Past And Prologue

As quotes go, there are all sorts of expressions about what history has meant through the ages. Here are a brief assortment:

• "History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided." - Konrad Adenauer
• "History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another." -Jacob Burckhardt
• "The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." -A. Whitney Brown
• "History: gossip well told." - Elbert Hubbard

But perhaps a more appropriate view came from author David Thelen who observed that "The challenge of history is to recover the past and introduce it to the present."

On June 1, we announced at HoyaSaxa.com an effort to, in Thelen's words, to recover the past of Georgetown University football and introduce it to the present. Following in the footsteps of the Georgetown Basketball History Project, a new web site will be created to house the "Georgetown Football History Project", which debuts in September.

The Basketball Project was born in 2004 with a simple, if ever-incomplete premise: build a web site to serve as a one-stop archive of the various and sundry facts and figures that had grown up over the years with Hoya Basketball and, where appropriate, correct and update factual information surrounding the program. By building a database of players and schedule information, putting together things like verifiable rosters by year, cleaning up long-incorrect data, and providing a forum for readers to learn a little more about alumni from the past (in general, those before 1972 and certainly those prior to World War II) the site helped to broaden the rich history of basketball at the Hilltop and served a role in the preparation of the school's basketball centennial activities during the 2006-07 season.

Six years later, it's time to take a similar step forward with a sport and a history that makes basketball looks tame by comparison.

It's safe to say that football at Georgetown has endured more twists and turns than some mystery novels. Its first game wasn't even played, as its opponent in 1881 simply failed to show up for the game. Its early years were replete with boisterous crowds and hard-hitting play, with two deaths in the first 20 years of varsity competition. Yet a sport started by students in 1874 would survive the sport stopping three times, the last being a fateful decision to walk away from major college athletics in 1950 because, in the words of then college president Hunter Guthrie, S.J.: "We did not want the clean, patrician features of Georgetown disfigured by a broken nose and a cauliflower ear."

Thirteen years later, students brought back football and, four years from now, their successors will mark the 50th anniversary of modern GU football, the longest uninterrupted run in the 120 years of competition at the school.

Having worked on the HoyaSaxa.com football site for over 14 years now, the various stories of this (and previous eras) convinced me that there are many stories to tell about the sport and its impact upon Georgetown. The Football Project will be an attempt to do so.

Like its basketball sibling, there will be plenty of stats on the site, an expanded player roster, and information about Georgetown's various All-Americans and Hall of Fame awardees. I expect there will also be the opportunity to share some of the interesting stories gathered on Georgetown's early era players, all but forgotten in the passing of time but interesting nonetheless. For example, three of Georgetown's early era coaches enjoyed an interesting life outside of coaching:

• After Georgetown dropped the sport for three seasons following the death of George Bahen, its new coach was Bill Donovan. Donovan was not a football coach per se, but followed in the tradition of three of Georgetown's four previous coaches: he was a professional baseball player moonlighting in the fall once the season was over. And yes, Bill Donovan, (nee "Wild Bill Donovan") was a pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1898 before moving on to Brooklyn in 1899 and pitching for 14 years in the majors and a stint as manager for the New York Yankees. Wikipedia notes that "On May 7, 1906, Donovan accomplished a rare feat even for the best base stealers. He stole second base, third base, and on the front end of a double steal took home in the 5th inning of an 8-3 victory over Cleveland. He also hit a triple in the same game."
• Four years following Donovan was a coach listed for many years in the media guides as "Herman Sutter". The typo belied the fame enjoyed by one Herman (Billy) Suter as football coach, writer, and publisher. Suter graduated from Princeton in 1896 and returned to Nashville to coach the team at Sewanee, also known by the formal name of "University of the South." His 1899 team gave up only one touchdown all season, and in a famous five day road trip, the little college shut out the likes of Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU, and Old Miss by a combined score of 101-0. Georgetown won seven of ten games that Suter coached in 1902, but Suter had bigger plans outside coaching. Suter retired from coaching to open a publishing company in Washington. He would later serve as an editor-at-large and publisher for the Nashville Tennessean, hiring a young writer named Grantland Rice to cover sports for the paper.
• By 1910, Georgetown welcomed a local coach by the name of Fred Nielsen, who coached two seasons. From 1910 through 1911, Georgetown outscored its opponents 438-57 and suffered only two defeats: a 17-0 loss to Pitt, the undefeated and unscored-upon national champions, and a 28-5 loss to Carlisle, led by All-American Jim Thorpe. (These two losses accounted for all but 12 points surrendered over two seasons.) Nielsen left coaching to pursue a distinguished career in law and diplomacy, serving as an international trade representative and Solicitor for the Department of State before joining the Georgetown law faculty in 1924.

