An article in the September 28 issue of the Georgetown Voice confirmed what many of us at a distance probably knew all along: Cooper Field is not a very good place to watch a college football game.
Oh, it is far better than its predecessor: the wayward Kehoe Field reconstruction was a 1970s workaround that was never going to last. And for those of us who followed the two decades of University over-promises and chronic under-deliveries of all that was the Multi-Sport Facility, today's Cooper Field will never meet those initial expectations, and is a monument of sorts to the administrative Tweed ring that didn't want the project on its permanent record. All that aside, it is what is, and serves its purpose, though as it was once suggested, it is more valuable to Georgetown for what is underneath the stands (locker rooms) than what is above it (seating).
The article pointed out three issues that will lead to some more commentary on this moving forward.
1. You can't get students to attend a game if they are unaware of it. Promotion of home football games is largely nonexistent. There is no signage, no banners in the Leavey Center, nothing. It's like going to a concert: you're unlikely to go on your own and even less likely to go if you don't know when it is. Add in the general malaise of Georgetown sports teams (read=men's basketball) over the collegiate life span of today's students, and absent awareness of the product, they will not wander over to see it.
A root cause for promotion also leads to a Tweed ring of sorts. In earlier times you could count on, at least, an article in the Voice or The HOYA, but the former prints an issue only monthly and the latter's issue seems to come out when they get around to it. You could look to Hoya Blue, but their last Twitter post as April 4 and its Instagram feed this fall is largely reposts from the soccer team.
The staff? Well, this would presume as to which staff you're talking about. The athletic department has no promotions staff per se, at least not one without men's basketball or a paid promotion. The Alumni Association staff works for the Office of Advancement, which isn't promoting athletic events beyond Homecoming. The Student Association? Forget it.
2. Once students get there, what is there to do? In many cases, very little. The band and cheerleaders, which formerly assumed seating as fans walked inside the stands (temporary or otherwise) have now been sent north to the far reaches of the stands adjacent to the Hariri Building-- inaudible under the needless PA system blasting out "Crazy Train" on second down and out of sight to students walking up and wondering where everyone is.
Are there promotions for student attendance: a free t-shirt, a field goal try for free books, that sort of stuff? No. Is GUGS there? No. How about a tailgate for students? No.
And then there's the fact that Cooper Field is visually unfriendly to Generation Z, being the only stadium in the Patriot League without so much as a basic video board, one which was promoted in Multi-Sport Facility plans as early as 2003. Millions for basketball, but no money for a video board, and thus fans are left to rely on that soccer scoreboard built in 1992 to follow the game.
Concessions are, well, underwhelming. At the Columbia game, I stood in line to order a hot dog which, I kid you not, looked like a two inch sausage link you would see at breakfast. Pre-game promotions, food trucks, songs that were written after, say, 1985, and basic Fan Interaction 101 all seem lost at these games, and that won't attract a generation to which group activities are still a little foreign having spent their formative years sitting alone in their room and staying away from people.
3. The most visible lack of interaction is community. Cooper Field was built with "sections" but no assigned seating, and that goes for students. Once they go there, where will their friends be?
Way back when, our freshman dorm floor had four or five players on the team, and we made it a point to sit as a group and cheer them on if any of them got into the game. I noted this in the Columbia game when nine or ten students filled up the row where I was sitting and seemed interested in getting up some spirit, or maybe they had some spirits of their own beforehand.
One of them started a cheer for Giancarlo Rufo. "Rufo!" he said. "Ruuuufo! "RUUUFFFO!" and the nearby fans seem to enjoy it. Spontaneous? Sure. Silly? Perhaps. But fun.
Georgetown University clams to be a lot of things, but fun generally isn't high on that list. There aren't going to be many memories for the Class of 2025 staring at Instagram or in the Pierce Reading Room. Three hours on a Saturday afternoon couldn't hurt. Getting outside and having a little fun at a game like this might be a welcome Saturday diversion from saving the environment and exploring the impact of health equity on indigenous populations in Oklahoma.
Tiara Haggins, the author of the Voice piece, ended her story as follows:
"Although football isn’t our main sport, these changes would be a good start to building a real student section—even if we aren’t good. You can have school spirit and never win—just think of our men’s basketball team, they only won nine of the 32 games they played last year, yet my seniors say the stands are always radiating with energy.
I believe Hoya Blue and Athletics have a responsibility to make games more enjoyable so more students will come. But more than that, I hope that students make an effort to show up and show out at our games. Football is only as much fun as you get out of it. We can revitalize the student section of our football games. It will be difficult, but think of how much fun they could be! Almost as fun, I imagine, as our basketball games.
We may not be good at football, but we’ll never know if our team could’ve been better with just a little bit of crowd support."
That journey begins with a first step. Let's start.