The More Things Change...

The MSF Clock tolls 2,800 days today. With this in mind, a look back at the 2005 Georgetown media guide, page four:

Football & The Big East (Part 2)

In part 2 of the review of football at Big East schools, we pause to look at the rest of the conference where football is not established. Was it ever there in the first place?

Yes.

In fact, every one of the ten Big East schools for 2013 had an intercollegiate football program at one point; of course, only three remain today: Georgetown, Villanova, and Butler.

Providence College had a small college program that was put on hold with the arrival of World War II and never returned, the more prominent program at Creighton met a similar fate after the 1942 season.

Football was also popular at Seton Hall, beginning in 1882 and running through at least 1932. The Pirates reconstituted football as a club program in 1965 and won the 1972 “Schaeffer Bowl” for Eastern club teams, defeating Marist 20-18 before 3,000 at Jack Coffey Field in the Bronx. In 1973, Seton Hall moved up to Division III, but a disastrous run in 1980 (0-9) and 1981 (2-7-0) led the school to drop football as the Big East was taking center stage.

St. John’s has a similar story. From its earliest days as a college in Brooklyn, not Queens, St. John’s was playing football as early as 1884, but  the school was not the match of NYU or Fordham. Games at Ebbets Field rarely drew more than a couple thousand or so compared to as many as 75,000 for the Violets and Rams. The Redmen dropped football in 1932, but returned as a club program in 1965 and upgraded to Division III in 1978. In 1993, St. John’s joined Georgetown and four other schools in founding the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), to which St. John’s went 10-1 in 1994 and was named the ECAC champions.

After seven years in the MAAC, St. John’s stepped up to the Northeast Conference, but the upgrade proved pyrrhic. The Redmen dropped to a 1-9 record in 2001, hastily rejoined the MAAC, then finished 2-8 the following year. Following the season, the now-retiring Rev. Donald Harrington cut football and five other men’s sports to save money and reinvest it in elevating other St. John’s sports. Of course, history shows that any claim to “reinvest” from dropping sports is a complete fantasy—the money always goes elsewhere. St. John’s athletic fortunes soon took a nosedive in the 2000’s, with or without football.

But football still exists among other Big East schools, albeit in the competitive limbo that is club football. Club football was the incubator of programs like Georgetown Fordham, and a dozen other current Division I programs—at its zenith, nearly 100 schools sponsored club football teams at Division I schools, compared to just over a dozen today.  But in this netherworld between NCAA football and no program at all, a football program at Marquette has been underway for 45 years, Xavier for eight years, and DePaul is a new entrant altogether. Each has a story to tell in a sport that has roots on all three campuses.

Of all the Jesuit schools which dropped football, none is there a more glaring absence from the gridiron as was Marquette. From its origins in 1892, football served as a rallying point for the downtown school, and over seven decades the team, variously known as the Hilltoppers, the Golden Avalanche, and the Warriors were the equal of some of the best teams in the nation.

With its 16,000 seat Marquette Stadium, opened in 1924, the Hilltoppers played a national schedule, not only with in-state rival Wisconsin, but opponents such as Iowa, Boston College, Temple, Kansas State, Ole Miss, and Arizona, among others. Marquette would travel, raising money for the program and raising interest in the school. The 1936 Hilltoppers defeated Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ole Miss en route to a 7-1 season, with a 20-6 win over St. Mary’s before 55,000 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. MU was then invited to the first Cotton Bowl, where they fell to Sammy Baugh and the defending national champions, Texas Christian, 16-6.

With the great exodus of Catholic colleges from football in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, Marquette remained resolute, as it was still playing before representative crowds against top competition. As losing ways began to eat into the program (the Golden Avalanche was 10-53-4 over a nine year period from 1951 to 1960), Marquette double-downed on the program and moved games off campus to County Stadium, home of the Milwaukee Braves. The crowds did not follow but the deficits did. Despite a 1959 lineup that would include five future NFL stars, among them All-Pro lineman George Andrie, school officials dropped the program in December 1960.

Student reaction at Marquette was nothing like the fearful silence at Georgetown when Rev. Hunter Guthrie dropped the program and dared anyone to dissent. Wrote a history of the Marquette club program:

“3,000 students spontaneously walked out of their classes and marched in protest down Wisconsin Avenue shouting "we want football; we want justice." They lit a bonfire…at the corner of N. 15th St. and W. Clybourne, tied up traffic for blocks on end, and pelted the squad cars and patrol wagons of the policemen who had been called in to quell them.

“John Sisk, a former all-American at Marquette during the glory days of the 1930s, said "the bomb which hit Hiroshima shocked the world. This one was a bomb which shocked alumni and thousands of friends of Marquette." He attempted to organize a fund drive among alumni and local businessmen to underwrite the football program and cover any budget deficits it would incur. But it was all for naught.”

Five years later, as the club football movement begun at Georgetown and Fordham was taking hold nationwide, a group of students began the process to bring back the sport to Marquette. A crowd of 9,000 saw Marquette play a Detroit club which had lost their own team just three years earlier. If any school with a football tradition could have renewed its legacy, it would appear to be Marquette. But Murphy’s law has followed this team since its very start.

The club model of Georgetown and Fordham relied on five components for success: 1) institutional cooperation, if not tacit support, 2) a campus presence, 3) like-minded opponents, 4) coaching continuity, and 5) on-field success. Marquette was able to maintain none of these.

In its six seasons in club football, Georgetown had just one season under .500. By contrast, Marquette did not win a single game for the first seven years of its club program--MU picked up its first win  against a high school all-star team in 1974. Its first winning season did not come until 1989, 22 years after the program had started. Student support vanished.