Yes, there are a lot of stories and accomplishments out there, from the better known to the obscure. Shown against the bright light of basketball, it seems to many that football at Georgetown has no tradition, but in fact it's a story that needs to be told.

And as Georgetown embarks on some big decisions regarding how it wants to approach football in the 2010's, a firm understanding of its past can be a window to its prologue, by realizing that those who have competed honorably have contributed to society as men for others learned many of the tools of leadership and dedication on those very playing fields seeming lost in obscurity.

Just this week, the Lindy's college football annual posed this question to its pick for Georgetown at the bottom of the PL race for the title: "Is university committed to football? Hoyas are 6-37 in last four years".

Well, it's 5-38, but this question has already been answered. Understanding the past can serve to bring together the generations for which intercollegiate athletics was, is, and can be something more.

And sooner rather than later, for as former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell aptly put it: "History balances the frustration of "how far we have to go" with the satisfaction of "how far we have come."

Coming in September.

The Rankings Game

The month of May marks the time of the off-season where the college football magazines (those that still exist, anyway) and the various writers that pen pre-season previews begin the task of the pre-season picks for college football. As such matters go, it's a fairly easy job.

College football is about continuity and there's a reason why the Alabamas and Texases of the world sit on one side of the poll and Duke and Vandy do not. And way down the street in the Patriot League, it's about continuity as well, so that's why Lafayette, Colgate and Lehigh will be at the top of the list, and Bucknell and Georgetown will be at the bottom.

But is this the proverbial chicken or the egg? Does poor recruiting lead to poor records, or does poor records lead to poor recruiting?

In many cases, it's clear. Vanderbilt does not get the depth or breadth of recruits that make their way to Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, LSU...well, every other SEC team. Expectations for Vanderbilt cannot be anything more than measured. Notre Dame is not the program it once was because Notre Dame is not the recruiting titan it once was, either. Once upon a time, the best players in the nation wouldn't dream of turning an offer to play under the Golden Dome. Now they do, and the results followed.

But in the case of the Hoyas, the issue is a little more complicated. To the surprise of many PL fans who would assume Georgetown could never sign the kids which end up in Easton or Hamilton or the Ivy League, Georgetown has done remarkably well over the years in bigger-name recruits, and over the last decade has signed more ranked high school recruits than any PL team except Lehigh. What happened to them is another story.

For this discussion, we are referring to a form of alchemy called college football recruiting rankings, an inexact science if there ever was one. Yes, five-star recruits are judged that for a reason, and more often than not it's because they are legitimate pro material. The farther down the list you go, however, the more intangibles and educated guesses become an issue, and so it was with Georgetown's ranked recruits this decade.

• Among the first of the ranked recruits of the 2000's was Jim Goranson, a Rivals.com two-star linebacker who transferred to Georgetown from the University of Illinois. At 6-2, 240, Goranson seemed to be the kind of player who could have dominated the PL as a linebacker...if he had played the position. When he arrived at GU, the Hoyas were set at LB and Goranson was moved to defensive end, where he was out of place, dropped into the two-deep for three more seasons, and never had the impact at Georgetown he could have.
• The hopes of depth in the Georgetown offensive line were considerably bolstered with a pair of two-star recruits in Jim Elliott and Tom Hutton, three years apart in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Elliott was among Georgetown's bigger "gets" of the decade, choosing GU over Rutgers and a number of other I-A offers. In a season and a half, Elliott may have cracked the starting lineup once, and he left the team thereafter. The 6-4, 290 lb. Hutton was ranked among the top 50 linemen in America in 2005, and ended up in just two games over two seasons.
• The highest ranked recruit of the decade was Rivals.com three-star QB Nick Cangelosi, the North Carolina transfer. But Cangelosi's considerable talents were caught up in the mix of a weak offensive line and Georgetown's decade long revolving door of quarterbacks, and he graduated with  unfulfilled promise. 

Of roughly 120 recruits in the Kevin Kelly era, 23 were ranked by the Rivals.com recruiting service, and nine with two or more stars on a 0-5 star scale--not a bad number for a program off the national college football radar. The skeptic might ask with recruits such as this, why Georgetown is sitting at 5-38?  While some have been significant contributors, none were selected all-PL or even All-American candidates, and some were names that came and went before most fans knew they were there (Arius Ford, James Cherundolo, Keion Wade).

Stars alone don't maketh the team, a team does, and Georgetown has not had enough of the success in things teams need (talent, execution, or playcalling) to be much more than a last place PL pick this fall. While the body of work of the 2010 recruiting class may not be up to the rankings of the last 2-3 years, it's still what they do on the field that matters most.

