"The significant problems we face cannot be
solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”--Albert Einstein
Entering its 25th season of Patriot League football this
fall, upcoming changes to Patriot League football figure to test a competitive
model at Georgetown
University that has
largely been unchanged in decades.
With an alchemy of philosophical, institutional, and
financial constraints, Georgetown is one of just two Division I schools in the
East playing nonscholarship football outside of the Ivy League, and is the only
nonscholarship program in all of Division I competing in a scholarship
conference. That the Hoyas have been able to compete in the Patriot has been
due in no small part to the resolve of its coaches and players, but the league
is poised for a significant upgrade in the years to come.
The arrival of two, perhaps three new member schools is one
part of the change, but revisions to the league bylaws put additional scrutiny
on how the Georgetown model, once dubbed as "football for fun", will
compete going forward in recruiting, admissions, and ultimately for wins.
In the midst of the uncertainty of NIL and pressure on men's
basketball to support the budget at-large, there are no clear paths to
determine which tactics are best aligned to a strategy to meet competitive and
institutional obligations. Priorities that once relegated football within a
narrow definition of the "ethos and culture" of Georgetown require a second look to see what
can be retained, and what must be realigned for the future.
To address a problem, of course, first one must identify
that there is a problem.
Plainly speaking, Georgetown's
25 years in the Patriot League have been a challenging (at best) exercise in
competing against better funded programs to whom it does not compete on a level
playing field in terms of resources or results. Since 2001, Georgetown is 29-111 against PL teams. In
almost any other program, that would be wholly unacceptable. It's not that Georgetown can't do so,
but often times it has chose not to.
The Rubik's cube analogy is especially appropriate here. The
balance of recruiting, admissions, retention, staff, facilities, and
competitive outcomes are all weighted against drivers that are equal parts
experiential (a worthwhile student experience), expectational (a record of
success worthy of the effort) and economic. A coach, an athletic director and
even a president at Georgetown
is expected to make it all work, in every sport, and at every time.
However daunting at times, the Frank Rienzo-era model of Georgetown athletics has,
for the most part succeeded, but 2025 is not 1975. Football is a visible example
of this. Even if Georgetown doesn't seek to
compete with Auburn or Syracuse,
how can it even compete with Richmond
or William & Mary on a 50 year old competitive model?
This column, in three parts, will attempt to raise issues
through a nine-box chart, comparing opportunities based on cost versus program
change. It's not a risk model in that neither cost nor program change is
inherently more or less risk-averse, but that competitive improvements come
with an impact to the model to which a sport is situated at Georgetown. Some are optimal, some are
disruptive, and still others may never gain the momentum to act upon it, but they
bear discussion.
In part one, let's look at three issues with relatively
little cost to the Georgetown
football model, but with some degree of program change.
1. Local recruiting (low cost, low program change).
All politics is local, so they say, and so is football.
Take a look at the Georgetown
roster of 2024. Just one player played high school ball in the District,
another five played inside the Beltway. Georgetown
is not even an afterthought to the All-Met or all-conference selections among
nearly 200 high school programs in the region, and not merely the ESPN Top 300
selections for whom a major college program offers opportunities to play in the
NFL. Of the top 20 teams in the Washington Post's 2024 high school rankings,
just one current GU player graduated from one of these schools. In the past 10
seasons, a total of just seven Georgetown
players are alumni of any of these 20 high
schools.
This is not new to football or to the University. For much
of the 20th century, Georgetown took a patrician view of local high schools,
passing over most public school applicants (before and after desegregation) and
limiting its private school interest to a coterie of schools such as Gonzaga,
St. John's, Landon, or Georgetown Prep, ostensibly over grades and academic
reputation. Outside a period in the early 1970s where Georgetown
picked up recruits from the now-defunct football program at Montgomery Junior College, local recruiting in football remains an
anomaly.
Today, a competitive FCS-level candidate from Good Counsel,
Churchill, or DeMatha would be more likely to end up on a roster at Holy Cross
or Lehigh than Georgetown.
