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Post by indianhoop on Nov 20, 2013 15:13:15 GMT -5
On whether or not Georgetown will remain in the PL and/or ever develop a football rivalry with Holy Cross etc. It would be interesting to get your take on these matters, rather than listening to our "echo chamber" ad infinitum. s2.excoboard.com/Crossports/33744/2420862 |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 22, 2013 11:22:37 GMT -5
DFW seems to be doing a good a good job flying the GU flag and explaining our circumstances there, so I don't feel much of a need to register for an HC board. I'll jot down my thoughts here and you can cross-post them if you'd like.
The Georgetown administration does not have much of an interest in developing a football rivalry with Holy Cross... or anyone else. If we did, we would have put some energy toward creating one with natural rivals like Howard, Villanova, William & Mary, one of the Ivies, etc. DFW is right when he says "I feel some at Georgetown wants to stay in the PL, even if it means 0-11 indefinitely." It won't be 0-11, necessarily, because we'll always have Davidson and can conceivably find some other FCS bottom-feeders to schedule. But that "some at Georgetown" includes the people calling the shots in Healy Hall.
To understand why, you have to understand that the football program's main purpose right now is not to win, but rather just to exist while staying within a limited, acceptable footprint, like at the Ivies. We hold on to football as a tradition because our desired peer institutions hold onto it. It's a program that has some nice history and makes for useful 'back in the day' hagiography, but in the present it is clear that big-time college football is a cesspool and even FCS-level football requires a level of commitment and tradeoffs that do not fit with how the University envisions itself. We make an exception for basketball because it's only 2 dozen players (M & W) and because John Thompson Jr. molded it in a way that we could hold up the program without holding our nose (the deflated basketball, Mary Fenlon, the Proposal 42 protest, etc.). Even now, we lose out on plenty of basketball recruits because we're not willing to go as far in making tradeoffs as many/most high major programs.
One can understand this perspective without too much difficulty. What's going to secure Georgetown's place in the US News Top 20 and ensure that it survives whatever higher ed bubble crashes happen in the coming years/decades is not winning a couple of PL football titles or FCS playoff games, it is ensuring that it's brand is so strong that people will continue paying top dollar to imprint themselves with that brand. There is a growing sense that not only would it require too much in the way of resources to turn football into something that would have a positive impact on that brand.. it may actually be impossible, period, as football's reputation as a sport and a collegiate enterprise continues to look worse and worse.
As for Holy Cross... this is going to come out sounding arrogant, and for that I apologize, but the general feeling when looking at Holy Cross is: there but for the grace of God go we. In the late 70s, Georgetown and Holy Cross were pretty similar in terms of their positioning in the collegiate landscape. Respected Jesuit schools that drew most of their students, who themselves were mostly Catholic, from the Northeast. Strong regional brand, but national reputation was mostly niche by niche. Then, the Big East and the athletics divergence, different institutional priorities and outside developments happen, and next thing you know Georgetown is #20 in the US News national rankings and has an endowment of over a billion, while Holy Cross is #25 among Liberal Arts Colleges and has an endowment of half that.
None of this is to say that Holy Cross would be in a different position if they had become a part of the Big East at its founding or made any particular decision(s) differently. The opportunities you have when your hilltop overlooks the nation's capital are very different from what they are when it overlooks Worcester, Mass. But the perspective of Georgetown toward Holy Cross is "what we used to be and could have been, if not for good decisions and good fortune." The aspirational gaze lies elsewhere, toward those 'Ivy League Overlords' and other schools that get mentioned in the same breath.
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Post by indianhoop on Nov 22, 2013 13:15:33 GMT -5
No offense taken Russky. I am one of many (increasingly older and more and more in the minority) HC alums who still bemoan the fact we didn't join the BE back in the late 1970s. That being said, what's done is done.
Back to the topic at hand, I really don't see how GTown can remain in the PL without changing its policies i.e funding/support etc for its football program. Obviously they can continue as is but the level of play in the league (as well as in the Ivies, who will inevitably try to keep pace in an "arms race" with PL schools) will approach the point where the Hoyas really shouldn't be on the same field as those schools in terms of fair competition.