Rankings only take you so far. Remember, Michael Ononibaku didn't arrive at Georgetown an All-American, he graduated as one. 

When you're 0-11 you need the lunch-bucket guys even more, the young men who aren't afraid to do the early morning practices and the heavy lifting week after week, year after year, even if they're not the starter they expected to be. Too many of the 23 ranked recruits gave up before the job was done, and never made the impact they could have. And the job still isn't done.

The problems of the last 10 years won't be solved in one recruiting class. Georgetown is still too small on the lines, too small in the backfield, too slow to have an effective passing game. Its defense is inevitably worn down and loses the battle of attrition. Some of these issues can best be solved with a deeper recruiting base and a stronger financial aid/scholarship strategy, but those are issues for off the field.

On the field, the freshman represent a start in that proverbial right direction, but everyone has to contibute. Yes, you keep reaching for the stars, but it's not all that counts. It's ultimately a team effort that is  going to decide if Georgetown gets out of the ditch in 2010, or spins its wheels.

Calling All Captains

With the announcement of Lee Reed as Georgetown's new athletic director, there are probably as many questions from the rank and file Hoya fan as any newcomer to the process. But when Wednesday's press conference opened the floor to questions at Riggs Library, only two questions were proferred.

Liz Clarke of the Washington Post asked about the oft-discussed but never funded training/practice facility. Reed's response was equal parts the response of a newcomer and one who wisely knows this issue has traction farther up the hill.

"Obviously a facility that will enhance practice opportunities for our student-athletes is something that is of importance," said Reed . " I need to get here and understand all that has gone on until this point to see where the plan is. I’ve heard about it. I’m excited about it, but there are so many other things that the university has that have put our coaches and student-athletes in a great place. That will be another piece, and that will be a critical piece. I’ll work with our senior management team and the fundraisers in our athletics program and advancement to move forward on raising the money that is necessary to build that facility. So yes, it is critical to us. I’m part of the team. I’m here to join the team and do what I can to bring the resources to our student-athletes and our coaches, as it relates to facilities and other areas."

Put another way, the ball's not in his court.

The second question came from Kevin Wessel of The HOYA, and among all the issues of interest to students today, from the shoddy condition of Kehoe Field to the growth of women's sports to better transportation to Verizon Center, his question was on a topic of no small frustration among the student body--the condition of the football program.

Reed's response did not sound like he was passing the buck upstairs.

"I’m aware of where the [Georgetown] football program is. I can’t wait to sit down with the coaching staff to kind of see where they are. I know it’s important to this community, so we’ll work with our coaching staff and we’ll work with the staff in place now to see what’s going on with the program."

One of the undercurrents to the 2010 off-season is the role of the athletic director in what is an uncomfortable topic: a 5-38 record since 2006. Other than Dartmouth and Indiana State, it's practically at the bottom of Division I. The coaching staff knows it is in a vulnerable place after last season, and it's clear football was a topic of discussion at Reed's interviews.

But Wessel's question only touched on a growing sense of anger by students that the program is in the ditch. No one walks in the door at Georgetown expecting to play Syracuse and West Virginia on a September afternoon, but a non-competitive program in an unfinished field lends itself to apathy and worse. The first year of the new director's role will be to get a sense of the hierarchy of sports at Georgetown, and where football fits into the firmament. A student body that slips from apathy to disinterest is bad for any sport. With spiraling costs and conference realignments forming a veritable scylla-and-charybdis for athletic departments over the next decade, increased support for any support outside basketball cannot be taken for granted.

A new voice in the athletic department offers a new opportunity for the football program to define itself and to assert its place in the fabric of campus and community life. Much of the last decade of GU football has been patterned on the sales pitch Bob Benson made to join the Patriot League in 2000, but it's now 2010 and if Georgetown wants to be something fundamentally better than what it is now in the next five or ten years, it needs vision, direction and support. The coaches will do their part, but it may be time for a largely silent group of alumni and donors to come to the forefront.

Since 1964, there are 125 living alumni who have served as a captain or co-captain for the football team. Doctors, attorneys, executives, a few coaches-- all sorts of men whose leadership skills on the field prepared them for leadership experiences off the field. As the new athletic director reviews and reshapes the department to which he has been entrusted, this is the group of volunteer leaders that need to be a visible, vocal, and volunteer-minded consituency that can show Reed and others that football is an asset on this campus, and as Georgetown considers growing the program, that it is an investment worth making, not merely a risk worth taking.

