One of the key drivers of the 2010 season will be a move to revive Georgetown's anemic offense, but the defense has questions as well. In the second part of some pre-season questions to consider for the 2010 Hoyas, this column focuses on defense.
1. How will the Hoyas fare in the 4-3? After various iterations of a "multiple" defense, the 3-4, and even the 5-2, the implementation of a traditional 4-3 is a recognition that if Georgetown doesn't stop the run, it can't hope to win many games, even in a much softer schedule as seen in 2010. That Georgetown was, on average, trailing by two touchdowns at halftimes of its games, the need to close the ground game remains a top priority to give the Hoyas at least the theoretical chance to compete in the fourth quarter. New defensive line coach Doug Goodwin's impact in this area this cannot be dismissed--the Hoyas play a fairly solid defense as a whole under defensive coordinator Rob Sgarlata, but the D-line has suffered for years in keeping teams from pounding the ball downfield, especially on first down. Last season's opponents averaged 4.7 yards a carry on the run, and in the season finale versus Fordham, first down rushes averaged over five yards a carry, Georetown rushes were, in comparison, less than a yard. Second and five is a world removed from second and nine in college football, and if the defense can set a goal of, say, three yards per carry, it opens up options that the Hoyas simply haven't had at their discretion in recent years.
2. How good can Nick Parrish be? OK, some disclosure, Nick Parrish went to my high school (Dallas Jesuit) and that school has turned out a number of solid college prospects through the years, but I've always remained impressed by Parrish's ability to disrupt plays and get to the ball. As Georgetown LB's go, his senior season could be the stuff of an all-conference season, notwithstanding the fact that GU's reputation in the Patriot League may prevent further national consideration. With Parrish's ability to pick up assisted tackles and play across the field and not just up and down, the move to the 4-3 could elevate his game even further. it's been a long time since opponents feared a Georgetown LB. A big season by Parrish could make believers out of the rest of the league, and maybe even earn him a free agent call after next spring's NFL draft.
3. Does Wayne Heimuli return to form? Before injuries wiped out his sophomore season, Heimuli was beginning to build some stature as a defender who was not afraid to make the big hit in the secondary. Heimuli also came from a great high school program in Euless (TX) Trinity that prided itself on really tight defense, and Heiumli's return could provided some much needed depth back in the secondary.
4. Are There Freshmen of Influence? If we didn't hear a thing defensively about the freshmen this year, I'd almost call that a success. It usually takes a year for freshmen to get acclimated defensively, and if you see 5 or 6 freshmen in the starting defensive lineup in November, that's a bad sign. While Georgetown still lacks the defensive depth of its competition in recruiting, the seeds for growth are there among the freshmen defenders to really grow and develop at Georgetown--assuming, of course, they're committed to doing so. Players like Shannon Adams, Charlie Dann, and James Ford arrive with size and that's a step forward in the inevitable transition to college ball, but experience still takes time. I wouldn't be surprised to a see a sophomore or two really step up, and the freshmen to follow accordingly.
5. Can Time of Possession Be Controlled? For whatever success teams had rushing the ball against Georgetown (and most did), the rest of the GU defense tended to fare better than many might expect. However, there is one statistic that cannot be ignored: time of possession. Georgetown's defense was on the field over 35 minutes a game last season, and you cannot win consistently when the defense gets worn out like that over the course of a season. Obviously, the offense could do a lot more on its part, but for its own sake the defense needs to work on improving third down conversion rates, particularly early in the season when the legs are still fresh and injuries and attrition have not yet taken its toll. During one of the games last season, I figured out that in games where the defensive time of possession was under 32 minutes, the Hoyas were close to a .500 team; of course, when you're 5-38 over the past four years, such possession times were the exception and not the rule.
Georgetown's defense took its share of grief last year, and the rush defense was a big, big part of it. If it improves, so will the Hoyas.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Five Questions: Offense
So much for being an optimist.
