Instead, Georgetown will play a Division III team for the first time in a quarter century. Before we ask why, we must know how this took place.
Scheduling Georgetown has never been popular in Howard football circles. Excepting "guarantee games", Howard prefers its non-conference games are held against other historically black colleges and universities (HBCU's) for the purposes of raising money for its football team and ostensibly the rest of its sports programs. A "classic" game between Howard and another HBCU could draw as many as 25,000 people, with copious amounts of corporate sponsorship to bring the band and dance teams to a community outside the Northeast. Though its schedule is not exclusively HBCU (Howard traveled to Youngstown State last week and to Harvard next month), a game with Georgetown in football is like Georgetown playing GW in basketball--not a lot to gain, but a lot to lose.
When London left for William & Mary after the 2018 season, new coach Mike Prince saw an opportunity to schedule Hampton (having left the MEAC for the Big South) and pick up a corporate payday. Goodbye "Mayor's Cup IV", hello, "Chicago Football Classic".
Howard was out. But there now was a hole in a Georgetown schedule, a schedule which wasn't strong to begin with. Instead of casting a net for I-AA schools with an open week on September 14 or September 21 (Georgetown's bye week), it stayed small time. Very small. While Georgetown could have potentially worked a deal with Western Carolina, Cal Poly, Youngstown State, or 12 other schools looking for games in week 3 earlier this spring, that would have come with a cost--none of these schools would accept a game on the Cooper construction lot, and the travel costs to places like Cullowhee, NC or San Luis Obispo, CA would cost Georgetown money and weren't going to be met by a corporate sponsor. Instead, the fan-unfriendly confines of Cooper Field will welcome Division III Catholic University Saturday for the first time since, well, since Rob Sgarlata was a starter in the Georgetown backfield and Cooper Field was part of the New South parking lot.
Byproducts of the club football era, the schools played 26 times between 1966 and 1993, with Georgetown winning 17 of them and eight of the last 10. With the Hoyas' move out of Division III and into the MAAC after the 1992 season, the teams played one final time on October 30, 1993, an unremarkable 10-0 Georgetown win that retired the Steve Dean Memorial Trophy.
The Catholic team that arrives on the bus Saturday bears scant resemblance to that 1993 team. The Cardinals now compete in a league known as the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, with most opponents in Massachusetts, Maine, or Vermont. The Cardinals were 1-9 last season in the NEWMAC and lost its opener last week to Kenyon (OH), 32-31. Last year's CUA team traveled to Utica, NY for its week 2 game, so a visit to Georgetown isn't unwelcome given its own travel budget.
Short of the final score, it's a no-lose situation for a program that hasn't posted a winning season since 2013. But what does it mean for Georgetown? Is this the best the Hoyas can do?
Many fans ignore the low-wattage schedules the Hoyas build as an opportunity to get a winning season. Better to beat Marist than get slaughtered by Maryland, a false choice notwithstanding. But the Hoyas' arcane scheduling patterns are increasingly contrary to that employed by the Patriot League and increasingly the Northeast Conference, a group of schools like Duquesne, St. Francis, Wagner, etc. that are no less competitive than GU but which has suddenly attracted major college opponents.
Let's start with the PL, whose out of conference record to date is 2-12 but which has seen its teams face the likes of Air Force, Navy, Temple, and Villanova. What these teams lose in outcomes they are gaining on recruiting, fan interest, and the game experience against better competition.
Six PL teams now up-schedule with I-A opponents, and one does not. I'm sure that playing Syracuse at the Carrier Dome does not fit the "ethos and culture of Georgetown" but the other six schools provide its opponents something Georgetown does not--a win for bowl eligibility.
And so do Northeast schools, despite a scholarship limit 20 below the PL. Former Division III opponents like Duquesne (with future games against Coastal Carolina, Charlotte, Hawaii and West Virginia through 2024), Robert Morris (Buffalo), St. Francis (Eastern Michigan, Akron) and Wagner (UConn, Miami) are all jumping into the pool. Even LIU, a Division II school joining the NEC, has already lined up a game at West Virginia in 2021.
I'm not arguing Georgetown needs to play West Virginia to be relevant. Howard's foray into Byrd Stadium meted a 79-0 outcome, the second largest margin for an opening game in I-A since 2000. But as Northeast schools continue to realign their early season schedules to major opponents, it reduces the pool of available games to which Georgetown is a candidate for.
What about Ivy League schools? Ivy schools don't schedule any opponents in the first three weeks of the season and are themselves increasingly looking beyond the Patriot League for who they do play, though not at the same competitive levels as the PL and NEC. But as PL and NEC schools fill their schedules, Georgetown either has to go further away from the Northeast to find opponents, something they have not shown they are willing to do, or load up on fan-agnostic opponents that are regularly among the 10 or 15 worst teams in the nation by statistical rankings.
Or they could get stuck with Division III games, which is a net negative on the reputation of the University to recruits and other opponents? What does it say when a Holy Cross coach can discuss their games at Boston College and UConn to a recruit and Georgetown is left with filling a schedule with such lightly regarded opponents?
Georgetown has chosen not to competitively schedule outside the non-scholarship ranks for a decade, so we should not be altogether surprised with a 2019 lineup of Davidson, Marist, and Catholic that is lamentable compared to its fellow PL schools. Even lowly Bucknell will feature the likes of Temple, Villanova, and Princeton on its 2019 slate.
A new(er) Cooper Field might help. A winning record might help. But in the end, there are less fish in the sea from which to land opponents in the years to come, none moreso than for a program with a record of conservative scheduling that has offered little in return.
It's not 1993 anymore. Georgetown can and must aim higher for its scheduling in the years to come, to give the fans something it has lacked for years--something to look forward to.
"You are what your schedule says you are," says the football proverb. Scheduling is identity. What is Georgetown's identity?