Some of these captains have been important volunteers and contributors in recent years, particularly among the club football era teams. Others, sadly, seem to have disappeared off the media guide. When DeGioia, Porterfield, Reed, et al. review the issues on the near-term plate for Georgetown football (from building the MSF to reacting to Patriot League scholarships), there needs to be a core leadership group among alumni ready to make the calls, twist the elbows, and fight for the program they helped build. These leaders of the past are a source of leadership for tomorrow.

And guess what? Tomorrow's here.

Let's move forward on reviving these ties among the football community. There are stories across the football landscape of key alumni and former captains coming through when a sluggish or faltering program most needed it; conversely, the I-AA graveyard is littered with alumni that could never quite get its act together when opportunity called and wondered what might have been. Let's welcome these captains back into the fold and get them back on the front lines to build Georgetown football for the next decade.

Here's Your MSF

  Yes, I still have the t-shirt. No, I'm not going to wear it at John Carroll Weekend.

On a cold and rainy Saturday not that long ago, I found my way across a mud-filled Harbin Field to a tent filled with alumni, parents, and assorted development officials. Speeches were made, shovels were cast into the dirt, and celebratory t-shirts were handed out. It read:

MULTI-SPORT FACILTY GROUNDBREAKING: APRIL 30, 2005

What I most remember wasn't the speeches or the plaudits, but one single remark. I forget to this day who said it to me, albeit in passing, but I remember the message, endemic of what this project has become. "The worst thing that can happen," he said, "is for people to be content with what they have right now."

That remark--and that t-shirt-- are reminders to me that not much changed since those shovels turned the dirt on Harbin Field five years ago, and we're all the lesser for it.

"The Field With No Name" has become a sad monument to Georgetown Football, from the temporary seats (that were being finished the morning of the home opener with Brown) that never went away, to the sand that piles up on its fringes from other construction projects more favorably blessed in the University's capital budget. The message this project has sent to prospective students and prospective opponents is an exceedingly poor one--it's the academic equivalent of setting up trailers on Healy Lawn and telling people that this is the library until we get the real one built.

A Google search brings up all kinds of old articles about the place, some official, some less so. "The proposed design will feature permanent spectator seating for 4,652, a two-story press box with VIP seating, sports lighting and sound system, a digital video screen and scoreboard," reads GUHoyas.com.

"Freshmen expect the typical autumn football experience, where you go watch your team win on Saturday, and that hasn’t happened,” GUSA president Ben Shaw told the New York Times. “But at the same time, no one wants football eliminated. We just want it to get better. But people are waiting and wondering. The Multi-Sport Field," he said, "is a metaphor for where things stand at Georgetown."

"The present hiatus in the construction process — albeit brief, we’re sure — will minimize interference with game schedules and allow more time for fundraising efforts," wote the HOYA in 2005. "The stadium, with seating for 4,500, will guarantee enough room for every Hoya fan. New locker rooms, videoconference rooms and a training facility will be housed within the stadium itself."

"Students, faculty, administrators and alumni — and hopefully local community members — agree that the future of Georgetown relies on the betterment of existing programs. That future starts right now."

Or not.

And yet, two hours south of campus, there is a construction project that bears more than a passing resemblance to the MSF, in form as well as function. Welcome To the University of Richmond.

There are numerous photo galleries available on the project, which began in 2006 after the University received approval from the City of Richmond to leave city-owned UR Stadium (capacity, 21,750) to renovate its track stadium (First Market Stadium) and build an on-campus facility of  about 7,800 seats by the 2009 season.

"The expanded Robins Stadium will be a permanent multi-sport venue [emphasis added] serving the University's football, lacrosse, soccer and track programs," writes a UR fact sheet. "The current off-campus facility used for home football games...is outdated and does not meet the needs of our growing football program in 2008....The Robins Stadium expansion has been carefully planned to minimize impact on the surrounding communities, and to further enhance the University's national reputation for having one of the most beautiful campuses in America."

Beginning this fall, UR students and fans will experience an on campus facility that provides year-round use for teams, coaches offices, concesssions, box seating, and modern scoreboard amenities. In a nod to student versus alumni seating patterns, the lower level of seating is reserved for students but built so that if students want to stand, it doesn't block the more sedentary fans above them. It will not be the biggest facility in its conference, but serve as a showplace to the program and a source of campus pride among the university and its community.

This is not to say that the Richmond project enjoyed smooth sailing--progress stalled in 2008 until the Robins family, stalwart supporters of that university, agreed to fund the remainder of the project to see it to conclusion, with the new facility opening in 2010, a year behind original plans. Ironically, Georgetown was scheduled to be among the first opponents to play in Robins Stadium before the parties cancelled the series late last year. Who will be the first opponents in a completed Multi-Sport Facility, no one knows.