Back in last year's preview of the offense, I made the claim that "The cynic can rightly say that Georgetown could easily lose every game this year. An optimist would look at the same schedule and make an argument that eight of the 11 games on the schedule are winnable, but with the right mix of talent, teaching, and execution."
Yes, I thought Georgetown could win its share of games, but can still hear the voice of Bob Uecker in the movie Major League with the call: "JUST a bit outside..." The 2009 season was a disaster in every sense of the word: no wins, flagging fan support, and the loss of a quarter of the returning lettermen from the season. For the first time in two decades, the mood of the campus was not when we will get better in football, but if we ever will.
OK, I'm not saying there are eight winnable games in 2010. (I'll post a number later in the week and get my prediction skills into more trouble.) But what is different about 2010?
Answer: Dave Patenaude.
The former New Haven head coach and Hofstra expatriate offers the promise of delivering something that a decade of offensive coordinatorrs (from Tim Breslin and Joe Moorhead to Elliot Uzelac, and Jim Miceli) could not (especially Uzelac and Miceli): a chance for excitement. You can only run so many quarterback keepers or line of scrimmage passes before the opponent takes it and stuffs it right back in your face; which, of course, is what happened eary and often in the 2009 season. This was the case most notably in the Oct. 31, 2009 game at Old Dominion, where Isaiah Kempf finished the first half 4-16 for 25 yards. The first year Monarchs simply took it to the staid and predictable Miceli offense and Georgetown had nothing to show otherwise.
The early word from practices suggests that Patenaude's experience with CAA offensive sets (a conference which, after all, has produced four national champions in the last seven years) will open up the Georgetown play book and make it a little harder for the Lafayettes and Lehighs of the world to drop eight in the box and kick sand in the Hoyas' offensive sets. Clearly, Georgetown's talent remains well behind its PL opponents, but some new play calls may be enough to keep Georgetown in games where they were demoralized early on, with nothing left in the arsenal from which to respond.
Last year's preview asked five questions of the offense, left largely unanswered last year. With that in mind, let's ask them again.
1. Is this the year for stability at quarterback? However new-look the Hoyas suggest they'll be, nothing suggests that the days of Aley Demarest, Bill Ring, Bill Ward, and J.J. Mont (the four starters of the entire decade of the 1990's) are back anytime soon. With 14 different starters since 2001, Georgetown has no choice but to platoon Scott Darby and Isaiah Kempf until talent, injuries, or sheer frustration takes over. Depending on the offensive calls, however, a platoon setup at QB could be just enough of a wrinkle to make things interesting, which is why I'm rooting for Tucker Stafford to get into some sort of rotation.
Aaron Aiken may be the Hoyas' QB of the future, but too many Hoya QB's of the past have been ground into the dirt as rookies and any time Aiken can spend to develop before jumping into the fray could be time well spent.
2. Is this the year of the running back? If Charlie Houghton made it back for a fifth year, well, maybe, but it appears not to have happened and the GU running corps remains a little too small and a little too slow to take over in 2010. Philip Oladeji and Wilburn Logan figure to get carries but neither has had the opportunity to really take over games, while freshmen Brandon Durham (5-7, 170) and Dalen Claytor (5-9, 180) might need a few more pounds to absorb the beatings that GU running backs face. If Georgetown gets away from the simplicity of the Uzelac and Miceli running back calls of the past, we might be able to see more from this group. Absent a better line, that may be asking a lot.
3. Can we "hold that line"? It's the Achilles heel of Georgetown football: it can't recruit the line size and depth needed to compete in the Patriot League. The starters are too small and every team knows it.
Georegetown lost three senior stalwarts in the line and four reserves that left the team early. A lot of expectations fall on freshmen and sophomores to step up and learn the hard way--in the trenches. Seniors Dan Lenihan (6-3, 250) and Erik Antico (6-2, 265) are now the smaller members among a line that bulked up in freshmen recruiting, with an average OL weight entering training camp of 278 lbs. among the class of 2014. But even that isn't close to a Lehigh or Colgate offensive line that averages over 300.
