Some thoughts following Penn's 42-39 overtime win over Georgetown Saturday:
1. A Sixty Minute Game, And Then Some: There are more than a share of college football games to which a loss is utterly deflating or completely expected, or both. Saturday's game was neither. Georgetown and Penn played as complete a game for sixty minutes that any coach (or fan) could have asked for.
Yes, there were mistakes made. Opportunities were given, others were lost. Giving up a safety and two interceptions at midfield was no way to open a second half, granted. But any Georgetown fan in the stands Saturday or those following along online could not have been more impressed by a team which scored three consecutive touchdowns over the final 18 minutes of play to put themselves in a position to win. Had the coin flip gone the other way, I think they would have.
Overtime games are rare for Georgetown, and rarer still are games where the Hoyas score as many as 36 and still lose. last we week, we noted how unusual it was for Georgetown to allow 22 or more points and still win. Well, how about this one: this is only the fourth time in school history where Georgetown scored more than 35 points and lost a game. Of the four, none were as close and none came down to the end as this one did.
Over a quarter century of following these games, Saturday's game harkens back to a 2002 game between Georgetown and Bucknell at Harbin Field. The Hoyas trailed 17-0 at halftime, 24-7 midway in the third, and 31-20 with 8:00 remaining, yet rallied to take the lead with 19 seconds remaining in a 32-31 win. That it took 21 years to match that kind of performance probably says something about the recent state of the Hoyas, but it is a sign for this team, and those that will follow, that it can be done.
2. Ivy Woes: With the loss, Georgetown falls to 3-3 on the 2023 season, but continues a run of futility against the Ivy League.
Since scheduling Ivy opponents in 2003, Georgetown is 7-33 (.175) versus the Ancient Eight and a fitful 1-20 (.047) versus Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth. Many, many reasons why, but Georgetown just hasn't been competitive, and such are not the ingredients of rivalries.
3. Empty Seats: One more thing that can be said about Saturday's opponent: it was no rivalry game, either.
A generously counted crowd of just 2,250 found its way into Franklin Field for the game, which appears to have been the second smallest home crowd for the Quakers in as least 80 years at Franklin Field., per annual statistics posted online. Yes, gone are the days when 82,000 showed up when Notre Dame played the Quakers in the pre-Ivy League days of the early 1950s, or even the 35,810 who filled the lower deck thirty years ago when Princeton came to town.
The reasons for this decades-long decline are varied numerous. Some of it is the sophistry of Penn undergrads, some of it the continuing erosion of college football among local fans who are predisposed to watch the SEC Game of the Week than sit through the elements at a Temple, Penn, or Villanova game. (For what it's worth, Temple drew a season high 18,388 Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field versus another non-rival, Texas-San Antonio.)
Maybe it's just the students; or, more appropriately, you need to start with them. This is not a generation of college students that does anything in large groups, including attendance. They do not march for football teams or to espouse political rights, they merely watch it on their Instagram account and nod accordingly.
In a recent Georgetown Voice article, a similar theme was echoed.
"I think the first thing is, it’s a school full of students, more so than a school full of sports fans," said women's soccer coach Dave Nolan, "I feel that probably there’s not enough students at Georgetown who are genuinely interested in sports to begin with."
"[For] kids today, social media is the easiest way to reach them, but it’s only the easiest way to reach them if they’re already aware of you and they’re already following you. If you have a student at Georgetown who doesn’t follow women’s soccer on Instagram or Twitter, they’re not going to be any wiser. And I sometimes feel that we forget that,” he said.
"If our students get involved, we build this culture … that’s going [to] go a long way for the experience of everyone,” said John Corwin, assistant athletic director of athletics marketing. “One thing we can all circle back to is we’re all Hoyas, we’re all a part of this family."
But for a lot of sports, football included, it's a family that doesn't pay much attention to each other.
4. Around the PL: Holy Cross may have a legitimate challenger this season that's not from the Bronx.
Lafayette 12, Princeton 9: The Leopards made some history in a 12-9 road win before 4,059 at Princeton Stadium. Scoring a field goal, touchdown, and a final safety with 1:57 to play, Lafayette moved to 5-1 and secured its first win over Princeton in 13 tries since the 2003 season. All-time, Princeton leads the series 45-5-3, but this was Lafayette's day, moving to 5-1 for the first time since 2009 and with a week off to meet Holy Cross on Oct. 21.
Holy Cross 55, Bucknell 27: Also approaching the bye week, the Crusaders were not challenged on the road before a turnout of just 925 at Lewisburg. Holy Cross combined for 574 total yards, led 34-14 at the half, and coasted to the win.
Fordham 38, Lehigh 35: The Rams narrowly averted a second consecutive upset after spotting the Engineers a 21-7 lead in the second quarter and trailed 35-24 early in the fourth quarter. A five play , 85 yard drive by Fordham QB C.J. Montes rallied the Rams to within three, while two Lehigh punts led to eventual Fordham field goals to close out the game. The Rams go out of conference to face winless Stony Brook while Lehigh will take a 1-5 record into Saturday's game versus Georgetown, which has never won at Goodman Stadium.