Support dropped off even further when Marquette Stadium was torn down in the early 1970’s. The Warriors, as they were known by then, became a barnstorming team of sorts, and many students rarely if ever saw them play. Institutional support all but ended after a ill-fated trip to Westchester (NY) Community College when the club’s treasurer left school with an unpaid bill of $4,600 for travel. It took the intervention of athletic director Al McGuire to cover the tab, but the damage had been done and the club football team was largely on their own. A decade later, the program suffered more bad press when much the 1996 team was determined to be students of a neighboring trade school, the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, not actual Marquette students.

To its credit, the club program at Marquette soldiers on. The oldest active club team in the nation, its schedule mixes club programs, junior colleges, and junior varsity clubs at regional Division III schools, but is often overmatched—from 2003-08 the Warriors were  a combined 6-37, with three of its wins coming over new club programs at Xavier and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. Beyond the Marquette community and the tiny subset of opponents they play, however, Marquette football is out of sight, out of mind.

The Xavier football story parallels that of Marquette and many Jesuit schools, but on a different timeline. In fact, until the fall of the MAAC, Xavier was the last Jesuit program to drop college football.

Xavier football dates to the turn of the century and took off in college football’s golden era, the 1920’s. It built a 15,000 seat on-campus stadium, Corcoran Field, which served it well through the Great Depression and post-war America. Along with Marquette, Detroit, and Holy Cross, it was one of the few Jesuit schools with any significant on-campus football facilities.

Xavier never achieved the national fame of Marquette or even Georgetown, for that matter. The Musketeers appeared in one bowl game, the now forgotten Salad Bowl, in 1950, defeating Arizona State. With a regional schedule that mixed small college (Centre, St. Ambrose, Quantico Marines) and larger programs (Cincinnati, Louisville, Toledo), Xavier established a small but successful major college program.

But like many teams, losing ways began to corrode the program. From a  6-4  record in 1968, Xavier dropped to 1-9 in 1969, and never finished above .500 thereafter. Three straight 1-9 seasons followed, including the September 1971 game where Xavier lost on the final play of the game to a Marshall program which had suffered the loss of its team in a 1970 plane crash.

In 1973, Xavier lost its opening three games to Temple, Cincinnati, and Tampa, but finished the season winning three straight to Northern Illinois, Villanova, and Toledo and finished 5-5-1. The attendance wasn’t there anymore, with the NFL’s Bengals cutting into the college market and the increasing lack of interest of larger schools to play Xavier. Annual losses were common at a school which was offering 60 scholarships against schools with 100 or more, and student attendance now numbered in the hundreds. TV money was nonexistent, and Ohio State was a bigger draw in Cincinnati than either of its two local Division I schools. While Dayton was able to save its program, Xavier would not be so fortunate.

Football at Xavier remained a memory until 2006, when a club team was launched to rebuild the team. The club even made it to the Xavier athletic web site, something Marquette’s team has never been able to do. But Xavier club football suffered the fate of many club programs, namely continuity. Coaches were largely volunteers, games were played off-campus and not always on Saturdays, and opponents could vary considerably. From 2009 to 2011, home game were played at four different high schools but none on-campus. Rosters varied, so much so that the 2012 season was canceled because of lack of depth—just 30 players started the season, and just 21 were left after week 2.

Of all the Big East schools engaging in football, the least known is DePaul, which added a club team this spring and was approved for funding just last week. The DePaul football story is as little known as any, but yet was an important part of that school’s athletic history.

Football has always been a part of Chicago, none more so than in the early 1900’s when four universities battled for local football supremacy: Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, and DePaul. The sport arrived at DePaul in 1907 and was repositioned in the early 1920’s, playing a schedule of mostly Catholic schools at nearby Wrigley Field. Coached by future Holy Cross legend Eddie Anderson, DePaul was a local fan favorite on the North Side. Fifteen different players joined the NFL. By 1928, a rivalry game with Loyola drew 80,000 to Soldier Field. Ten years later, both were gone.

Unlike many Catholic schools (Georgetown included) which once pleaded poverty to escape their football obligations, the Great Depression took its toll on Windy City football. Loyola was the first to go in 1929, while DePaul made it nine more years. Where the Blue Demons had once sold out Wrigley Field, less than 1,000 showed for its homecoming game in 1938. By that December, the school announced it was dropping football for financial reasons, which were all too real. Enrollment at the working-class school had dropped 30 percent in five years from 1929 to 1934, and the school was approaching $1 million in debt—not all of it football, of course, but enough to make the athletic folks uncomfortable.

And of course, it was the record. DePaul finished 2-7 in 1938. No one drops a team at the top.

For the next seventy five years, football was forgotten at DePaul. No field, no memory of its better days. In 2013, a  junior named Riley Halligan created a Facebook page and sought interest for students to start a club team. At semester’s end, funding was secured for the Blue Demons to take the field this fall, with the goal of reestablishing the rivalry with Loyola that once captured a city’s imagination.

All three schools share opportunities and challenges in club football, none more so than facilities and visibility. None of the three have an on-campus environment from which to build a program, though there are possibilities. None have the visibility that an NCAA program offers, with the kind of opponents fans are either a) aware of and/or b) interested in seeing. People know names like Princeton or Holy Cross. Playing Maranatha Baptist or the Carroll College JV team doesn’t carry the same kind of interest.

Is there an NCAA future for these teams? In the end, it’s more about the school and less about the team—the schools must make an institutional commitment first  when one has not been there before.