Size is no guarantee of success--Billy Wuyek (6-5, 325) or Tom Amaro (6-6, 320) never settled in the starting lineups, but it is a bellwether of a team that intends to run the ball.
4. Whither the passing game? This is a point of legitimate concern. With just one of its top four wide receivers returning from 2009, Coach Patenaude really has to build from the ground up. WRs Kenneth Futlough and Patrick Ryan arrive with limited experience from 2009, while FAU transfer Jamal Davis has the opportunity to become a game changer. The Hoyas haven't developed a major downfield threat in a decade, and it remains to be seen if the offensive line can give a quarterback enough time to create opportunities downfield. Davis might be that option.
Georgetown really needs to develop its receivers. Too much of its passing attack in recent years has been in short passes to running backs which defenses can adjust to. With no seniors among the receivers, this is an area for development and growth.
5. Can Keerome Lawrence be a game changer? I sure hope so. Now a senior, Lawrence has played three different positions in three years and gives it 100% every time. His play has been unpredictable at times but, with experience comes predictability. At least once this season, I think Lawrence can carry this team to an upset win. And with a former quarterback in the slot, a comment from last year's column which bears repeating:
Back in last year's preview of the offense, I made the claim that "The cynic can rightly say that Georgetown could easily lose every game this year. An optimist would look at the same schedule and make an argument that eight of the 11 games on the schedule are winnable, but with the right mix of talent, teaching, and execution."
Yes, I thought Georgetown could win its share of games, but can still hear the voice of Bob Uecker in the movie Major League with the call: "JUST a bit outside..." The 2009 season was a disaster in every sense of the word: no wins, flagging fan support, and the loss of a quarter of the returning lettermen from the season. For the first time in two decades, the mood of the campus was not when we will get better in football, but if we ever will.
OK, I'm not saying there are eight winnable games in 2010. (I'll post a number later in the week and get my prediction skills into more trouble.) But what is different about 2010?
Answer: Dave Patenaude.
The former New Haven head coach and Hofstra expatriate offers the promise of delivering something that a decade of offensive coordinatorrs (from Tim Breslin and Joe Moorhead to Elliot Uzelac, and Jim Miceli) could not (especially Uzelac and Miceli): a chance for excitement. You can only run so many quarterback keepers or line of scrimmage passes before the opponent takes it and stuffs it right back in your face; which, of course, is what happened eary and often in the 2009 season. This was the case most notably in the Oct. 31, 2009 game at Old Dominion, where Isaiah Kempf finished the first half 4-16 for 25 yards. The first year Monarchs simply took it to the staid and predictable Miceli offense and Georgetown had nothing to show otherwise.
The early word from practices suggests that Patenaude's experience with CAA offensive sets (a conference which, after all, has produced four national champions in the last seven years) will open up the Georgetown play book and make it a little harder for the Lafayettes and Lehighs of the world to drop eight in the box and kick sand in the Hoyas' offensive sets. Clearly, Georgetown's talent remains well behind its PL opponents, but some new play calls may be enough to keep Georgetown in games where they were demoralized early on, with nothing left in the arsenal from which to respond.
Last year's preview asked five questions of the offense, left largely unanswered last year. With that in mind, let's ask them again.
1. Is this the year for stability at quarterback? However new-look the Hoyas suggest they'll be, nothing suggests that the days of Aley Demarest, Bill Ring, Bill Ward, and J.J. Mont (the four starters of the entire decade of the 1990's) are back anytime soon. With 14 different starters since 2001, Georgetown has no choice but to platoon Scott Darby and Isaiah Kempf until talent, injuries, or sheer frustration takes over. Depending on the offensive calls, however, a platoon setup at QB could be just enough of a wrinkle to make things interesting, which is why I'm rooting for Tucker Stafford to get into some sort of rotation.
Aaron Aiken may be the Hoyas' QB of the future, but too many Hoya QB's of the past have been ground into the dirt as rookies and any time Aiken can spend to develop before jumping into the fray could be time well spent.