The 2024 Villanova roster has more Washington
kids than Georgetown
does. So does Richmond.
For the majority of its PL existence, Georgetown could shrug its shoulders and
point to the Patriot League Academic index as the governor on local recruiting.
For the first 20 years of PL football at Georgetown, the restrictions that
limited Georgetown to a narrow subset of recruitable athletes based on GPA and
SATs within one standard deviation of the admitted pool of students largely
wiped away any recruit below a 1200 SAT, and that was a lion's share of the
local market. Even if one were to have the numbers, Georgetown's
competitive standing would lead the high-score recruits elsewhere.
Quietly, this has changed.
The Patriot League began to take a look at SAT's during
COVID, where six of the seven schools (Georgetown
excepted) went test optional. In 2023, the NCAA ruled that SAT scores were no
longer required for eligibility. By late 2024, references in the Patriot League
bylaws were revised from "Academic Index" guidelines to "Narrative
Reporting". By many accounts, the banding of recruits to a strict index is
no longer maintained.
While no one will say so publicly, this subtle change, along
with expected changes to the league's redshirting policy, persuaded Richmond and William &
Mary that PL football would not be a competitive stranglehold on the recruiting
bases it already maintains.
Potentially, this change should open the recruiting window a
little wider on Georgetown
recruits, including local ones, to whom the GU staff could not even look at
before, but to whom its financial aid would be otherwise competitive among
lower-income and Pell Grant eligible applicants (the latter of which is a
public priority of the University at large). This is not to suggest that
low-performing rockheads are suddenly in the consideration set, only that the coaches can cast a wider net at talent to whom the opportunity to study and compete at
Georgetown is no longer a deal-breaker. But will it?
The lack of an academic index is not the salvation of Georgetown recruiting:
it's still an difficult proposition to attract talent without sustained
success. I have called it the Cornell paradox-- a top prospect with an offer to
Harvard or Princeton wouldn't go to Ithaca
because the Big Red aren't successful, even if the aid was comparable. Cornell
hasn't won an outright Ivy title ever and its last shared title was 35 years
ago. The Big Red have 32 wins in the past 10 years, the Hoyas 35.
To paraphrase an old argument, before you win the game, you
must win the recruit. However, successful programs are built with a local (or
regional) foundation: an Alabama or a Penn State
can recruit nationally, but they had better in the mix for every top recruit in
the state. To the degree Georgetown
can be a realistic option for local and regional talent, it needs a foundation.
Georgetown
has posted only 17 first team all PL selections since 2001. Of these, one was a
local product. There is too much talent in the region not to prioritize local
recruiting and not just settle for the boarding schools and the second team
all-county selections to compete in today's Patriot League.
Recruiting is about relationships, and the turnover in
assistant coaches doesn't make that job any easier for the Hoyas. (On its web
site, a page titled "Who Recruits My State" lists Steve Thames as the
contact for DC and suburban Maryland;
unfortunately, Thames left Georgetown for Rutgers two seasons ago.) Assistant coaches can't go very
deep with dozens, if not hundreds of high schools in their assigned region, and
must rely on the trust built with high school coaches who understand the PL
model and Georgetown's
place within it. The Hoyas' two veteran assistants (Rob Spence, Kevin Doherty)
recruit the tried and true of Georgetown
recruiting: the New York Tri-State area and New England. However, fewer players are coming from this
region: in 1996, 44 members of the team came from either New
York or New Jersey.
In 2024, just 12. Personally, I'd like to see more signees from Texas and Florida,
but that comes with a cost.
Local recruiting remains a low cost, value-added
approach and one which could open the door to more talented recruits that want
to make a difference close to home.
2. Focus On The Transfer Portal (low cost, moderate program change).
One of the unfortunate byproducts of this era is the
transitory nature of college athletes through the increasingly volatile NCAA
transfer portal. Between the transfer
portal and name, image, and likeness, the tenures of the four year player is an
increasingly rare one in Division I athletics.
Georgetown
University is not immune
to these trends, and not just in the revolving door that is men's basketball. The
transfer portal opens for baseball today and players from a lot of teams, Georgetown included, will
be out the door. Head baseball coach Edwin Thompson hasn't hesitated to make
his case online.
