RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 10, 2015 20:42:41 GMT -5
As far as the MSF, It seems that one has to make a case that it is crucial to more than football. In this sense I think the poster above is correct that the performance of the team is part of that calculus.. The same goes with upgrading the program with scholarships(though I'm not sure what the real incremental cost of scholarships is as one would have to net the existing fin aid cost vs the incremental scholarship amt). Keep in mind, most of the financial aid that football players currently receive is need-based aid coming out of the general financial aid pool. The AD neither provides nor 'owns' those funds, so the only existing funds that could be converted would be current scholarship equivalencies, which are nowhere near as much as the amount of University general need-based aid that would be lost by moving to scholarship football. I understand that the Patriot League rules for the new scholarship regime dictate that if you give out any scholarships, then players cannot receive any financial aid from any source other than those scholarships. So, the real incremental cost would be enormous. Gtwn often does not look at things very strategically and this is certainly the case with the current allocation of athletic scholarships. Sprinkling a few scholarships around to subpar programs like baseball, volleyball, softball which aspire to be mediocre makes no sense. Pick a few additional sports that we really want and "can" be good at and concentrate the resources there. The thing is, Georgetown really does already do this. DeGioia was quite up front about this at one of the recent Reunion town halls he hosted. There are some sports where the goal is to try to compete at a high level, including the possibility of winning national championships. We try to fund those sports to the max to put them in a position to do so. There are other sports (including football) where the goal is to compete as best we can given the uneven playing field created by financial constraints, which preclude us from funding those sports at the same level as our peers and competitors. The complicating factor is that the Big East as a conference has scholarship minimums and coaching minimums, among other things, in place for many sports. For those sport, you can't just throw out a minimally-resourced, non-scholarship team. If you're going to have the team in the Big East, it has to meet a certain level. Thus baseball, volleyball, softball, etc. The case for really supporting football at the 1-AA level vs other sports at a national level would have to be that the sport is uniquely tied to the university's identity in a way that other sports are not. I suspect that when we started playing the ivies this type of aspirational thinking prevailed when the MSF was launched. I would guess that the sr admin at least have second thoughts or no longer believe that is true, but will never admit it. Therefore the program, project , and other programs languish. In terms of second thoughts/no longer believing it is true... the football spending arms race, which claimed Patriot League schools that we thought were on the same wavelength as us, is responsible for part of that. The whole concussion issue and the fact that the sport's risks may simply be impossible to mitigate to ethically acceptable levels also plays a major role. The corrosive impact that 'football culture' has had at many institutions also plays a part, especially for those members of the administration and faculty who are not athletically inclined to begin with. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 10, 2015 22:53:48 GMT -5
1. The idea that it's full scholarships or nothing isn't supported by the PL by-laws, which only mandate that a team can't surpass 60 equivalent grants. Put another way, Fordham can't have 50 on scholarship and another 50 on financial aid.
2. I obviously wasn't there at the town hall but it reads that DeGioia was referencing the tiering of sports created by Frank Rienzo in the 1970's--national (competes for NCAA championships), regional (competes for conference championships), and local (happy to be playing). Football was a regional sport in that approach.