2. Is this the year of the running back? If Charlie Houghton made it back for a fifth year, well, maybe, but it appears not to have happened and the GU running corps remains a little too small and a little too slow to take over in 2010. Philip Oladeji and Wilburn Logan figure to get carries but neither has had the opportunity to really take over games, while freshmen Brandon Durham (5-7, 170) and Dalen Claytor (5-9, 180) might need a few more pounds to absorb the beatings that GU running backs face. If Georgetown gets away from the simplicity of the Uzelac and Miceli running back calls of the past, we might be able to see more from this group. Absent a better line, that may be asking a lot.
3. Can we "hold that line"? It's the Achilles heel of Georgetown football: it can't recruit the line size and depth needed to compete in the Patriot League. The starters are too small and every team knows it.
Georegetown lost three senior stalwarts in the line and four reserves that left the team early. A lot of expectations fall on freshmen and sophomores to step up and learn the hard way--in the trenches. Seniors Dan Lenihan (6-3, 250) and Erik Antico (6-2, 265) are now the smaller members among a line that bulked up in freshmen recruiting, with an average OL weight entering training camp of 278 lbs. among the class of 2014. But even that isn't close to a Lehigh or Colgate offensive line that averages over 300.
Size is no guarantee of success--Billy Wuyek (6-5, 325) or Tom Amaro (6-6, 320) never settled in the starting lineups, but it is a bellwether of a team that intends to run the ball.
4. Whither the passing game? This is a point of legitimate concern. With just one of its top four wide receivers returning from 2009, Coach Patenaude really has to build from the ground up. WRs Kenneth Futlough and Patrick Ryan arrive with limited experience from 2009, while FAU transfer Jamal Davis has the opportunity to become a game changer. The Hoyas haven't developed a major downfield threat in a decade, and it remains to be seen if the offensive line can give a quarterback enough time to create opportunities downfield. Davis might be that option.
Georgetown really needs to develop its receivers. Too much of its passing attack in recent years has been in short passes to running backs which defenses can adjust to. With no seniors among the receivers, this is an area for development and growth.
5. Can Keerome Lawrence be a game changer? I sure hope so. Now a senior, Lawrence has played three different positions in three years and gives it 100% every time. His play has been unpredictable at times but, with experience comes predictability. At least once this season, I think Lawrence can carry this team to an upset win. And with a former quarterback in the slot, a comment from last year's column which bears repeating:
Moving a quarterback to the slot is a risky move, but in this situation I think it could be a real given Lawrence's skill set and the ability to introduce something Georgetown hasn't had in the backfield in six years: unpredictability.These were questions that really weren't answered in 2009. For the Hoyas to improve, you'll see it first with these five.
In 2003, Bob Benson introduced a lineup that, for the first half of the season, thoroughly confused opponents and led Georgetown to three straight wins by late October, by adding to a freshman quarterback named Alondzo Turner into the lineup. Announced as 6-0, but just barely, the 180 lb. Turner could run, pass, and when in a slot, add some interesting options to the backfield and was named the league's rookie of the week in two consecutive weeks. For 2003, his only season with Georgetown, Turner was third on the team in rushing and threw three touchdowns.
While the experiment with Turner didn't develop, the ability of Lawrence to develop in the backfield is in intriguing one...With his ability, Lawrence could be a great addition to the backfield that enters 2009 ranked among the bottom of I-AA in yardage per game.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Summer Of George
With the off-season winding down, it's interesting to look back and see what Georgetown's been talking about this summer with regards to football. Or, just as important, what it hasn't.
For whatever reason, these summer staples of the past were never posted on the athletics web site, and thus off-season coverage has been next to nothing for a team that, in 2009, was next to nothing in the win column. Even in the first week of August, the fall roster remains unpublished, through you'd think it will be in place for the Patriot League Media Day. But perhaps Georgetown has taken to heart the truism that no team wins championships in July, and all the rah-rah articles don't carry any weight when you're 0-11, anyway.