Does Marquette gain anything from upgrading its team? Does Xavier? Does DePaul? In a climate where basketball is the only recognizable sport at three urban campuses, it’s a tough sell to devote upwards of $1 million (even at a Pioneer League level) to a sport that doesn’t bring the attention basketball does. No one remembers Eddie Anderson at DePaul, they remember Ray Meyer.

That’s not so suggest these schools can’t expand athletics. Marquette is adding men’s lacrosse, a sport all but foreign to Wisconsin, to offer something new to its students and serve as a beacon for talented student-athletes interested in Big east level competition to consider attending MU, and that doesn’t come cheap. But could football offer the same, especially without the scholarships?

This has to be an executive level initiative. The days where a school could add football “for the sake of the boys” is obsolete. The political impact of Title IX and the rampant increases in spending attributed to football make an presidential decision to add varsity football justifiable only under two reasonable scenarios: 1) football will increase male enrollment (the driver for the growth in many Division III programs) and 2) football will make money (the driver for such start-ups as Old Dominion, South Alabama, and Georgia State. A third, adding a sport to play in a specific conference, doesn’t apply in the Big East.

Will an extra hundred men make the difference at DePaul, with over 21,000 students? No. Maybe at Xavier, less so at Marquette.

Will it be a money maker? In almost every scenario, no; if for no other reason, there is not a regional conference where these schools can join to drive revenue into football. Having committed to the Big East where football is redolent of its troubled past, it’s not like Marquette is taking a call to play in the Big 12.

The ideal home for these programs would be in the Pioneer League, where Midwestern peers like Butler, Drake and Valparaiso have been able to find a safe harbor for teams that are too established to play as clubs, too big to play outside Division I, but too small to play at the scholarship level. That kind of upgrade is  neither imminent nor under advisement for now, because it takes time to bring any program to the I-AA level, even a club team, without financial commitment and, at the very least, facilities. Marquette could play on the Valley Fields complex that did not exist in a prior era, while Xavier’s Corcoran Field is now better known as a soccer field. DePaul’s field situation is an open question. But one cannot survive in the lower levels of Division I these days as an off-campus entity. It doomed Northeastern, Canisius, St. Peter’s and a half dozen other schools. Kids simply need to play in front of other students for this to work.

But as any fan of football will tell you, there are values and verities to college football that are unique to a college campus, and something that even club football can’t adequately match.  In 1929, the Rev. John McCormick summed it up in a tribute to Marquette football:

“The football team is a rallying point for the sentiment that centers around any college. Its contests are dramatic; student loyalty is fired by them; the alumnus feels the thrill of their success, and the public is aroused, as no mere academic achievement could arouse it, to the importance of the institutions participating in them. Certainly the name of Marquette is more widely known than otherwise it would be because of the glory that has come to it on the football field from the victories of the "Golden Avalanche."

Were that the Golden Avalanche, the Musketeers, and Blue Demons get a chance for an encore performance.

Football & The Big East (Part 1)

The lasting story of the 2012-13 sports year will be the headline that reads “Football destroyed  the Big East Conference. Which isn’t quite accurate, of course.

The Big East was (nearly) destroyed by greed, of which football was a symptom of a larger disease. No one can say without question that Rutgers is joining the Big Ten because of its football team. Nor is the premise of Syracuse and Boston College squaring off in the cold of a New England winter the sole driver behind the Atlantic Coast Conference’s predatory behavior.  Greed, or as I’ve described it in the past, "NCAA musical chairs", drives college presidents to throw reason and tradition right out the window when the music stops and one less beanbag chair sits on the Division I floor, which is why Maryland disposed of 60 years of ACC fellowship in just 45 minutes of a trustees meeting, or why Texas A&M gave up a 120 years old rivalry with their neighbors down the road in Austin.

The media, then, will tell you that football is dead, dead, and deader than dead in the new, basketball-friendly Big East. But six of the teams in the newest configuration of the league still have a football preference, even if they seem to be going in six different directions.

We start with Georgetown, where the Hoyas enter 2013 amidst a measure of institutional uncertainty about where the Patriot League is taking (or not taking) this team. A year ago, when six PL schools voted for full scholarship football and Georgetown cast a very public “no” vote, there was a sense from the league office that Georgetown would eventually go with the flow. That hasn’t happened.

The problem, of course, is that the 2013 recruiting cycle marks a visible divide between what the rest of the PL is selling (e.g., a guaranteed free ride to some of the better liberal arts schools in the nation) and what Kevin Kelly and his staff can sell (e.g., some grant, some loan, some guesswork but a great place to go to school, if you don’t mind the MSF.) The results from this year’s recruiting class reflect that Georgetown is already starting a lap behind in the recruiting race. What’s the prognosis when two, three, or four years of PL scholarship players start lining up across the field? The other coaches know but won’t say. Neither will Coach Kelly.

Football wise, Georgetown is an outlier among the other Big East programs at the University. The prospect of the increase in TV money from Fox Sports One could open up some money in the budget to better support the team, but it may be mitigated by a decline in ticket demand—because, after all, there is no Syracuse or Pitt on the schedules to spur paying extra for seats. If Georgetown reverts to the attendance patters of the late Craig Esherick-early JTIII years, when the Verizon Center upper deck was tarped off,  that revenue loss is going to impact a lot of sports, including football.

The next few years are vital for Georgetown to define what kind of program it wants to be and if it is willing to fund it to the degree necessary wherever it can compete—in the Patriot, the NEC, or an independent (since no one seems to want the frequent flyer club known as the Pioneer League). A successful Big East in basketball can only be a positive for football's roadmap, but the road is going to be rocky.