3. The Big East has scholarship minimums in four sports (M/W basketball, M/W soccer), but not all.
4. I don't get the concussion reference. No one is tying concussion concerns to scholarships.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 10, 2015 23:44:34 GMT -5
1. The idea that it's full scholarships or nothing isn't supported by the PL by-laws, which only mandate that a team can't surpass 60 equivalent grants. Put another way, Fordham can't have 50 on scholarship and another 50 on financial aid. I got that notion from an explanation by a fan of another PL team that was made on this board. I have no independent confirmation; if you know differently, or would like to investigate and find the definite answer, I'm sure we would all benefit from that information. 2. I obviously wasn't there at the town hall but it reads that DeGioia was referencing the tiering of sports created by Frank Rienzo in the 1970's--national (competes for NCAA championships), regional (competes for conference championships), and local (happy to be playing). Football was a regional sport in that approach. More or less. The Regional tier doesn't really exist anymore, aside from football (and maybe crew?), since none of the New Big East schools has a major structural advantage over us. We should be competitive against all of them in any sport. 3. The Big East has scholarship minimums in four sports (M/W basketball, M/W soccer), but not all. I don't think it's just those 4... those are the four that each school must field, certainly, but I think there are others where if you *do* field a team, it must meet certain requirements. I don't have independent confirmation on this either, but here, for example, we have a newspaper article from when Marquette joined the Big East, and they're talking about the pros and cons of increasing the number of sports they offer. The article reads: "The Big East has scholarship minimums and requirements for coaching staff size in most sports." (emphasis added) 4. I don't get the concussion reference. No one is tying concussion concerns to scholarships. Spending seemingly fungible money on, or otherwise prioritizing, football at Georgetown has long been a hard sell. To the extent that there is an ever-expanding consensus forming within academia that football is too dangerous a sport and universities should not be in the business of sponsoring it (and especially enriching themselves off of it), it makes it that much tougher to make football any kind of priority. A move to scholarship status would be a big enough financial commitment that it would require the buy-in of the Main Campus Faculty and other stakeholders; I just don't see that kind of buy-in ever materializing, and the concussion issue is one of the reasons why. |
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Post by aleutianhoya on May 11, 2015 7:19:00 GMT -5
Gtwn often does not look at things very strategically and this is certainly the case with the current allocation of athletic scholarships. Sprinkling a few scholarships around to subpar programs like baseball, volleyball, softball which aspire to be mediocre makes no sense. Pick a few additional sports that we really want and "can" be good at and concentrate the resources there. The thing is, Georgetown really does already do this. DeGioia was quite up front about this at one of the recent Reunion town halls he hosted. There are some sports where the goal is to try to compete at a high level, including the possibility of winning national championships. We try to fund those sports to the max to put them in a position to do so. There are other sports (including football) where the goal is to compete as best we can given the uneven playing field created by financial constraints, which preclude us from funding those sports at the same level as our peers and competitors. Let's not forget title IX. We have a legal obligation to provide gender equity -- the decision to even play softball (Georgetown's newest sport) was entirely a Title IX decision. And I'm sure if given a true "choice," we wouldn't fund scholarships in volleyball, for example, where we've had something like a two-year run of actual competitiveness in the sport's history. But more broadly, I actually have no problem whatsoever with the "there are going to be certain sports we really try to win, certain sports we try to be competitive in, and certain sports where we're basically putting a third-grade rec team on the field" approach. (That's the national/regional/local dichotomy that DFW refers to later in the thread; I've just phrased it a bit differently.) It may be, as Russky points out, that the BE is no longer as competitive in a number of sports so there aren't as many "local" sports because we should be able to compete for a conference championship in more sports than we previously did. (See, e.g., baseball.) But, regardless, as a strategic matter, the approach makes perfect sense. To me, so long as we are essentially doing what we need to do to be ultra-competitive in the sports we are trying to be ultra-competitive in, why not provide other opportunities to students at the university to compete against their peers, so long as everyone knows the potential competitive disadvantages going in? And my sense is that they aren't hidden from anyone. Sure, I get that dropping, say, baseball allows funds to be reallocated to other sports, but I'm just not convinced the relatively small incremental improvement that might be possible in those other sports would be worth not providing the opportunity to our theoretical baseball players to participate. There IS educational value in participation in intercollegiate athletics, regardless of the actual (or potential -- given funding realities) outcome. Football is different, of course. Even playing a non-competitive brand of the sport is quite expensive. But without the outlay of even those resources, where do you put the money (particularly if, as Russky says, a large portion of the financial packages aren't athletic packages to begin with and wouldn't be reallocable within athletics)? And is its effect on the sports that get that money really so significant -- significant enough to drop a sport with a 100+ year history at the University? |
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Post by Problem of Dog on May 11, 2015 14:00:53 GMT -5