It's also a time for player preparation, too. When you face the size and talent gap that the Hoyas do week in and out, summer preparation is critical to success in the fall. The late Scotty Glacken once said that the 40 weeks of the off-season is the time to prepare for the roughly 40 hours on the field during a season. Whether a player is a starter, a backup, or a newcomer, the coaches need men that are physically and emotionally ready to battle come training camp next week.Without it, all the coaching in the world won't get this team where it needs to be. So just because it's quiet doesn't mean nothing is going on.
-- At Colgate, the Red Raiders are taking a page out of some of the SEC schools and initiating a summer caravan for fans. "This summer['s] road tour will make stops at towns throughout the Central New York area to give fans chances to win tickets to Colgate football games, receive free giveaway items, take photos with championship trophies and receive information about football ticket discounts, " wrote the Colgate web site. "Fans can meet Raider along with coaches and former standout wide receiver Pat Simonds ’10 at select stops on the Tour." With Colgate awaiting its biggest regular season game in a generation at Syracuse next month, getting the word out is good timing.
-- Fordham fans have been awaiting 2010 as its first year with schoalrship players since 1954, though it is not altogether clear whether only recruited freshmen are on scholarships, or some upperclassmen have been converted onto scholarships (I think it is the former). The university is also seeking to inmprove conditions by building new locker rooms for the team, in a somewhat unlikely place--a former pool which sat underneath Rose Hill Gymnasium. "The new space will feature over 90 lockers, wide screen televisions and a theater-type viewing area for the team...", reads the Fordham web site. "When finished, the room will be approximately 4,800 square feet, more than four times larger than the current locker room."
Were Georgetown to do the same! Yes, we 're still waiting on the MSF, but in research for the soon to arrive Football History Project, Georgetown has some great figures from its football past that could be honored thusly. From Harry Costello to Johnny Gilroy, Jack Hagerty to Jim Mooney, Augie Lio to Jim Castliglia, and the one and only Al Blozis, the names of Georgetown's football past need not be banished to the library archives.
"[But] this was supposed to be the Summer of George!", Costanza said.
- No stories about seven on seven games with Maryland or Towson.
- No stories about incredible off-season workouts.
- No stories about players coming back early, or that "can't wait" until opening day.
For whatever reason, these summer staples of the past were never posted on the athletics web site, and thus off-season coverage has been next to nothing for a team that, in 2009, was next to nothing in the win column. Even in the first week of August, the fall roster remains unpublished, through you'd think it will be in place for the Patriot League Media Day. But perhaps Georgetown has taken to heart the truism that no team wins championships in July, and all the rah-rah articles don't carry any weight when you're 0-11, anyway.
The summer is a time for planning and preparation, and the staff knows that this year will be looked upon very, very closely by fans and a new athletic director to see where the program is headed. The mistakes of 2010 aren't that of Jim Miceli, Dassin Blackwell, or Frank Colaprete. With a considerably lighter schedule, a healthy crop of returning upperclassmen (published roster notwithstanding), and three returning QBs, expectations of a more successful season must be a mandate and not wishful thinking.
It's also a time for player preparation, too. When you face the size and talent gap that the Hoyas do week in and out, summer preparation is critical to success in the fall. The late Scotty Glacken once said that the 40 weeks of the off-season is the time to prepare for the roughly 40 hours on the field during a season. Whether a player is a starter, a backup, or a newcomer, the coaches need men that are physically and emotionally ready to battle come training camp next week.Without it, all the coaching in the world won't get this team where it needs to be. So just because it's quiet doesn't mean nothing is going on.
Speaking of quiet, what's been going on around the rest of the Patriot League?
-- Bucknell fans were given a summertime jolt when it was learned that its Oct. 2 home game with Cornell would be picked up by the CBS College Sports Network (formerly CSTV), a national cable and satellite carrier. This isn't Time-Warner Cable or Channel 69 we're talking about, but truly national coverage. It's an outstanding opportunity for the teams and the Patriot League to reach a wider audience, and you've got to hope that Bucknell officials do everything in their power to make Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium sell out for the occasion. The worst thing CBS needs is to have fans surfing the networks after Texas-Oklahoma or Penn State-Iowa to see 8,000 empty seats at Lewisburg. Who knows, maybe CBS could give Georgetown a look when that new field is built....