The road could be just as unsettled at Villanova, which was within a week of joining the Big East in football in 2011 before the University of  Pittsburgh tabled the motion, right before the Syracuse-Pitt skullduggery with ESPN and the ACC blew up the idea of expansion from within. Where would the Wildcats be today had that vote going through? Sitting alongside UConn and Temple in the American Athletic Conference (AAC)? Or would the ACC have reached out to capture the Philadelphia market? Whatever the scenario, reality is not so cheery.

Villanova spends approximately $5.3 million on its football program, and in 2009 it paid off with a Division I-AA national title. Its football home in the Colonial Athletic Association gives it a front row seat for an at-large bid, but the CAA is in its own turf fight over realignment. Massachusetts has left for the MAC, James Madison has eyed the Sun Belt, and the New England schools continue to muddle through an overall lack of facilities and funding relative to their southern neighbors.

The Wildcats get a Division I-A game nearly every year, an annual game with Delaware that always draw well, and more often than not, a ticket to the NCAA I-AA playoffs…but at a significant, multi-million loss to the athletic department’s bottom line. In the new conference order, can the Cats keep this up?

Head coach Andy Talley has been resolute to stay in the CAA, and the Wildcats may well do so. Some have floated the concept of the Patriot league, though the mere idea of taking a step down in the PL can lead to all sorts of consequences. Richmond learned this the hard way when its president, former GU provost William Cooper, was drummed out of his post a decade ago following his recommendation that Richmond consider joining the Patriot League. No one from UR has pushed it forward since.

And, of course, it’s not like the PL would save Villanova any money, as the 60-scholarship league is just as expensive, but with a major competitive firewall, namely the PL’s academic index (AI). It’s unknown how many of Villanova’s players would even meet the stringent requirements of an AI, but Talley is in no hurry to find out.

What was said about Georgetown could apply to Villanova as well: the next few years are vital to define what kind of program it wants to be. While it seems that I-A is off the table, a successful Big East in basketball can only be a positive for football, but the road to get there is not altogether certain.

A third intercollegiate team is now on the Big East landscape. A school which once played in Division I-A’s Missouri Valley Conference before 36,000 at its on-campus bowl, Butler settled into the small college ranks after World War II and remained there until 1993, when it joined the Pioneer League. For many years, Butler’s program mimicked the state of the Butler Bowl, which has slowly but inexorably been falling apart for years. By the mid-2000’s, the south stands (early converted to an amphitheater) had been torn down, the east side was bulldozed for apartments, and the remaining seating was just 30 yards wide.

The  renovated Butler Bowl now seats 5,600 and the Bulldogs have begun to reassert themselves in the Pioneer, which now holds an annual ticket to the I-AA playoffs. With a budget of  just $648,000, football remains a low cost option to maintain football at the campus, mindful of the national growth of the basketball program up the hill at the field house. With the move to the Big East,  Butler’s overall athletic budget will be the smallest in the conference at just $15 million, but an influx of TV money offers the opportunity to upgrade a number of sports. Is football one of them, or is increased football expenditures in conflict with the goal of upgrading teams playing in the Big East?

The three schools don’t seem to share much in common. But they are now part of a conference that, to date, has not embraced the role football plays at their schools.  And while the Big East isn’t adding football as a conference sport for a variety of reasons, is there an opportunity for these three schools to commit to a scheduling agreement?

For Georgetown, this would mean two new games on the calendar each year against their Big East brethren, with alternating trips to Philadelphia and Indianapolis. While trading Marist and Wagner for Villanova and Butler would probably not upset anyone on the Hilltop, Villanova’s situation is much more complex. The Wildcats are committed to eight CAA games a season, with a solid non-conference schedule that usually includes a I-A team like Temple, Pennsylvania, and a Patriot League opponent. Villanova would be initially unlikely to give up two local opponents to play schools like Georgetown or Butler. Yes, it would likely be two comfortable wins given the funding disparities, but Big Five rivalries are thicker than blood or water.

Butler would also have some decisions to make. The Pioneer schedule is now eight games as well—while Butler has started to add Ivy opponents (Dartmouth is visiting Indianapolis this season), it continued to schedule one or two games each year against smaller college teams in Indiana to keep travel costs down. Would it add another plane trip (to the four it must make in the Pioneer) to travel east each year?

But as we’ve all learned over the last few years, nothing is set in stone when it comes to football. While the three schools don’t figure to see each other right now, it’s worth a look down the road, one which the conference itself might want to tacitly promote. Obviously, the Big East cared less when Georgetown and St. John’s competed in the MAAC, but as these three schools continue to play football amidst a changing basketball landscape, it might be a further opportunity to enhance rivalries that will now extend into basketball season and beyond.

In part 2, three more Big East schools with football ambitions, but at the club level. What is the future of football at Marquette, Xavier, and DePaul?

The Price Of Progress

Press releases. Videos. Online chats with the coaches. A corporate sponsor. No, this isn't Tuscaloosa or State College, but Easton, PA.

Welcome to "Lafayette Football National Signing Day, Presented By Coke Zero".

And welcome to Patriot League scholarship football.

This is the day that six PL coaches have awaited since last February, when six league presidents (and one notable dissent) opened the door for scholarship football for the land of what was once "The Last Amateurs". Much like its I-A brethren, the quotes from the coaches sell the day as "the best class ever", a veritable Lake Woebegone of talent ("where everyone is above average".)