And while one can make a case that a smaller school like Richmond has more major donors at its disposal than Georgetown does (a dubious argument, but one nonetheless), Robins Stadium is under construction now because it is a priority--not just for UR Football, but for the university as a whole. Richmond could have easily moved the football program on campus and put up temporary bleachers and be done with it, but at what price, and at what cost? Never mind what it will do to the fan experience and recruiting (two things sorely lacking at Georgetown in its current setup), Robins Stadium will be a visible statement that UR is committed to doing what is right for its campus and for its students.

Few great universities would put up a temporary building, do nothing with it for five years and be satisfied with it.  Georgetown would not have considered putting up temporary housing in the New South parking lot and calling it the Southwest Quadrangle. It would not have considered knocking out some drywall in the Ryan Administration building and hand it over to the fine arts department as its new facility. But five years later, where is the person that works outside McDonough Gym that sees this monument to institutional inertia and expects something better?

Well, Dan Porterfield does, but few others have said as much publicly.

"It is crucial that we complete the Multi-Sport Field," Porterfield wrote seven months ago in September, the last official mention of the project. "Our goals will stay the same: To improve our teams' game-day experience, to make the venue more fan-friendly, and to construct an aesthetically pleasing facility. As we develop new options for this important project in the coming months, we look forward to sharing its details with our friends and donors."

The question is not what what happeed over the last seven months or the last five years, but when there will be a visible and tangible move forward for the student, alumni, and donor community--not talk, not shovels, but actual construction.  (As a point of disclosure, I'm one of these donors, albeit a meager one. In the early part of this decade, I made the largest gift to GU I had made to date, $1,000, to buy the equivalent of a seat in the new MSF that was to open in 2003, then 2005, then....well, whenever. In the intervening years, I've never received correspondence from University Development as to what my $1,000 bought, if they want a second gift out of me, or even if there'll be a "seat" after all.) The diminished returns for Hoya football in the Kevin Kelly era coupled with fading aspirations for the true promise of what a new facility can mean-- not just to Georgetown athletically but holistically-- may leave some bureaucrat to ask why it can't just be left as it is now, with a few pieces of wood here and some more gravel there, and spend the money on something else.

What was true in 2005 is true in 2010: "The worst thing that can happen is for people to be content with what they have right now."

And five years later, there's far too much contentment going around. Maybe I'll pack the t-shirt after all.

Coming Attractions

Bill Parcells' caution to coaches is part of the football lexicon: "You are," he said, "what your record says you are."

But a corollary to the Parcells Principle might just as well be: "You are what your schedule says you are."  So if people are surprised that the 2010 football schedule looks like something out of 2000 rather than 2009, maybe they shouldn't be. It is Kevin Kelly's best chance yet to turn back the clock and turn around the record.

Georgetown played three scholarship teams in 2009, and lost all three. The 14-11 loss to Howard was a winnable game, but a tragedy of errors on both sides, and if Howard acted to end the erstwhile D.C. Cup, it was not for enmity of Georgetown, but to wash its hands of a series that seemed to bring little out on either side.

In contrast to Howard, the ending to the Georgetown-Richmond series was not unexpected. Conceived in more hopeful days when Bob Benson saw Georgetown as a legitimate contender by the end of the decade, the Hoyas caught the Spiders ascendant while its fortunes had fallen. The Hoyas turned the ball over in each of its first three possessions in last seasons game and the 49-10 finish was only due to the generosity of UR coach Mike London.

The Hoyas' 31-10 loss to Old Dominion was more problematic. Playing a first year team, one that had lost to Monmouth and Fordham earlier in the year, Georgetown was embarassed to the point that the Monarchs called off the dogs in the second quarter, up 28-3. ODU was getting better every week, Georgetown wasn't, and it showed. By 2010, ODU didn't need Georgetown anymore, and waived a chance at potentially three more wins through 2012 to further upgrade its schedule.

No one will be surprised in a few years when London, now coach at Virginia, will make a call to ODU's Bobby Wilder to have Old Dominion open the season at Charlottesville. That call will most certainly not come to Kevin Kelly and Georgetown.

But however painful the outcomes, these games showed the ability of Georgetown to at least aim higher than from where it was. There was no shame in losing to the I-AA national champion, at least in comparison to lose to Marist. And had it added North Dakota State, a likely loss with a guarantee fee, at least you could say the Hoyas were "playing up" against someone on its non-conference schedule. There's no "playing up" like that in 2010.