-- At Colgate, the Red Raiders are taking a page out of some of the SEC schools and initiating a summer caravan for fans. "This summer['s] road tour will make stops at towns throughout the Central New York area to give fans chances to win tickets to Colgate football games, receive free giveaway items, take photos with championship trophies and receive information about football ticket discounts, " wrote the Colgate web site. "Fans can meet Raider along with coaches and former standout wide receiver Pat Simonds ’10 at select stops on the Tour." With Colgate awaiting its biggest regular season game in a generation at Syracuse next month, getting the word out is good timing.
-- Fordham fans have been awaiting 2010 as its first year with schoalrship players since 1954, though it is not altogether clear whether only recruited freshmen are on scholarships, or some upperclassmen have been converted onto scholarships (I think it is the former). The university is also seeking to inmprove conditions by building new locker rooms for the team, in a somewhat unlikely place--a former pool which sat underneath Rose Hill Gymnasium. "The new space will feature over 90 lockers, wide screen televisions and a theater-type viewing area for the team...", reads the Fordham web site. "When finished, the room will be approximately 4,800 square feet, more than four times larger than the current locker room."
Fans from other schools are astounded to hear that game-day locker rooms at Georgetown don't really exist. This too, waits for the decade-long Multi Sport Field project to awaken, but as the MSF sleeps, others move forward.
--From Holy Cross, a project of a different kind--the school is introducing a "Ring Of Fame" at Fitton Field to honor Crusader gridiron greats of the past. The inaugural class includes names such as Bill Osmanski '39, Ed Murphy '43, Vince Promuto '60, John Provost '75, Gil Fenerty '86, and Gordie Lockbaum '86, ostensibly the last Division I-A athlete that was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy.
Were Georgetown to do the same! Yes, we 're still waiting on the MSF, but in research for the soon to arrive Football History Project, Georgetown has some great figures from its football past that could be honored thusly. From Harry Costello to Johnny Gilroy, Jack Hagerty to Jim Mooney, Augie Lio to Jim Castliglia, and the one and only Al Blozis, the names of Georgetown's football past need not be banished to the library archives.
--At Lafayette, a quiet summer as far as news goes, but the Leopards' web site did not that two former quarterbacks were set to square off in the European Federation for American Football championship in Chur, Switzerland. There are some Georgetown grads that play in arena ball (Luke McCardle, now 28, is still active) and other have seen time in Europe. While the NFL remains a distant dream for most PL athletes, it's itneresting to see that some ahve been able to continue their careers, sometimes in places one might now expect. (and for the record, Germany defeated Finland, 26-10.)
--Lehigh football alumni were feted at a summer golf tournament sponsored by that school's version of the Gridiron Club. "I thought the event went great,” explained event organizer Mark Yeager.“The most important thing that we took away from the golf outing was that it accomplished our goal of bringing guys back together. It gave them a reason to get together for an afternoon with older and younger alumni, meet the coaches and hear about the program; we were able to re-engage them with the program and the athletics department and elevate awareness, which are fundamental goals that I think we accomplished.”
Oh, and about the title to this article. Fans of the TV show Seinfeld will no doubt recall the episode where George Costanza proclaims a season of taking it easy, which he calls "the summer of George", to include, in no particular order, frisbee golf, reading a book from start to finish ("in that order", he notes), watching TV, and taking mid-morning naps. Unfortunately for George, a turn of events ends him right back to where he was the year before, namely, in the hospital.
"Mr. Costanza, your legs have sustained extensive trauma. Apparently your body was in the state of advanced atrophy, due to a period of extreme inactivity," said the doctor. But with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, I think there's a good chance you may, one day, walk again."
"[But] this was supposed to be the Summer of George!", Costanza said.
Well, it's easy to go through a summer and, if you're not careful, end up right back to where you were. For Georgetown, let's hope the summer of 2010 doesn't lead back to the autumn of 2009.