I'd just like to see a Georgetown program that can compete at this level and not be the perennial "whipping boy" of the league.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 22, 2013 13:23:26 GMT -5
(as well as in the Ivies, who will inevitably try to keep pace in an "arms race" with PL schools) I don't understand what this means. What do you think the Ivies will be doing that they aren't already, beyond continuing to bulk up their need-based financial aid packages for all undergrads to the point where anyone below the upper-upper-middle class is paying very little in tuition for an Ivy League degree? |
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Post by indianhoop on Nov 22, 2013 22:09:45 GMT -5
(as well as in the Ivies, who will inevitably try to keep pace in an "arms race" with PL schools) I don't understand what this means. What do you think the Ivies will be doing that they aren't already, beyond continuing to bulk up their need-based financial aid packages for all undergrads to the point where anyone below the upper-upper-middle class is paying very little in tuition for an Ivy League degree? That's basically what I'm saying. The Ivies can "talk a tough game" i.e. "we aren't playing those PL infidels as long as they give scholarships" but who are they going to schedule??? Marist, Davidson, Georgetown??? Georgetown can envision an "Ivy-league" loaded non-schedule (whatever league it ends up in) but they won't be competitive with the better Ivies. The "upper-Ivies"..... actually all the Ivies not named Cornell or Columbia, care quite a bit about football and the Hoyas won't be competitive against them if they continue their non-support. |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 24, 2013 23:52:18 GMT -5
I don't understand what this means. What do you think the Ivies will be doing that they aren't already, beyond continuing to bulk up their need-based financial aid packages for all undergrads to the point where anyone below the upper-upper-middle class is paying very little in tuition for an Ivy League degree? That's basically what I'm saying. Right... so... how is this an 'arms race'? That term implies mutual escalation and each side responding to what the other is doing. The Ivies aren't doing that at all - they just keep on keeping on, staying on the same path they have been. That's not an arms race. I wouldn't expect one, either; I rather doubt that the folks in Ivy League athletics offices are losing too much sleep over what the Patriot League is or is not doing. Georgetown looks to be (for the most part) adopting and sticking to that same strategy, even though it has a much smaller resource base from which to operate. Call it the "Fake It Till You Make It" strategy. |
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Post by indianhoop on Nov 25, 2013 13:11:52 GMT -5
The Ivies, particularly H-Y-P, are giving a lot more aid to kids than they did 25 years ago though. I knew a fair amount of guys at HC who took the full scholarship to play football at HC rather than take a lot less $$$ to play for Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale etc back then. That was one (of many) advantages we had over the Ivies in our pre-PL 1-AA days.
They have upped the arms race in that regard i.e. giving more football aid $$$ than they did in the 80's and 90's and I would expect them to continue to do so vis a vis the PL schools have more and more and then ultimately, full scholarship rosters.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Nov 25, 2013 14:16:58 GMT -5
Frankly I don't even think that is a football-driven thing so much as a University wide thing at H-Y-P. Essentially Harvard students don't pay tuition any more (athletes and non-athletes alike) unless their families are well-off. I think all Harvard is doing differently now football-wise is recruiting kids from less well off backgrounds who then of course qualify for TONS of tuition assistance which amounts to a full scholarship. There used to be a whole lot more kids on the football teams at Harvard and Yale from Exeter, Andover, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, etc. The composition of the rosters in the Ivy league has changes drastically in just the last 15 years or so. More kids from high school football power states now and very few froom New England prep schools.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 25, 2013 16:32:09 GMT -5
Frankly I don't even think that is a football-driven thing so much as a University wide thing at H-Y-P. Essentially Harvard students don't pay tuition any more (athletes and non-athletes alike) unless their families are well-off. I think all Harvard is doing differently now football-wise is recruiting kids from less well off backgrounds who then of course qualify for TONS of tuition assistance which amounts to a full scholarship. There used to be a whole lot more kids on the football teams at Harvard and Yale from Exeter, Andover, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, etc. The composition of the rosters in the Ivy league has changes drastically in just the last 15 years or so. More kids from high school football power states now and very few froom New England prep schools. This |
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Post by indianhoop on Nov 25, 2013 17:07:49 GMT -5
Again though, what this means is that a lot of the Ivies are getting better on the field as well. Harvard and Princeton were very strong (for the FCS) this year and Brown, Dartmouth and Yale weren't too far behind.
It's going to be tougher and tougher for GTown squads to be competitive with them going forward without more funding etc.
Maybe the result of the game itself doesn't ultimately matter to the GTown Admin. and again, that's fine, that's their perogative as Bobby Brown would say.
All I ultimately want to see is a GTown football program in the PL that wants to be there and compete year to year.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 25, 2013 18:28:29 GMT -5
Sure, the Ivy teams (excepting Columbia, I guess) improved as well, but that was a function of the "rising tide lifts all boats" continued expansion of Ivy need-based financial aid to the entire student body. Now, if the football programs made a conscious decision to start recruiting more working-class kids and fewer prep school products, in order to take advantage of this ever-growing generosity, that would be an athletics-specific move. I'm not sure if such a decision was ever made, at Harvard or anywhere else, though it's not inconceivable. Or it could just be a function of changes in the prep landscape - the rise of near-year-round recruiting, the Internet, Rivals, Youtube, and all the other things that have changed the recruiting landscape and now allow talented players to easily get noticed without having to attend a school with a well-connected coach.
Georgetown's administration appears to believe that eventually, in the long run, the "Rising Tide Lifts All Boats" approach that 'worked' for the Ivies will work for the Hoyas as well, even if it will take a lot of time and A LOT of tide-raising. The problem is that our financial aid endowment isn't going to quadruple overnight - or even over a decade. That's a long time to wait...
Any realistic plan for keeping the program competitive in the Patriot League must, at the very least, involve a process for steadily increasing scholarship equivalencies. The gradual rise in need-based aid for all students will not come anywhere near quickly enough to improve the program's footing in the competition for the relatively small cohort of PL-caliber recruits.
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