"We welcome anyone interested that is looking to come
play @GtownBaseball," he wrote on Twitter. "Want a chance to develop
on the field? Get a world class degree? Come grow in Washington D.C. Come join us for the next
chapter! DM’s are wide open!"
By contrast, Georgetown
football hasn't made inbound transfers a priority.
It's still "Four for 40" for Rob Sgarlata and
staff, not "One or two for 40"
and that's understandable--he's been with the program for 35 years and
understands the importance of class ties that extends from one's arrival as
freshmen right through life as alumni. As a result, the four year development is
part of the program's fabric: more than many programs, most Georgetown underclassmen won't see the
starting lineup until their junior season. To bring someone into the starting
lineup that didn't go through one, two, or three years learning the ropes is a
big change, but an increasingly necessary one in this era of college football.
Georgetown
has accepted transfers in the past, but few if any have been game changers as
the program goes. Most of the transfers over the years have been walk-ons at
FBS programs that didn't get time there, and many didn't get time at Georgetown, either. I
recall one WAC transfer in the mid-2000s who arrived that summer and didn't
even make the team (though he stayed to graduate), another was a kicker from the
University of Texas that played in the Georgetown spring game but then transferred
back to Texas and finished his degree there. The current team's most notable inbound
transfer is WR Nick Dunneman, but he arrived from a Division III program. More
often than not, transfer admissions have been rare at Georgetown and not changed the trajectory of
their respective teams.
Other PL schools have seen an impact from transfers. The
2024 Patriot League offensive player of the year was Bucknell QB Ralph Rucker, was
a transfer from Oklahoma. Fordham
quarterback J.J. Montes arrived from New
Mexico and was a Walter Payton finalist in 2023. But what the portal giveth, however, it can taketh
away: Lafayette lost nine players this past
season to transfers, Richmond
lost ten. Lafayette
head coach John Troxell told the student newspaper what is driving this.
"Agents [are] becoming more active in communicating
with players [which] gives them an enticing opportunity to leave and chase
money or a higher level,” he said. “We lost more guys [in 2024] than we lost
probably in the first two years combined."
"My ultimate goal is to become a pro,” said all-PL first
team RB Jamar Curtis, who left Lafayette and is now enrolled at Sacramento State.
"I’ve got a better chance of reaching my potential and our goals
from where I’m at now.”
Georgetown
is unlikely to be the place for such aspirations, but there is a sweet spot
where, for a sophomore or a redshirt freshman, a commitment to a Patriot League
school makes sense. Richmond is positioned for
that this season, adding three well recruited players that did not see time at Maryland, North
Carolina and Appalachian State, respectively but
still want to play football. Bucknell
and Holy Cross have three adds as well. The Hoyas have apparently added one transfer,
though they never announced it. Luke
Daly, a reserve WR that played at Villanova for three seasons, announced a
transfer to Georgetown
on January 12.
Three transfers seems a good number for Georgetown to aspire to each
year: impact players that were either previously recruited by Georgetown and
took offers elsewhere before entering the portal, or those with previous FBS experience
elsewhere but wish to return closer to home. One or two years of grades
provides the staff and the office of admissions with a review of what they are
capable of, and if admitted they arrive to the team with the intangible asset
of experience. This is especially valuable, and needed, in impact positions
like running back and the offensive line, where Georgetown simply does not recruit as well,
and often wears out during the season.
It's also a good number given that, maintains the high
school recruiting strategy, so that Georgetown
does not become a way-station for 10-15 transfers in and out every season. A
limited number of transfers replaces experience with experience.
The Patriot League isn't at the stage where it is ready to
sign off on grad transfers... well, not yet, anyway. Georgetown's place in that
discussion needs some internal consensus as this is where a Georgetown degree
may be most impactful to a graduate with excess eligibility, and how to make
that case to commit to a fifth year at the program.
3. Alternate Degree Programs (low cost, high program
change).