"The decision of the Patriot League to offer merit aid scholarships made recruiting different in that it simplified the process for certain families," said Bucknell coach Joe Susan. "Our ability to attract the best and the brightest has always been the focal point of our recruiting and that continued this year. The challenge of recruiting young men who can balance the requirements of a rigorous undergraduate education with playing Division I football is what is rewarding about this process."

"[Scholarships] enabled us to go after a Division I player or a Division I-AA scholarship player who maybe, financially, you weren't able to go after,” said Dick Biddle at Colgate.

Lehigh's Andy Coen told the Easton Express-Times that "Really as you look at where we’ve been in the playoffs two of last three years, the big differences for us and where we’ve lost it at North Dakota (24-0) and Delaware (42-20) has been at the line of scrimmage. For us to be able to recruit [300 lb.] kids I think are that level of linemen is real important.”

And back at Lafayette, Frank Tavani is still catching a break from this schedule of activities, all of which were streamed online:

11 a.m. GoLeopards.com Chat Room with Head Coach Frank Tavani
12 p.m. LIVE from Bourger Varsity Football House
1 p.m. - LSN team breaks down commitment film
2 p.m. - LSN team breaks down commitment film
3 p.m. - Offensive Coordinator Mickey Fein
4 p.m. - Defensive Coordinator John Loose
5 p.m. - Director of Admissions, Matthew Hyde
5:30 p.m. - The Wrap-Up Show, presented by Coke Zero
6:15 p.m. - Coach Tavani live on ESPN Radio of the Lehigh Valley (1230 and 1320 AM)

"We have access to student-athletes that are being recruited heavily by the Ivy League and the Colonial Athletic Association," Tavani told an online chat. "The other thing that's a huge difference is that the pool has just expanded by making middle class America available...We were able to make a significant impact, particularly with those families with low to no financial need."

"We are working on getting Army and Navy back on the schedule as well as Delaware, Villanova and possibly a...game at Rutgers," he added, though Tavani knows that none of that will matter if Lafayette can't turn it around versus the Engineers in November.

All in all, lots of fun for these schools. So how much does all this cost?

About $900,000.

No, not for the online chats and the videos, but the cost to offer these 15 scholarships (in whatever combination of full and partial grants the schools choose) will cost the six schools $900,000 per school, a combined total of just under $5.4 million. And just for this year. Next year, another $900,000 per school. And the next year. And so on, and so on.

(And now you remember why Jack DeGioia wasn't on board.)

Yes, these schools are paying a price to compete with Delaware as well as Dartmouth, Youngstown State as well as Yale.The $4 million-plus budgets which these six schools will move to in football (and most are already there, with Fordham and Colgate nearing $5 million) are more than Georgetown spends on any of 28 different sports, one obvious team excepted. Put another way, the $900,000 in first year scholarships could fund a range of Georgetown teams from tennis and golf to swimming and softball.

So why do they do it? In part, the lure of competition and the dread that the PL is becoming irrelevant in football drives the discussion; others, mindful of the threats Fordham made that it would leave the league without it, is a sense of self-preservation. Of 125-odd Division I teams, 104 offer scholarships just like Colgate, Lehigh, et al. In a way that is academically palatable to the schools, it raises the playing field for a sport that is the "bread and butter" program at these six schools.

Just 21 non-scholarship schools remain nationally, and just ten in the East: eight Ivies, Marist, and Georgetown. Which raises a variety of questions, but for today, three:

1. What was the impact to Georgetown in its recruiting effort? No coach is going to undersell his list, but it's likely Georgetown got the worst of it this year. Not all recruits are online just yet, but there are numerous articles about how someone chose school X "over Georgetown". Happens all the time, of course, but it's more visible this year because of need.

The "low need" recruit (academic parlance for what used to be called "wealthy")  can now go to Bucknell or Colgate without paying a dime. At many of the Ivies, tuition is capped at 10% of cost for households under $200,000, meaning an offer for Princeton or Harvard is no more than $20,000 a year for a family who might have paid twice that for a prep or boarding school.  Georgetown can't match either.

The "medium need" recruit who was formerly expected to pay half of his tuition to play PL football also can get a free ride at Lehigh or Holy Cross, and if an Ivy offer is forthcoming, the 10% rule could provide a family with a $60,000 household income a bargain at $6,000 a year, while three Ivies will simply cover the cost with an outright grant. Anywhere else, it's called a full scholarship. At Georgetown, expect to pay $30,000.

The "high need" recruit is likely to get a favorable offer no matter where he goes. Fordham or Lafayette makes it simple: you're in. The Ivies, in. Georgetown can offer full need but it's a mix of grant, loan, and work study unless that's bought out. In this cohort, Georgetown wins some, loses others, just like it always does. But for those 50% of families making more than the national average of $45,000 a year, the idea of paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend Georgeotwn just got as little more difficult to justify, especially when Bucknell or lehigh or Holy Cross can tell that same recruit "you don't have to pay here."

2. What is the impact to Georgetown in its recruiting effort going forward? There's a learning curve in college recruiting in any sport, both for the school and for the recruit. The coaches that went through this first round learned a little more about what to do, and what not to do. Next year's recruits will know a little more about which PL schools are recruiting with schoalrships and which one is not. I have to believe more than a few recruits and their parents asked coaches Kelly, Sgarlata et al.: "Do you offer scholarships?" University philosophy notwithstanding, it's not easy to convey to a parent whose son may be very interested in attending  an inconvenient truth: we can't afford to give your son a free ride. Unfortunately, others do..and others will.