The Hoyas have traded in Howard, Richmond, and Old Dominion (combined 2009 record: 22-13) for Davidson, Sacred Heart and Wagner (combined 2009 record: 11-20). So long, Foreman Field (capacity 19,782), hello Campus Field (capacity 2,000). And outside of a few misguided folks like me that would still rather see 12,000 in the stands at Villanova on the schedule than 1,500 at Sacred Heart, you can look at the Hoyas' record over these past four years and ask, well, maybe this is all they can handle right now.

And that's what it's come to.

The web site known as the College Football Data Warehouse studied the records of 238 Division I teams over the last ten seasons, ranking Georgetown 232nd in win-loss record and 232nd in strength of schedule. (Wagner and Sacred Heart ranked 234th and 235th, respectively, but such is the fate of low-scholarship football.)  And maybe it's fortunate Georgetown was able to pick up these games at such a late date, because universities like GU cannot long tolerate the recent seasons that erode more than Kevin Kelly's record, but his standing at the University.

I mentioned the 2000 schedule, the interregnum between the soft success of the MAAC and the harder ground of the Patriot. Georgetown's schedule that year was a hodge-podge of opponents: five MAAC teams (Duquesne, Marist, and defunct programs at Fairfield,. Iona, St. Peter's), three Patriot teams (Holy Cross, Fordham, and Bucknell), two Pioneer (Davidson, Butler), and one Northeast Conference team (Wagner). The Hoyas finished 0-3 against the Patriot, and 5-3 against everyone else. If the Hoyas could carve out a winning record like that against Yale, Davidson, Wagner, Sacred Heart, and Marist, well...it's not much but it's a start. The problem is, of course, that this is the kind of schedule better suited for 2000 than 2010, and really doesn't prepare the Hoyas for a move up the PL standings. After ten years, the Hoyas seem no more capable of dominating conference opponents than it was in 2000.

But the contrary scenario isn't a pretty one, either: if Georgetown can't  win against these five schools (combined 2009 record: 22-30), then what does it say? Excepting I-AA newcomers Campbell and Old Dominion, Georgetown is among seven low-rated I-AA schools (Columbia, Dartmouth, Indiana State, Savannah State, Southern Utah, and St. Francis) with a combined record of 57-241 (.191) over the past four seasons. For these schools to get out of their mess, they must start winning, plain and simple.

So sometimes a step back allows you a few steps forward.











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D.C. Cup: R.I.P.

Along the row of trophies that surrounding the foyer of McDonough Gymnasium, amidst boxing gloves and leather helmets of bygone eras, sits the Steven Dean Memorial Trophy. Named for an inspirational student of Georgetown in the early 1970's who served as sports information director at Catholic University before his death, the trophy was the manifestation of a fierce if largely forgotten rivalry between a pair of former Division I football powers that trudged in the isolation of Division III. Where once Dutch Bergman and Jack Hagerty were leading their respective teams to the Orange Bowl, these schools now fought annually on the windswept confines of Kehoe Field and the rotting remains of what was Brookland Stadium.

Now placed somewhere in an office in Burr Gymnasium. the D.C [Mayor's] Cup will not get a place on the trophy shelf of Howard University's honors, much less Adrian Fenty's post-mayoral holdings. More likely, someone will throw it away for no good reason. Which, in hindsight, says a lot about a rivalry that never was, and two schools that snared apathy from the jaws of opportunity.

When announced on April 24, 2008, it was an idea whose time had come, especially with the District's two I-AA teams both in need of a boost in attention. "I have seen both schools play over the years and as a Washingtonian, I always wondered why we we're not playing each other," said Dwight Datcher, the new Howard athletic director who was a longtime member of the Georgetown staff, including a tour as an assistant basketball coach under John Thompson in the 1970's. "It is a plus for both institutions because it will involve students, alumni and faculty."

The Howard coaching staff even seemed excited.

"This is something that is long overdue", said HU coach Corey Bailey. "It makes sense to have the game since we are the only two Division 1 football playing schools in Washington. These are two outstanding academic institutions and this match-up will bring together alumni, students and fans."

Just two years later, the Cup is no more. Howard announced its 2010 schedule this year, opening with Holy Cross, not Georgetown. For its part, Georgetown has traded for Bison of another herd--namely, North Dakota State, where at least the game will be indoors at the 19,000 seat Fargodome and outside the elements of the approaching North Dakota winter.

The D.C. elements (natural and man-made) proved to foreshadow a rivalry that never was.

In 2008, the game was postponed for the arrival of an incoming tropical storm that brushed past the D.C. area. Played a day later, an announced crowd of 6,085 saw Georgetown (no, make that Kenny Mitchell) walk off with a win, 12-7. Few students from either school showed, few alumni, fewer still from the press.
And aside from a general sense of pride to open the season, Georgetown's bump for the game was minimal, losing its next eight of nine. Howard fared none better, finishing 1-10.