A four year residential experience is a traditional one for Georgetown
student-athletes. As recent years have shown, it's no longer the only path to
an education.
Some will transfer in, others will transfer out. Online
education is now a factor. At a University which is actively trying to create a
separate campus in downtown Washington, some majors, particularly in public
policy, face a different student life than those in dormitories. As this column
has discussed, the opportunities to draw more local recruits and more transfer
opportunities, it must discuss, if not engage with, academic opportunities
which align with nontraditional degree opportunities.
In 2024, two men's basketball players, Jay Heath and Akok
Akok, received bachelor's degrees in liberal studies (BLS) from Georgetown University. Each were transfer students
(from Arizona State
and Connecticut,
respectively) who joined the team. A BLS is not a degree from the College, or the SFS, or even
the business school. It's a degree from the School of Continuing Studies (SCS),
which has quietly become the largest degree granting school at the University.
Primarily known for a wide variety of master's degree and professional
certificate programs to working professionals, the downtown campus has been
offering the BLS degree for a number of years, primarily to those who have
completed up to two years elsewhere, in concentrations such as Business &
Entrepreneurship, Cybersecurity, Analytics, & Technology, Media,
Communications, & Humanities, Politics & International Relations, and
Interdisciplinary Studies.
Two items distinguish the BLS from its A.B. and B.S.
brethren: flexibility and cost.
First, it's an online degree. Some may object to say that an
online education isn't a "real" education, but two years of Georgetown students
navigated online coursework during COVID-19 and did fine. It is a degree in
course per the University. For transfer applicants who have completed as many
as two years elsewhere and do not expect to retake core courses to fit the
requirements of a specific four year College or MSB program, such a program
gives them the flexibility to earn a degree and stay on focus to graduate on
time.
Watching a lecture online may not be the same as sitting in
the back of a classroom at Hariri, but the coursework is designed to be held up
to the same standards as a classroom environment. As online education grows
more comfortable within the 18-24 audience, it's an option for some candidates
which heretofore has gone unnoticed.
The second issue is cost. The need award for a football
player coming to Georgetown
will be based on a 15 hour per semester commitment at an average of $2,550 per
credit hour. This, plus the cost of attendance, is a University commitment of
somewhere short of $92,000 per FTE per year and that's what the program must
work to get an aid package that a recruit and his family can afford. The cost of a credit hour for the BLS degree
is $412.
And you read that correctly.
A full year's tuition in SCS, therefore, runs $12,360 versus
$71,136 for the main campus. Even adding in the cost of room and board, a year
in SCS would be as little as one-third the cost of a main campus undergraduate
degree program.
While a note in the online undergraduate bulletin notes that
"undergraduates in the [SCS] may be eligible for loans, federal grants,
private scholarships, and other external awards, but are generally not eligible
for [University aid] scholarships," an SCS applicant of a middle class
household income has a much, much lower threshold of affordability than one
where the expected gap between the parent contribution and the coat of
attendance is much higher, and even less should the applicant be local to the
area and thus not opt for room and board
(required on main campus, but not within SCS). It also suggests that if the
football program bought out the loan or work study portion of the gross cost, the
gap could come in at a much lower cost and be much more competitive.
Generally speaking, Georgetown football hasn't had commuting students since it made dormitory living a requirement in
the 1980s (and gained the annual revenue from doing so). To no surprise,
perhaps, on-campus housing now runs between $15,000 to $19,000 per year in
financial aid calculations. For those families that can afford it or who have a
full aid package, living on campus is a good thing. For those that don't have that financial option, it can be a deal
breaker.
Granted, an online education is a marked change from where Georgetown football is right now--there will
always be those who want the four year finance degree and the entre to Wall
Street. For some transfers, and that's the group in discussion here, it may not
be. For them, it may be more about a Georgetown degree and
less about the view from Village A or the food in the dining hall. Were it to
be an option down the road, an online program could be an opening to recruits
who, with transfer credits, can earn their degree and compete for the team, and
be able to afford both.
These three topics are about change as opening doors. In
part 2, we'll talk about looking at new ways to fund such changes.
