Scheduling Blues

The off-season is but one month old and six of the seven Patriot League schools already have their schedules all but set. Here are the out of conference schedules for Patriot League teams in 2020:

Bucknell
09/04 - at Army
09/12 - Villanova
09/26 - at Princeton
10/03 - Cornell
10/10 - TBD

Colgate:
09/05 - at Western Michigan
09/12 - at William & Mary
09/19 - at Syracuse
09/26 - New Hampshire
10/17 - Cornell

Fordham:
08/29 - Stony Brook
09/05 - Bryant
09/12 - at Hawaii
09/26 - at Monmouth
10/10 - at Wagner

Holy Cross:
09/05 - at Boston College
09/19 - Yale
09/26 - TBD
10/03 - at Harvard
10/10 - Brown

Lafayette:
09/05 - at Sacred Heart
09/12 - at Navy
09/19 - William & Mary
09/26 - at Pennsylvania
10/17 - Harvard

Lehigh
09/05 - at Villanova
09/19 - Columbia
09/26 - LIU
10/03 - at Yale
10/24 - at St. Francis

And Georgetown? Just one announced game, a September 26 home game with Columbia that marks the last home game in the eight year series between the teams which ends after 2021. It's likely Georgetown will play none of the other 21 opponents Patriot League schools have secured for next season.

Yes, they will find opponents. No, they will not be of any interest by the casual Georgetown fan. The lack of scheduling foresight by Georgetown continues to be an impediment to program growth.

Earlier this season, we wrote about the logjam Georgetown faces in scheduling, a confluence of low budget, low aspirations, and bad timing. Georgetown is not willing to spend money on road games beyond a bus trip, it is reticent of games against scholarship opponents, and those remaining low-wattage Northeastern teams that are in the cohort are all scheduling up--that is, they don't need to play Georgetown in September.

The blinders of non-scholarship football at Georgetown cannot be ignored in scheduling. When once there were as many as 30 non-scholarship opponents in the Northeast to choose from, in 2020 there are just nine, of which eight do not play for the first three weeks of the season. Outside of the Ivies, there are just two non-scholarship Division I teams within 450 miles of the Hilltop, and GU already plays them both--Marist and Davidson. But there are five non-conference games a year, and therein lies a problem very much of Georgetown's own choosing.

How about some of the other non-conference foes already on PL schedules in 2020? Let's skip past the BC and Syracuse's of the world as a practical matter.

Example #1: Wagner (October 10 at Fordham). The Seahawks were on Georgetown's schedule from 2010 to 2014, a reasonably competitive series. Would they be a suitable opponent for Georgetown in Week 2 (Sept. 12), assuming Georgetown opens Cooper Field II with the likes of Davidson or Catholic?

No chance. Wagner is taking a payday to play the University of Miami, with a likely guarantee game in the $300,000 range. That's certainly not in the ethos and culture of Georgetown, but it's not like Miami called Georgetown, either.

Example #2: William & Mary (Sept. 19, hosting Lafayette). If there was ever a CAA team which looks good in the Georgetown football mirror, it would be W&M. The Tribe isn't too big, it's situated in a colonial village all its own, already plays PL teams, and is a two hour bus trip away.  Check, check, and check.

But since Georgetown got thumped by Richmond by a collective 97-10 in the 2008 and 2009 seasons, CAA teams haven't returned to the schedule and with two PL teams already on the 2020 W&M ledger, they certainly don't need another one.

Washington is not in their plans. Palo Alto is. W&M opens its season at September 5 at Stanford in a matchup of two teams that used to be called the Indians but have little else in common. No one in Williamsburg is arguing that it should be playing Georgetown instead of a recruiting visit to Northern California, a trip paid for by an opponent whose athletics endowment that pays out as much in a year in returns as is Georgetown's entire annual athletic budget.

Example #3: LIU (Sept. 26 at Lehigh). Remember C.W. Post, that Division II school just north of the Jericho Turnpike? Would they play Georgetown, much like Stony Brook once did and give New York fans a second local game for the Hoyas in 2020?

Post has since rebranded as Long Island University and jumped right into I-AA football last year, taking advantage of a loophole that LIU's Brooklyn campus was already in Division I. To no surprise, they finished 0-10, but are not scheduling from a position of weakness. Once known as the Pioneers, the newly rebranded Sharks (I was hoping for the "Railroaders") travel to Montana State, Delaware, and Lehigh in 2020.

On the future schedules for LIU? West Virginia, Toledo, Miami (OH)  and the University of Ohio - four losses with a check attached to each.

Example #4: Villanova (Sept. 12 at Bucknell): While the Wildcats haven't front-loaded on I-A opponents, they certainly can get them, with an upcoming visit to Penn State in 2021. But Villanova has still been able to schedule the entire PL save Holy Cross over the past decade, but can't find their way to dial the 202 area code. This past season, the Wildcats were 3-0 over Bucknell, Colgate, and Lehigh en route to the NCAA playoffs.

While Andy Talley has moved on, the same business model applies at it pertains to Georgetown: it's a no-win proposition for the Wildcats. Playing the Hoyas in football is the equivalent of Georgetown playing Holy Cross in basketball: wins, and it's expected, lose, and someone is going to be on the hot seat. A trip to and from Bucknell is 150 miles each way--beat the Bison and be home by dinner. Giving up a short trip in each of fans to play in Washington, even with the promise of Cooper Field II, is a non-starter for now.

If Georgetown and Villanova still aren't on speaking terms, how about the other Big East I-AA football team? Butler checks the boxes (no scholarship, not likely to overwhelm their opponents, no guarantee required). But they fail the bus test. Since 1980, Georgetown has traveled just once to an opponent west of Pittsburgh.

Not that it hasn't stopped the Bulldogs from going on the road themselves. They'll open the 2020 schedule at Target Field in Minneapolis versus perennial I-AA power North Dakota State. The remainder of their non-conference schedule features a first ever trip to Princeton and two home games against small Indiana colleges because, well, the Butler Bowl isn't exactly the Yale Bowl, and it's not even a bowl anymore.

In September, we wrote that "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."

That hasn't changed.

If I had to pick one Patriot League school to copy a non-conference schedule over in 2020, give me Bucknell. Show me the excitement of fans to see Georgetown travel to West Point, to host a game  with Villanova, and bookend the first month of the season with Princeton and Cornell. Instead, Davidson, Marist, Catholic and Columbia put the fan base to sleep and continues the soft bigotry of low expectations around a program which deserves much better.

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."