In 2009, the elements returned, only in the form of a cold, miserable rain. The crowds expected from Howard never materialized-- not even the band showed up. The Homecoming crowd at GU was so dispirited (some said, disgusted) by the poor play on the field that most deserted the MSF by the second quarter. The teams combined for 246 yards in penalties in a 14-11 finish was viewed by no more than 500 by the end of the game, and not more than 100 across the field. Georgetown had a first and goal at the two yard line late in the game and proceeded to call three quarterback sneaks without success. Howard won back the Cup and any bragging rights thereto, and proceeded to finish the season with one more win. Georgetown never got closer to a win all year.

Not with a bang, but a whimper, the Cup went unfilled. Datcher, by all accounts a good athletic director, ran into the inertia that grips Howard atheltics, and was replaced at year's end by vice provost Charles Gibbs. That a vice provost moves into athletics should say something about Howard athletics, but it was at best a lateral move.

"You have to credit and mock HU for making this move this way," wrote the HBCU Sports Journal. "Likely, they were fully aware of the kind of pushback the alumni and students would have against a reviled university executive obtaining more power in the school leadership structure. Perhaps Gibbs, in tandem with University Relations, figured if they never announced the move, no one would know until it really mattered – such as a major gift coming into the department, or the firing of a coach. Perhaps they believed that by the time fans noticed that [Gibbs] was in charge, more pressing issues would be at hand than his clandestine hiring."

"They aren’t at liberty to tell the story of a former admissions officer rising through the ranks to head an athletic department, because his career path is the only thing more illogical than his appointment as athletic director. They can’t expect donations to come fluttering from Heaven; neither roses nor checks fall easily at the feet of disgraced executives."

To an outsider, Howard University exists in its own world. To the Bison, Howard is the "Mecca", the Harvard of HBCU's, but its athletic teams remain at the bottom of Division I. Excepting the street party called Homecomning, the Bison averaged just 2,715 a game this season, not much more than the 2,400 or so at the grim MSF. The basketball team finished 7-25 and drew 991 a game. For a school which rightly prides itself on some of the best students in the HBCU market, it lags considerably behind its HBCU peers in sports, much less other local schools, and after all these years, football there remains more than a well kept secret. So maybe it's not so surprising that with Howard struggling against a team such as Georgetown, the new athletic leadership wanted to walk away.

The two games drew a total of 8,715. Would it have been any different at a neutral site--RFK Stadium, perhaps? Would a marketing campaign corodinated between the schools have made a difference, with a TV broadcast? Could an effort to invite all the local high school kids in the District have made it a true city-wide event? And for its part, couldn't the mayor's office have even bothered to issue a simple press release about it?

These are things that take time, patience, initiaitve, planning and money. Neither school seems to have much of any at this point, much less the city iself.

There hasn't been a truly meaningful "bragging rights" football game in the city since the old DC city title high school football games, which drew as many as 50,000 to RFK before a riot broke out after the 1962 Eastern-St. John's game, and the game was soon discontinued. The DCIAA "city title" now draws friends and family crowds, dwarfed by the Maryland and Virginia schools beyond its borders. The last time these schools got a headline, it was the announcement that Coolidge HS had hired a woman as head football coach.

On the college front, the Eagle Bank Bowl was begun to draw local interest in football, and drew just 23,000 this past December, one of the smallest bowl turnouts nationwide...and yet no one considered and/or pursued local sponsorship of Georgetown-Howard? With two of the most prominent universities right within its borders, the efforts to promote the D.C. Cup were so half-hearted as to suggest that neither school really cared enough about it to make it a priority, and it's now already forgotten, much  like the teams themselves.

"The Bison open the season on September 4 against Holy Cross in Worcester, MA," writes the Howard atheltics web site announcing its schedule. "Holy Cross is a perennial contender in the Football Championships Subdivision", something they did not say about Georgetown.

Georgetown hasn't announced its schedule. Rest assured it won't mention Howard like that.

So next time fans gripe and moan that the schools of the area won't play each other, ask them about the D.C. Cup.

Help Wanted

The second week in March is a rite of passage on the Georgetown athletics calendar, the week that no matter what the sport, eyes are fixed on New York.