3. What is the competitive impact to Georgetown going forward? Ship, meet iceberg. This was the year the Hoya program felt the "bump". But of course, the damage follows.
True, you don't absolutely need scholarships to compete (hey, they beat Howard, right?) and Georgetown held its own with a 40 scholarship program at Wagner and a talented Ivy program at Princeton last year. But for fans in 2009 who saw the Hoyas stare across the lines at Richmond or Old Dominion and quickly lose hope, bear in mind that in three more years, Bucknell, Colgate, Fordham, Holy Cross, Lafayette and Lehigh will be at or near the same scholarship levels enjoyed by those two schools during the Hoyas 0-11 season. And while nothing's set in stone, if these schools are recruiting the same level of kids Richmond does, the results will play out on the field.

Yes, not every scholarship recruit meets expectations. Colgate is proud of signing five Rivals.com two-star recruits this year, and Georgetown fans know well that two-stars does not dennote, well, stars. In the Kelly era, Georgetown signed ten Rivals two-star recruits, and only one (QB/TE Tucker Stafford) played more than two seasons. Three of the last four (Conor Randall, Andrew Sachais, Joe Rosenblatt) played a total of four games combined over one season each. None of the ten were All-Patriot League.

But a better level of recruit does, in time, pay off on the field, regardless of sport. Where was Georgetown soccer when it was a non-scholarship team? Where is it now as a full scholarship team? Even with its own meager facilities, even with a budget far more modest than Big 10 or SEC or ACC schools of a similar bent, Georgetown became a national power this past year, because the best kids had the ways and the means to attend the Hilltop. And when it comes to football, the kids that have the grades and the talent are increasingly going to be wearing maroon and purple and brown instead of blue and gray.

And what happened to those games with Old Dominion and Richmond? One four year series with Georgetown cancelled after one season, another after two. (Richmond's two wins over Georgetown were by a combined 97-10). Guess what? Colgate thinks it can now compete with Richmond for recruits. Lehigh wants an offensive line that looks more like North Dakota State. Lafayette plans to play Army and Rutgers, not just Davidson and Wagner. No one is coming to Holy Cross asking why it's stadium isn't getting built.

Last year, I wrote this about the coming storm over scholarships:

"In its show of near-unanimity Monday, the PL decided it is better to march behind the Rams than keep the Hoyas in tow. Everyone in that room knew the situation Georgetown faces that the other schools don’t, the gap in funding, in facilities, and in academics that makes a 60 scholarship decision not only unpopular at Georgetown, but untenable. They could have pursued an accommodation, an acknowledgement that without some sort of graduated approach, they were pricing the Hoyas right out of the PL."

"The lack of public response to Georgetown’s specific situation makes it sound as if the league has come to peace that it is sacrificing the values of one institution for the promise of expansion and the perception it is bigger-time than its Ivy-like demeanor once suggested."

Perception may not be reality, but in recruiting, it's the next best thing.

Thirteen In '13

New year, new opportunities, and a lot of the same old concerns. With that in mind, thoughts on 13 of the pressing issues for the Hoyas into 2013.

1. The Elephant In The Room. Six Patriot League head coaches are offering schoalrships to recruits, and Kevin Kelly is not among them. That doesn't figure to change. It's not so much a subject for debate (i.e., Georgetown isn't interested in it) inasmuch as the solidifying of a competitive gap between Georgetown and the other Patriot League teams will begin to take hold and inevitably extend over the next four years. Kelly knows it, and Tavani, Coen, etc. know it as well. Fans would scoff at the idea of playing the likes of Delaware, William & Mary, Villanova, etc. without scholarships, because the competitive gap would be so huge. By 2016, the competitive gap between the CAA and PL schools will be the equivalent of 0.75 scholarships per recruiting class, or 60 vs. 63 on the team overall. Will the Hoyas be competitive in 2013? Yes. Going forward, it's an open question.

2. Starting Quarterback? 2012 began with a starter at QB and ended with a lot of unanswered questions. Don't expect the starter to be named in the spring...or the summer, or maybe by opening day. Aiken has three years in the system but would be one year starter at senior, Skon will be a junior, Nolan and MacPherson sophomores. Depth is a nice thing to have, but there needs to be a clear #1 at some point.

3. Running Back By Committee. One of the collateral liabilities of the Hoyas' recruiting effort vis a vis schoalrships is the inability to land the kind of running back that can really be a difference maker. For the better part of 10 years, Georgetown has relied on either small, quicker backs that get hurt along the way (Kim Sarin, Emir Davis, Wilburn Logan, Dalen Claytor) or athletes as converted backs (Kyle Van Fleet, Keerome Lawrence) to spark the offense, but with only one 1,000 yard season rusher in the 120+ years of the program, rushing just hasn't been very good. Nick Campanella has half of his 14 TD's over the past two sasons agaisnt one team (Davidson) and averages less than 40 yards a game in the other 20 games not involving the Wildcats. Joel Kimpela showed flashes of his talent but must commit to a strong off-season program to take the next step. Troye Bullock could be the FB the Hoyas have needed for a few years, but only if Vinny Marino can use him effectively.

4. Vinny Marino.  Marino's play calling ebbed as the injuries began to pile up. Yes, it's hard to design an offense when one, two, three, and four quarterbacks go to the bench, but as Georgetown begins to face taller and more capable opponents across the lines, the play calling must step up as well.

5. Defensive Line: Undersized, inexperienced, a step slow...all of which can be improved upon in the off season.

6. The Next Linebacker To Watch: Dustin Wharton. Has all the tools to be an All-America candidate as was Robert McCabe.

7. Jeremy Moore: Georgetown is really going to miss him, especially on returns. Would like to see Cameron Gamble and Javan Robinson take the next step to follow in Moore's footsteps.