Football is different, of course. Even playing a non-competitive brand of the sport is quite expensive. But without the outlay of even those resources, where do you put the money (particularly if, as Russky says, a large portion of the financial packages aren't athletic packages to begin with and wouldn't be reallocable within athletics)? And is its effect on the sports that get that money really so significant -- significant enough to drop a sport with a 100+ year history at the University? I think that question ultimately becomes more complicated when people start complaining about the on-field results. If the gap really widens greatly where the PL is a legitimate scholarship football conference, ala the CAA, and Georgetown regularly loses every conference game, most by 3 scores or more, then you are going to have people suggesting we leave the conference. That will be along with the people who were inclined to drop football in the first place complaining about how the competitive imbalance raises safety concerns, like the concussion issue. At that point, even for the pro-football faction, you get to another difficult junction, which is where to go from there? And I honestly think the school would drop football before having it compete in the Pioneer League. And there aren't many other options. I'm not saying we'll see football dropped in the next 10-15 years, but I don't think the conversation is that far off, nor that absurd, if things continue to progress as they have. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on May 12, 2015 14:22:26 GMT -5
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eb59
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Post by eb59 on Jun 4, 2015 17:43:18 GMT -5
A little school right up the road from Gtown can get this built for $6m and we can't get anything in 15 years!!!! Come On Man! For the $10 - $12m that Gtown was planning to spend we could get somthing just like this byut a little bigger and with Two sidelines of seating!!! Stevenson MD Football StadiumTHIS IS SO DEPRESSING!!!!! |
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Jun 4, 2015 21:18:09 GMT -5
A little school right up the road from Gtown can get this built for $6m and we can't get anything in 15 years!!!! Come On Man! For the $10 - $12m that Gtown was planning to spend we could get somthing just like this byut a little bigger and with Two sidelines of seating!!! Stevenson MD Football StadiumTHIS IS SO DEPRESSING!!!!! APPLES AND ORANGES!!!!! |
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Post by Problem of Dog on Jun 4, 2015 23:46:07 GMT -5
A little school right up the road from Gtown can get this built for $6m and we can't get anything in 15 years!!!! Come On Man! For the $10 - $12m that Gtown was planning to spend we could get somthing just like this byut a little bigger and with Two sidelines of seating!!! Stevenson MD Football StadiumTHIS IS SO DEPRESSING!!!!! Did you really read this whole thread and then just decide it was an issue of money? |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 5, 2015 19:25:32 GMT -5
The other issue, which DFW didn't address in his blog post, is that Georgetown's relatively newfound professionalism and rigor around campus planning and constructions means that the school isn't about to just throw up some permanent bleachers or try to rush through a stadium. It's going to be done deliberately, in a way that integrates with the holistic plans for the rest of that part of campus and the campus as a whole. In other words, even if some heretofore unknown alum had designated $20 million to go to the MSF, and the MSF alone, in his will, and he dropped dead today, we wouldn't have shovels in the ground next week, next month, or even next year.
It is a problem of money, but it is most definitely not only a problem of money.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Jun 5, 2015 20:20:50 GMT -5
The other issue, which DFW didn't address in his blog post, is that Georgetown's relatively newfound professionalism and rigor around campus planning and constructions means that the school isn't about to just throw up some permanent bleachers or try to rush through a stadium. It's going to be done deliberately, in a way that integrates with the holistic plans for the rest of that part of campus and the campus as a whole. In other words, even if some heretofore unknown alum had designated $20 million to go to the MSF, and the MSF alone, in his will, and he dropped dead today, we wouldn't have shovels in the ground next week, next month, or even next year. It is a problem of money, but it is most definitely not only a problem of money. After reading DFW's ever repetitive posts, I'm convinced that he just chooses to ignore facts that don't fit his narrative, because he can't actually be this clueless to distill it to an issue of money. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 6, 2015 8:41:17 GMT -5
It is a problem of money, but it is most definitely not only a problem of money. Agreed. I'm not sure why this is even a point of argument. |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 6, 2015 14:21:41 GMT -5
It is a problem of money, but it is most definitely not only a problem of money. Agreed. I'm not sure why this is even a point of argument. I mean, it's not. I think all of us who have beaten this issue to a thousand deaths on here are probably, at worst, in violent agreement with each other. We all, to one extent or another, seem to understand what's up and what the score is (although I remain befuddled by your obsession with airborne soil). We all get the impasse - we just seem to have different ideas about what it would realistically take to actually move past it. Unfortunately, McDonough (and Healy) has proven to be of little to no help in this regard, due to an institutional inability to openly talk about prioritization. It's a well-worn cliché that has the benefit of being absolutely true: if everything is a priority, then nothing is. We're perfectly fine at playing up priorities and areas of emphasis. What we never, ever talk about is the tradeoffs and what gets deprioritized in turn, and what the larger gameplan ends up looking like as a result. It's by no means unique to Georgetown - it may be as common of an institutional defect as there is. But it's all the more aggravating because open communication is mostly about effort and will; unlike most constraints, this one is internal and self-imposed. It is what it is. At this point, I think football advocates have to slightly adjust their tune. Ask not what Georgetown can do for its football program; ask what the MSF - and Hoyas football by extension - can do for Georgetown. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jun 9, 2015 16:21:01 GMT -5
"At this point, I think football advocates have to slightly adjust their tune. Ask not what Georgetown can do for its football program; ask what the MSF - and Hoyas football by extension - can do for Georgetown."
