is to keep the program at a low profile. No good can come of placing a big emphasis on it or diverting resources toward it for which there is no shortage of demands. Best to chart an extremely conservative course, make incremental improvements as circumstances allow, and generally not worry about it too much." You can see why that would not be the sort of thing you admit in a public forum, but it's basically true. To the extent that there is a plan for raising the fortunes of Georgetown football, it's basically this: 1. At some point, enough contributions from football and lacrosse alums and estate gifts will be scraped together to build some sort of MSF. It'll look nice enough, because the University is now actually thinking about things like aesthetics, the pedestrian experience, and the campus fabric. It won't be anything to write home about, and a dozen losing seasons may pass between now and then, but it'll happen. We don't have the space available for anything that would compete, size-wise, with our peer institutions, but if Georgetown football is a quaint anachronism, then there's nothing wrong with it having a quaint stadium. 2. thebin says "If they are academic minded and very good players with decent grades, you can be sure they will have offers from Ivies who already offer much more generous aid packages than we ever will." The University has as one of its top priorities bridging that "ever will" gap. A full third of For Generations to Come has been dedicated toward scholarships, and you should expect that same level of emphasis, if not higher, to continue in the future. Much of the financial aid our football players are getting now is of the need-based variety. Many people will question setting aside millions of dollars for football scholarships or equivalencies (which also necessitate corresponding increases in funding of women's sports). No one really questions general financial aid spending. If we can create a rising tide that lifts all students' boats up to Ivy or near-Ivy levels, then not having scholarships becomes much less of an issue, at least so far as competing with the Patriots and the Ivies is concerned. So, let's just focus on making Georgetown Be All You Can COFHE, and the tangential things like non-scholarship or limited-scholarship sports will work themselves out. If neither of these measures sound particularly fast or excitement-generating (from a football perspective, anyway), you're right. But that's where we are, and it'll take more than bringing in an ambitious young head coach (or ambitious young athletic director *cough*) to change that. At this point, I'm just hopeful that we can get the IAC up and running by 2016 and the football team no longer has to get dressed for games in freaking McShain Lounge. TL;DR: The lack of direction, progress, and commitment surrounding the program is a feature, not a bug.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 6, 2013 11:18:20 GMT -5
Great post. Depressing, but accurate. The conclusion i draw from it is that lee reed is as big a problem as kelly. I was violently underwhelmed when i heard that we plucked our new AD from the likes of Cleveland st. Ive seen no reason since to question my initial prejudice.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 6, 2013 12:37:09 GMT -5
This goes beyond the AD level - Muir's a basketball guy first and foremost, but he knows all about football as well, and he made very little progress during his tenure. The AD takes his marching orders from Healy 2 (and, less directly, the BoD, which would have to approve any sort of large-scale spending). Ultimately, the decision to keep football on a low simmer comes from the top.
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Post by hoyafbdad13 on Oct 7, 2013 21:22:02 GMT -5
What really shocks me is that the people in charge AD, etc. are not totally embarrassed by the productivity of the FB program and MSF. This is Georgetown University. Maybe given the success of the other athletic programs the only people that really pay attention to football are alumni who have played and the parents of the players. The truth is maybe nobody else really notices or cares. I still talk to people today that are surprised to find out Georgetown even has a football team. I'd love to know honestly what the top brass thinks and hear their reasoning for letting it be. Granted the campus is somewhat city like rather than country like, but the MSF is really an eyesore. Maybe they justify it as a practice field for the other sports, which if that's the case makes total sense. Although our HS practice fields are better than the MSF.
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Post by indianhoop on Oct 8, 2013 10:46:30 GMT -5
This is really the first week where the "rubber really meets the road" i.e. a full scholarship PL team playing GTown. I don't wish you guys ill will but this one could get ugly. Fordham is playing very well...for the Hoyas sake, hopefully they're looking past this game.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 8, 2013 12:10:17 GMT -5
I think the best single reason for completing the MSF (as it does not rely on football value) is the current facility is a blight on campus and that whether we have a football team or not we will presumably still have an athletic department which will necessitate a real college facility beyond the very nice soccer field. For lax, whatever football we have, field hockey, NCAA playoffs, whatever. Just something that would not embarrass a decent public high school. We are too good a school, with land too precious a commodity, to let that "stadium" take up so much room in what is now the heart of campus. And clearly we need the playing surface for many reasons. I agree that a simple sense of shame should have been enough for the powers that be to have built something there in the last 5 years. It is like we have a nice $1mm house in a very nice neighborhood that happens to have a chain link fence surrounding a rusting above-ground pool in the backyard. People come over all impressed and then accidentally wander too far.....um....what the hell happened there? What is that supposed to be? Wait, is this GU or UDC?
And for the record, I'm bracing for a three-run stretch of epic losses. Fordham will likely be testing out a lot of freshmen in the second half.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 8, 2013 12:21:43 GMT -5
This is really the first week where the "rubber really meets the road" i.e. a full scholarship PL team playing GTown. I don't wish you guys ill will but this one could get ugly. Fordham is playing very well...for the Hoyas sake, hopefully they're looking past this game. Georgetown has played eight full-scholarship I-AA teams since 2001 (not including Howard, who may or may not have been full scholarship at the time). The Hoyas' record is 1-7. That's non unexpected, given the talent limits imposed by the PL funding formula in prior years. The immediate problem is that Fordham is peaking while Georgetown is at low tide. I think the best single reason for completing the MSF (as it does not rely on football value) is the current facility is a blight on campus and that whether we have a football team or not we will presumably still have an athletic department which will necessitate a real college facility beyond the very nice soccer field. No guarantees on that soccer field, either. If MedStar gets its way (unlikely now but who knows going forward), Shaw Field will be the site of the next GU Hospital. And if things got really dire the department could ship football and lacrosse to Bethesda, inasmuch as these are the only sports that qualify for the "Multi" Sport Field...which must seem more marketable to donors than " Two Sport Field".
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 8, 2013 12:46:13 GMT -5
How is it possible that Howard is that bad with (allegedly) full schollies?
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 8, 2013 12:53:04 GMT -5
How is it possible that Howard is that bad with (allegedly) full schollies? In no particular order: coaching, recruiting, eligibility issues, and style of play. Howard is a counter for I-A games, so they carry at least 56.7 scholarships to qualify. Whether those 56+ are always playing is another matter.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 9, 2013 9:37:23 GMT -5
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Post by stdno2man on Oct 10, 2013 7:28:19 GMT -5
Two points: First, there comes a time when things aren't working when changes have to be at considered. It does not have anything to do with blame, fault or responsibility but just that we are not getting the results we want and there is no reason to think things will change. However with that said we have to come up with a list of what is important. If winning is at the top then something has to be done. However if running a clean program and graduating players is at the top then that has to be factored in. My position is that they are not mutually exclusive.
Second, please don't under sell the opportunity that Georgetown offers. Georgetown offers far more than some of the DII and DIII universities where they have great coaching and a good program. This issue is not that Georgetown can recruit a great coach but that it may not be able to retain a great coach. However that is relative because it goes for any university. We see movement every year in this profession based on successful results so this shouldn't dissuade us at Georgetown.
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