8. Scheduling. Georgetown seems to be the one PL school who isn't looking for play-up games in the CAA or lower level I-A tier. Obviously, I-A schools won't return the call because GU lacks the equivalencies for games to be bowl-eligible, and the better schools will look for 2-1 or home-only tilts with what they perceive as lesser quality teams. Put another way, Georgetown basketball isn't returning games with Duquesne and Liberty and schools like Delaware or App State aren't penciling in the Multi-Sport Field any time soon. The 2013 schedule isn't out but it appears to be following a track very similar to 2012, needing to replace Yale but returning most of the rest. Would Georgetown take a one game road game for a higher-wattage opponent? Probably not.

9. Local Recruiting. I've always seen this as a missed opportunity for Georgetown. Yes, it's harder to avoid the facilities issues, but there are kids that, if given the chance to stay closer to home, would play, and play well, at Georgetown. Some of Scotty Glacken's better recruits of the 1970's and early 1980's were Montgomery County kids that either came to Georgetown from high school or transferred in from JC when Montgomery College fielded a team. Junior college football has all but died in the East, but the Georgetown brand could still draw better from the region's schools.

10. Local Coverage. In case you hadn't noticed, newspapers are getting out of the college sports business. There are no beat writers assigned to Georgetown football, and there won't be going forward. More efforts need to be palced in designing a more innovative way to get Georgetown coverage out there, and the one camera setup from GUHoyas.com fails noticeably, as does the price tag for such poor quality transmissions. Chuck Timanus--and the viewers--deserve better, and in doing so, it may extend the reach of the Hoyas in ways the Post, Times, and Examiner fail to do.

11. The Dark Cloud: Another year of football, another year of whistling past the MSF. That turf isn't getting any younger, those seats any less windbeaten, and those weeds aren't getting any smaller. At some point, it's time to address a fix to this mess on the campus landscape. Better to do it from within Athletics than wait for the next big academic program to cast its eyes on the property.

12. Annual Support: Great progess made in 2012. More to follow in 2013, I'm sure.

13. Strategic Planning. 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the emergence of "modern" Georgetown football. If it hasn't already, this may be the time to sketch out where this program is in the next 5, 10, 15 years. The current model seems to be circa 2000 and isn't fine-tuned to the changes about to overtake them in the Patriot League. Whether the future is Patriot League status quo, joining the NEC, some new arrangement as an independent etc., it's worth a dialogue with a variety of constituents while time is still on the Hoyas side.

A Modest Proposal: Meet The Hoya-Cats

In case you're wondering, no one left --or joined-- the Big East conference this weekend.

Which raises this question--what would it take for either Villanova or Georgetown to be a more serious player in these tectonic shifts? Football, of course, yet neither plays at the competitive level needed to either lead the Big East or be a candidate for another major conference.

So what if the two schools got together to field a Big East team?

(Please, it's only a parody. In the Internet age it doesn't take much for an story to go viral in the wrong way.)

BIG EAST Announces Debut of Georgetown University and Villanova University

In Innovative Football Partnership

PROVIDENCE, Nov. 31 -- The BIG EAST Conference has announced the addition of Georgetown University and Villanova University as a single conference entity that will compete in the BIG EAST in the sport of football.

The BIG EAST extended an invitation to S.J.-O.S.A., LLC, a joint venture between the universities, to operate a unified football team (to be known as "Georgetown and Villanova" or "G&V") comprising football student-athletes of both  universities at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of NCAA competition. G&V will begin BIG EAST football competition in the 2015 season along with the U.S. Naval Academy, who joins the league that season.

The combined team will compete under the nickname "Hoya-Cats". The team’s colors will be blue, white, and gray, reflective of the common colors of both institutions.  Each school will maintain its own records and the team will represent both universities as its sole intercollegiate football entity after the 2014 season. 

"We are very excited to welcome Georgetown University and Villanova University into the BIG EAST Conference for football," said a conference official.  "Each of these schools have a strong athletic tradition and an innovative plan of friendly competition that will help elevate our football league.  Each University is an outstanding academic institution that continue to reflect the values and responsibilities of their long held membership in the BIG EAST conference." 

Villanova and Georgetown compete within the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) of NCAA Division I football, but each lacked the resources to make a jump to the FBS under its current funding and scholarship models. The combined team will have the full scholarship and facility resources necessary to compete at the highest level of intercollegiate football and allow the BIG EAST to sponsor an even number of teams by division.

The combined FBS entity will compete at the 85 scholarship limit mandated by the FBS. Approximately 60 of the scholarships will initially be supplied by Villanova, 25 by Georgetown.  The team will host six home games annually, three at FedEx Field outside Landover, MD (Georgetown)  and three at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA (Villanova).  In addition, an annual game with Temple will alternate between home and away at Lincoln Financial Field, giving G&V seven home opportunities annually between its two cities. 

Practice facilities will be established at both schools with team offices headquartered at Villanova. 

The student-athletes are admitted to the school of their choice and will receive degrees from either Georgetown or Villanova. Through a dual degree program to be announced,  each school will offer a program whereby a student-athlete can take the first three years of classes at either Georgetown or Villanova to receive a bachelor’s degree and conclude his intercollegiate eligibility at the second school for the pursuit of an MBA.

In conjunction with the joint venture and the athletic departments of the universities, a combined coaching staff for the 2015 season will be named at a later date. The schools will continue to field a full complement of BIG EAST sports independently of each other.