Couldn't agree more. Luckily I think the case is easy to make in the NEW gtown campus. Campus improvement has had a big decade, but there is a lot of work to be done still on a campus with architectural blights such as Reiss, New South (facade), st. marys, etc. And nothing acts more like an above-ground pool with a rusted Pontiac on cinder blocks on our campus more than the 15 year-old, very small stadium project still surrounded by porta-johns. It is a literal monument to our failure to be able to close out a publicly launched quite modest facility (that has many uses including graduations, concerts,etc.) which now finds itself in the heart of campus. In its current state the temporary bleachers are a scar on a big portion of very valuable campus space.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 13, 2015 17:31:37 GMT -5
"At this point, I think football advocates have to slightly adjust their tune. Ask not what Georgetown can do for its football program; ask what the MSF - and Hoyas football by extension - can do for Georgetown." Couldn't agree more. Luckily I think the case is easy to make in the NEW gtown campus. Campus improvement has had a big decade, but there is a lot of work to be done still on a campus with architectural blights such as Reiss, New South (facade), st. marys, etc. And nothing acts more like an above-ground pool with a rusted Pontiac on cinder blocks on our campus more than the 15 year-old, very small stadium project still surrounded by porta-johns. It is a literal monument to our failure to be able to close out a publicly launched quite modest facility (that has many uses including graduations, concerts,etc.) which now finds itself in the heart of campus. In its current state the temporary bleachers are a scar on a big portion of very valuable campus space. Well, right - that's why it's bound to happen eventually. It's not the highest priority, obviously, and projects that are either Campus Plan mandates (housing, bus turnaround) or Healy 2 priorities (Regents, Georgetown Downtown, Thompson Center) will be higher in the order of precedence. On top of that, the University has shown itself to have a fairly high tolerance for living with eyesores. Still, the emphasis on the campus pedestrian experience and green space makes the resolution of MSF not just a nice-to-have, but really a need-to-have, albeit a lower-priority one. The design of the "student life corridor" and the re-imagining of Harbin depends, in part, on a finalizing site boundaries and design for the MSF. It also isn't such a huge lift that it has to be tied to a major capital campaign, which is a big plus. There's already a glut of big ticket items competing for primetime status in the next Campus Plan. |
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 13, 2015 19:03:08 GMT -5
On top of that, the University has shown itself to have a fairly high tolerance for living with eyesores. Indeed. A few candidates: 1. Kober-Cogan (vacant) 2. Poulton 3. New South |
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 13, 2015 20:08:01 GMT -5
On top of that, the University has shown itself to have a fairly high tolerance for living with eyesores. Indeed. A few candidates: 1. Kober-Cogan (vacant) 2. Poulton 3. New South Kober-Cogan's current status falls on MedStar's head. It certainly is an odd structure on a bizarre footprint, but it's clearly a product of its time and is usually accepted as such. The same goes for New South - it is architecturally undistinguished, but clearly in line with the institutional aesthetic of that time period (see also: Reiss). More to the point, several rounds of renovations have left New South as not just functional but actually remarkably nice on the inside and some parts of the exterior. It's not really an eyesore in the way that dilapidated (Old Jes Res, Gervase, Holy Rood) or unfinished (MSF) things or inherently ugly spaces (surface parking lots) are. Poulton is kind of like a pre-Healy Family Student Center New South, with the added ugliness of a surface parking lot fronting the street. It's not really an eyesore when compared to collegiate structures across the country, but it certainly is an example of the kind of utilitarian, ad hoc thinking that would never fly today. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jul 14, 2015 9:56:46 GMT -5
"We are updating our building plans for the Multi-Sport Field and hope to have some very exciting news to share in the very near future relative to the completion of that project."
Lee Reed
Director of Intercollegiate Athletics
November 2014
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Jul 14, 2015 12:32:39 GMT -5
"We are updating our building plans for the Multi-Sport Field and hope to have some very exciting news to share in the very near future relative to the completion of that project."
Lee Reed
Director of Intercollegiate Athletics
November 2018
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jul 21, 2015 11:23:07 GMT -5
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