For 30 years, the Big East men's tournament has become a magnet not only for the basketball fans among us (myself included), but for much of the Georgetown athletics and development staff-- a time to reconnect with the New York base, meet some new fundraising contacts, and take part in the conference's showplace event.  While not in the Big East, football has also taken advantage of the weekend over the years, with alumni receptions and meet-and-greets with the head coach.
And over the years, you couldn't miss a Frank Rienzo, a Joe Lang, or a Bernard Muir moving quickly through the halls at the Affinia Southgate or Madison Square Garden, because this was no week off for them. Come to think of it, there are no weekends off for that position. But for only the second time in 30 years, Georgetown heads to the Big East in continued search of an athletic director, and the time it has taken to fill the position says a lot about how important (and daunting) the challenge is.

At first glance, it would seem to be a job with a lot of takers:

"Help Wanted:  Top 25 university in BCS-level Division I conference invites nominations and applications for Director of Athletics. Sucessful candidate will lead an award-winning intercollegiate program with a budget comparable to Mississippi State and New Mexico, the largest budget of any major school not playing I-A football. Extensive national coverage during winter months on CBS and ESPN, with instantly identifiable worldwide brand for licensing opportunities. Frequent exposure to national leaders, professional athletes, and local celebrities in vicinity. Work may extend to nights and weekends, some travel required."

Were it that easy! The days where an athletic director was an early retirement job for an ex-coach are long, long gone. No more are the days where an athltic director would pay the bills, say hello to a visiting trustee on their way through town, and get in a couple of rounds of golf before the weekend--it's literally become the CEO of a multi-million dollar company, with 150 employees, 800 participants, and more than a few alumni and fans who mistakenly think the athletic director answers to them. Little wonder that when Michigan hired its new director, it hired a former CEO from Domino's Pizza. Faculty bemoan how athletics is a business, but if it's not run with sound business principles, things break down in a hurry, unlike the glacial pace of academia, where tenure is a lifetime pass and philosophy professors don't have to present a win-loss record to keep their jobs.

In April 2009, the Wilmington News-Journal announced Georgetown AD Bernard Muir was a candidate for the director's post at Delaware. That surprised a lot of people, especially as Muir was considered a rising star in NCAA  circles and, to most, Delaware is not a step up from Georgetown. But unless someone is prepared to make Georgetown their last career stop, the employment door swings two ways: you either open the door or someone opens the door for you. Muir decided to exit on his own terms a month later, and for the last 10 months, Georgetown has been on the lookout for his sucessor.

(It bears repeating that Georgetown has been well served by interim director Dan Porterfield, who has done great work to keep things on an even keel and whose service to this University deserves a lot of praise. Of course, Dan already has a job at Georgetown (sometimes more than one) and interim does not mean indefinite, so the need to bring in a new leader is as important for him as it is for the coaches and players.)

It's not surprising that the search has taken this long--the next paragraph of this fictional job listing would give any serious candidate pause:

"Candidate must manage largest intercollegiate program in conference with less resources per student than any peer school. Must manage revenue stream of one sport with rising scholarship and program needs of 28 other teams, 25 of which have no revenue potential. Must work within university bureaucracy to help raise approx. $10-15 million for athletics annually. Must promptly address over $100 million in deferred/delayed construction projects without funds in hand, with extremely limited space, and with no debt financing. Candidate must have all teams competing at highest competitive levels and to still graduate 100% of seniors amidst rigorous educational requirements, without scandal or sanction." 

This is not an easy situation. There is no T. Boone Hoya waiting to fill the cofffers, no Yum Brands or FedEx waiting to build an athletics campus down the street. A sixty year old building houses a staff of 150 when it was built for six. Kehoe Field has been unplayable for seven years, the track and field program hasn't seen its on-campus track in almost 14 years. Baseball field? Gone. Two 100-yard fields are the remaining sources of outdoor athletic space not just for teams, but for 6,500 students. A boathouse has been in the planning stages since the second term of the Reagan administration.

And then there's football--where does an new AD start with this? Georgetown isn't sitting at the bottom of the Big East, it's sitting with a 1-22 record in the Patriot League over the last four seasons. Recruits see aging, temporary bleachers surrounded by piles of construction dirt, and coaches are still expected to outrecruit Yale and Princeton for kids with a 1400 SAT and a 4.8 in the 40...and stay within two touchdowns of them in the process. 

But through it all, the most important part of the job listing reads: "Georgetown University". It's the tie that binds this job to a wealth of great opportunitiss and possibilities, no less with a football program that could do so much more with a strong athletic director at the helm. Richmond went from almost downgrading its football program to national champions in six years, and will debut a $25 million on-campus stadium this season. If Georgetown got behind its football program, the turnaround could be almost as dramatic.

Yes, it's a tough job, but Georgetown can't long survive in major college athletics without an athletic director, one who will not only articulate the strategic visiton of athletics at the University, but chart a course for it to succeed and excel. It might just be the second toughest job at the school.

The toughest? The president that has to hire him.