DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Aug 10, 2016 7:07:01 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 10, 2016 21:27:51 GMT -5
Excellent illustration of something I've long maintained: the greatest marginal benefits from the TAC will be gained not by the men's basketball team, which had the cream of the thin gruel we could previously offer, but rather the programs that faced the worst deficits relative to their peers. The football team faces lots of other structural disadvantages that we've discussed to death, but this is one that will hopefully help. Compare the athletic training facilities at a Fordham or even a Cornell to the Thompson Center and the equation has now been decidedly flipped.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 11, 2016 7:35:22 GMT -5
Excellent illustration of something I've long maintained: the greatest marginal benefits from the TAC will be gained not by the men's basketball team, which had the cream of the thin gruel we could previously offer, but rather the programs that faced the worst deficits relative to their peers. The football team faces lots of other structural disadvantages that we've discussed to death, but this is one that will hopefully help. Compare the athletic training facilities at a Fordham or even a Cornell to the Thompson Center and the equation has now been decidedly flipped. A rhetorical question, and not a personal one. We're talking amongst friends, so...Is the best that Georgetown can now aspire is by comparing its program to Fordham or Cornell? Does our new track coach tell recruits they can be as good as Fordham? Does our soccer coach set a goal every year to be better than Cornell? The soft bigotry of low expectations continues to tell the Georgetown community that while our other sports can compete for recruits and titles, football can't go outside a very narrow circle of teams in facilities and in scheduling. The aforementioned Fordham will host a game at Yankee Stadium this year, while Georgetown opens against Davidson College, whose program hasn't defeated a Division I-AA team in the non-conference in over 10 years and which, in 2014, ended a 12 game losing streak by playing a team from a non-existent college. nypost.com/2015/11/29/the-shady-college-football-team-that-gets-paid-to-lose-games/
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Post by bgsmitty43 on Aug 11, 2016 12:39:20 GMT -5
I think the building of the new football stadium is crucial. If GU can build at least a 10,000 seat stadium with locker rooms, restrooms, concession stand, and more amenities, it will go a long way in attracting quality recruits. I'm not sure what the delay in planning is, but communication goes a long way. Please let us know what's happening. With the Thompson Center and a new stadium, it will give Sgarlata and company some tools to compete.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 12, 2016 21:13:29 GMT -5
A rhetorical question, and not a personal one. We're talking amongst friends, so...Is the best that Georgetown can now aspire is by comparing its program to Fordham or Cornell? Does our new track coach tell recruits they can be as good as Fordham? Does our soccer coach set a goal every year to be better than Cornell? The soft bigotry of low expectations continues to tell the Georgetown community that while our other sports can compete for recruits and titles, football can't go outside a very narrow circle of teams in facilities and in scheduling. The aforementioned Fordham will host a game at Yankee Stadium this year, while Georgetown opens against Davidson College, whose program hasn't defeated a Division I-AA team in the non-conference in over 10 years and which, in 2014, ended a 12 game losing streak by playing a team from a non-existent college. nypost.com/2015/11/29/the-shady-college-football-team-that-gets-paid-to-lose-games/It's not like football is the *only* program in that boat. Field hockey isn't winning any titles anytime soon. Neither is baseball. Hell, the runner-stacked track program... basically doesn't have any field events, making it literally impossible for them to win titles. Anyway, expectations - low or otherwise - do not appear a priori. They have to come from somewhere and have some reasoning behind them. In the extra special case of football, there's both a pragmatic aspect and an ethical/cultural ones. That's the framing I arrived at independently, and it was only after going back to the 2015 Georgetown Voice interview with DeGioia did I see that it's how he articulated it as well: Pragmatically: football is a very expensive sport. Lots of players, lots of coaches, lots of injuries, big playing surface and facility requirements, expensive equipment, etc. Given the arms race that has taken place in the college landscape, the financial investment required to put Georgetown just *on par* with competitive programs at the I-AA level is institutionally substantial. The investment required to bring it up to a “competing for titles” level is truly enormous, especially when you take into account the restrictions of the MSF footprint and the surrounding neighborhood. If all you care about is winning, then you have to reckon with the fact that the marginal value of the next athletics dollar is much lower for football than for many other programs. Money is fungible though, and the University has just finished toasting the conclusion of a $1.6+ billion capital campaign. If it really made football a top priority, it could enhance the program by leaps and bounds. The reason it doesn’t is because of those ethical and cultural factors that Jack mentions. I feel like we’ve discussed them to death over the years, but here, a brief restatement once again: - There is the Academic Index, but even without it, Georgetown is still at a serious recruiting disadvantage due to its more stringent academic requirements. The pool of competitive I-AA and up players it can recruit from is quite small and probably getting relatively smaller. The academic challenge is an issue for basketball and some other sports as well, of course, but it is more pronounced in football and making major… accommodations… for a dozen players is very different from making them for 70. At a relatively small school, you could well start having a statistically significant impact on class averages at that point. Georgetown is not willing to noticeably alter its academic profile any further to accommodate football.