With the combined addition, the BIG EAST football membership will now be in 14 states, 13 of the top 50 Nielsen media markets and eight of the top 25 media markets. The conference will have a television households reach of 31.3 million - by far the largest number in college football.

(With apologies to the memory of the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh Steagles).

Week 11 Thoughts

Some (otherwise delayed) thoughts on Holy Cross' 24-0 win over Georgetown:

1. Not With a Bang, But A...For a team which had won two straight, playing a 1-9 team that had lost five straight, and to turn in that kind of effort on offense was the equivalent of throwing a bucket of cold water on the 2012 season.

Coach Kelly was not afraid to call out the defense in mid-season, and they responded. Not so for calling out the offense, whose play calls from Vinny Marino were as predictable as they were ineffective.

Injuries? Yes, they play a role, and one can argue that the offensive game plan went out the window the moment Isaiah Kempf went off the field at Davidson. Yes, the running backs were increasingly out of service, with Durham and Claytor hurt late in the year. But the overall effort on offense was disarmingly lacking, and the over-reliance on rushing when the Hoyas were especially weak in that area (and against a HC defense that was just as suspect in the secondary as the front line) proved futile.

You don't win games when your quarterback leads in rushing yards. You don't win games when you don't complete a pass for more than 19 yards, and throw nine others for a combined 44 yards. You don't win games when your number of completed passes (11) equals the number of punts (11).

The play calling showed neither urgency nor motivation. Neither team was going to the playoffs, but relying on a running game when there was none left was especially frustrating. Think of this: three running plays totaled 45 yards. The remaining 29 totaled 46 yards against the worst rushing defense in the league...but when you know your opponent is simply running the same plays, any rushing defense can look good.

Georgetown came off the field in the 2011 finale with Lehigh bloodied but unbowed. 2012 was a different story.

2. Five For '13? Depending on whether Isaiah Kempf comes back for a redshirt senior season, Georgetown could have has many as five quarterbacks with prior experience competing for a starting job next season. Some quick thoughts on each:

• Isaiah Kempf: Efficient and effective. Kempf's a safe choice in '13, but it puts off grooming a successor for another year. 
• Aaron Aiken: More suited to a running than a passing game. As Aiken is a rising senior, I'd like to see him as a Keerome Lawrence-slot back than as a full time signal caller.
• Stephen Skon: Had his moments, but still too many interceptions (8) than touchdowns (4). 181 yards lost to sack yardage didn't help his final rushing totals, but Georgetown QB's don't have to run to be sucessful. As Skon is a rising junior, he's be an excellent platoon choice with...
• Kyle Nolan: There aren't a lot of fourth string QB's anywhere with a passing rating of 157.7--and in I-AA football, only four at any class have a higher efficiency ranking, including Colgate's Gavin McCarney (159.05). We saw what McCarney could do with a stronger offensive line and some impact receivers, and if Nolan had a little more of both there's no telling what he could do. Maybe the best in-season debut by a Georgetown freshman at QB since Aley Demarest in 1990.
• Cameron MacPherson--We didn't get to see much of MacPherson in the Holy Cross game (and at this point in the season, why not?), but MacPherson likely had little practice time this season and the expectations he would see any game time were nonexistent until about week 10. A work in progress for 2013 and he 's got some time on his side.

3. Attendance. 1,789? Really?

4. Offensive Moments Of the Year: In chronological order:

1. Wagner (Sep. 8): Aaron Aiken's 12 yard pass to Kevin Macari with under 2:00 left sets the Hoyas in position to win the game over the 2012 NEC champions with a field goal.
2. Princeton (Sep. 20): Fourth and 3 at midfield, 2:55 left. Going for it, a six yard run by Dalen Claytor gets the Hoyas into Tiger territory. If they punt, Matt MacZura may never have seen the chance to win the game.
3. Princeton (Sep. 20): Yes, he missed some field goals this season, but as moments go, MacZura's game winning field goal on ESPNU may be the most memorable play for Hoya fans since Georgetown returned to  intercollegiate football in 1964.
4. Colgate (Oct. 20): Down 37-14 at the half, Kyle Nolan throws his third TD pass of the game, 62 yards, to Kevin Macari. Georgetown would not go down without a fight, closing to 37-29 before the Red Raiders pulled away.
5. Lafayette (Oct. 27): Down four, late 4th quarter, fourth and two at midfield. No safe run here, as Nolan goes downfield for 25 yards to Jamal Davis. The Hoyas go on to convert their best comeback of the season 20-17.

5. Defensive Moments Of the Year: In chronological order:

1. Wagner (Sep. 8); Down 13-10 in the final minite, the Hoyas hold Wagner to a five yard pass on 4th and 15 to secure the win.
2. Princeton (Sep. 20): Late in the second quarter, Rohan Williamson loses a punt at the Georgetown 17, which could have been a knockout punch for the Hoyas in this one. Instead, the defense forces losses on consecutive plays, taking the Tigers out of the red zone. A 42 yard field goal to end the half goes wide, the result of which keeps Georgetown within distance of a game that it would win on that side of the field with a kick of its own.
3. Lehigh (Oct. 13): Three interceptions for Jeremy Moore and seven forced by the defense overall. Unfortunately, the Georgetown offense could convert only two of the seven into touchdowns and GU lost by three.
4. Lafayette (Oct. 27): Cameron Gamble's interception late in the game seals a record third straight win over the Leopards, all settled by defensive performances late in the game.
5. Bucknell (Nov. 10): A team effort, holding the Bison without a single third down conversion.

Stop by the blog (and the web site) during the off-season, with new columns every 2-3 weeks. Thanks for supporting the Hoyas this season.