- The culture around major college football programs has frequently become a culture of disciplinary impunity, to the point that many players come to expect strongly preferential treatment. Again, this isn’t limited to football, but often feels more pronounced due to the size and prominence of the team, the violence of the sport and the hyper-macho ethic around it, etc. There are many schools where you really are Big Man on Campus and effectively untouchable. Georgetown is not such a school.
- The arms race among programs has resulted in rampant cheating: recruiting violations, performance-enhancing drugs, all manner of espionage and sabotage, and so on. Again, it’s magnified because it’s football: the financial stakes are greater, the lights are brighter, the ratings are higher. As a private university that is deeply invested in maintaining a high-prestige brand, Georgetown is not going to jeopardize its good name for the possibility of gridiron glory.
- The trendlines for football as a sport aren’t looking so hot right now. The steady drumbeat of evidence about the long-term effects not just of concussions, but of repeated sub-concussion head contact, is having a real impact on public perception. You have more and more public figures publicly expressing real hesitation about allowing their kids to participate, while at the same time the prominence of other contact sports, such as soccer and lacrosse, continues to grow. Changing national demographics are likely to have an impact as well, as the proportion of families that don’t come from a ‘football culture’ continues to grow.
- Intermingled with the growing concern about the costs of playing football is greater scrutiny of its benefits – and whom they go to. The belief that college revenue athletics are a form of exploitation, which is nowht starting to be publicly argued by athletes like the Northwestern group, is also spreading. As the fattest cash cow by far, football scores the highest on the exploitation scale, especially when viewed through the prism of the consequences of playing. The targets of that exploitation are also disproportionately black (and there’s a good chance they will become even more so), and in our current Black Lives Matter moment, that dynamic is a meaningful and freighted one.
Add it all up, and it’s not hard to see how one might conclude that the world of big-time college football – or anything that remotely hints of aspiring toward it – is a toxic one, which a prestigious and ethically-grounded institution would do well to avoid. This is doubly true when the costs associated with entering and remaining in that world are high and only getting higher, even as other financial demands continue to grow. So instead we look the Ivies, our prestigious aspirational peers, as our guide for what a respectable football program looks like. To quote Lee Reed: “We want to play schools that have a similar philosophy when it comes to aid. We are running out of schools to do that against, so it makes sense because the Ivies are our peers.” The "about aid" part is too narrow - what the Ivies really have is a similar philosophy about college football. These views are all contentious, of course – likely they do not (yet) hold too much currency in the Metroplex or SEC country. Probably most of the people who consider themselves devoted fans of football – even Georgetown football – disagree with some or all of them. But they are real, and growing, and I expect that Jack DeGioia has a better sense of where the views of the Georgetown community writ large fall in relation to them than does anyone here, myself included. So I will let him have the last word, from that same interview:
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Post by Problem of Dog on Aug 16, 2016 11:22:34 GMT -5
Russky, great analysis, but DFW knows all of this. He just doesn't like the answer he gets over and over, so he continues to complain as if there's a switch that can be flipped, or that DeGioia would even choose to flip that switch.
We have a hard enough time funding aid for our non-athletes that it's a total financial non-starter.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 16, 2016 13:49:20 GMT -5
Russky, great analysis, but DFW knows all of this. He just doesn't like the answer he gets over and over, so he continues to complain as if there's a switch that can be flipped, or that DeGioia would even choose to flip that switch. We have a hard enough time funding aid for our non-athletes that it's a total financial non-starter. I've never heard Jack say "no scholarships" or "no upgrades" whatsoever for football. What he has said is that he doesn't want to pursue the Fordham model where the Rams are trending to $7 million annually on football. That's less than $2 million from the bottom ten of I-A. There are realistic and reasonable upgrades for football that do not involve $7 million of annual spending.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 17, 2016 21:41:10 GMT -5
I've never heard Jack say "no scholarships" or "no upgrades" whatsoever for football I mean... blog.georgetownvoice.com/2011/09/01/president-degioia-and-todd-olson-discuss-china-campus-plan-healy-pub-and-more/Obviously he has not said "no upgrades whatsoever" - that was my entire point at the beginning of this thread, that the TAC constitutes a major upgrade for football. Cooper Field - hello! - also constitutes a major upgrade. What you will not see are scholarships or a move toward a relaxation of academic standards, both of which would likely be necessary to compete for "titles" in the current landscape.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 18, 2016 5:55:39 GMT -5
What you will not see are scholarships or a move toward a relaxation of academic standards, both of which would likely be necessary to compete for "titles" in the current landscape. I'm not sure I follow--how does one relax academic standards with an Academic Index? Did Colgate or Lehigh reduce its academic standards along the way? That having been said, 28 sports at Georgetown recruit without an Academic Index and do just fine. I would not presume you think baseball or women's soccer or sailing or cross country has relaxed its standards to compete, yet why shouldn't football follow the same admissions standards they do?
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Aug 18, 2016 7:36:36 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Aug 19, 2016 20:18:34 GMT -5
What you will not see are scholarships or a move toward a relaxation of academic standards, both of which would likely be necessary to compete for "titles" in the current landscape. I'm not sure I follow--how does one relax academic standards with an Academic Index? Did Colgate or Lehigh reduce its academic standards along the way? That having been said, 28 sports at Georgetown recruit without an Academic Index and do just fine. I would not presume you think baseball or women's soccer or sailing or cross country has relaxed its standards to compete, yet why shouldn't football follow the same admissions standards they do? I mean, no one in the Patriot League is winning any "titles" unless it is the Patriot League title. And you can't have been talking about that, since you scoffed at the notion of aspiring to the level of Fordham or Cornell, who are very much in that same vein... The Academic Index does indeed limit Georgetown's flexibility with regard to academic standards. In fact, that is one of the reasons the administration is so committed to the Patriot League - it gives them an easy answer to the question of "why not be just a little more flexible to get some of these marginal recruits?" The larger topic of academic admissions allowances for recruited athletes is not really one I want to get into on this forum - not least because I myself only have limited direct experience with it. That's certainly true for football, which was (and I assume still is) one of the sports that Charlie Deacon handled personally. What I will say is that the amount of...leeway... a program has in this regard does indeed have an impact on their competitiveness. That's true for baseball, women's soccer, sailing and cross country all. It varies sport by sport, of course. Some sports draw a more affluent crowd that is less likely to require major concession to field a competitive team. But football is not one of those sports. And so just as those sports you named - baseball, women's soccer, sailing, and cross country - do not have the same amount of leeway, so too do the restrictions they face differ in terms of impact. In football, that impact is indeed pretty steep. Not insurmountable by itself, given favorable conditions in every other area (just look at Stanford). But all other conditions are decidedly not favorable.
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AvantGuardHoya
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Post by AvantGuardHoya on Sept 1, 2016 12:36:06 GMT -5
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