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Case For Better Football
In the midst of discussions about conference realignment, the issue of scholarships and football at Georgetown, a Big East school that does not play football within its conference, has led those inside and outside the Georgetown community to ask what the role football scholarships should play in its future. This is the third of a three part series on the subject asking this question across a spectrum of possibilities: the case for a different view of a sustainable funding model.
So, what can be learned from the previous two installments of this series? Just two points, I'm afraid.
One, Georgetown cannot effectively compete without increased support. Two, that Georgetown cannot, on its own, afford the level of support needed to effectively compete.The key sentence in these two points is not "cannot"; instead, it is "effective"--what is the effective level of competition which Georgetown sees in its program? Amidst the annual budgets and the storm clouds of a Patriot League arms race, this is the question that needs definition.
Every school answers it, even subconsciously. The effective level of competition at Notre Dame is to compete for a national championship; when it falls short, failure is seen as the result. It's been 22 years since ND was awarded a national title and they've gone through five coaches as a result.
The effective level at Boston College is not to expect national title considersation but to aim for a New Year's Day bowl bid. The fans come to BC to see a winner, but Jan 7 on the calendar is not the sole criterion for the program.
In I-AA, similar decisions follow. It took a quarter century, but the effective level of Villanova is to annually compete for the I-AA title, and they did it, spending about 18% of a $25 million athletic budget to get in a position to do so. Fordham spends almost as much, even in its formerly non-scholarship days, but its effective goal (for now) is to make the I-AA playoffs, where post-season success is a notable accopmplishment but not an expectation.
Jack DeGioia and Dan Porterfield have reiterated a refrain amidst the grumbling over the state of the football program: there is a place for football at Georgetown. But concurrent with the talk about whether the curent philosophy is a workable one for the future, the University has to do a better job to answer what that place is, to restate the effective level of competition it expects from its players and coaches, and by extension, the effective level of expectations that the fan base should commit to.
Nearly forty years ago, former athletic director Frank Rienzo advocated a tiered system for Georgetown athletics based on budgets, traditions, and the competitive landscape, and defined them in specific. The "national" sports were those where the goal of competing for the national championship was a stated one, and these sports would get the program and scholarship support to make that a reasonable goal (basketball, track, and later, lacrosse were identified thusly). A second tier, the "regional" sports, were not built for NCAA titles but were otherwise capable of competing within a conference and limited scholarship support would be provided to strive for occasional post-season honors (soccer, golf, rowing etc.) A third tier, the "local" sports, offered more in competition than performance, without scholarship support, and where the post-season was a lofty goal but by no means an expectation (baseball, swimming, field hockey). The Big East conference didn't always agree (e.g., they didn't want any of its sports funded at a local level), but the general framework existed to this day.
As to football, it was considered a regional sport. Is is still such, and can it be funded as such in the future?
Among GU sports, football ($1.5 million) trails only basketball and track in program expenditures, but as a percentage of expenses (1.6%) it is the lowest spend among any of its peers. A school like Lafayette spends 36% of its entire athletic budget on football alone--a similar outlay at GU would devote a Big East-sized $10.4 million to football. But Georgetown is not Lafayette.
An outsider can assume Georgetown does not want to be Notre Dame in football; if it did, it is failing miserably. It does not appear to want to be BC, either. Does it aspire to compete programmatically and philosophically with Villanova? What about Holy Cross? Duquesne? Sacred Heart? Or something even less? For a number of years GU got along in the D-III world and excelled in the MAAC because many of its its member schools had even less of a commitment; not surprisingly, most of these are in the football graveyard today. The past ten years of the Patriot have rendered the 1993 cost contwainment model somewhat obsolete. A move by Fordham to open the door to 60 scholarships could make it dangerous.
Answering the question to what is Georgetown's effective place in the college football firmament sets in course the follow-up--how to excel in that framework. A school doesn't have to compete for a bowl game or a national title to crerate a positive experience for coaches, players, and fans. But absent a set of clear marching orders, it can run adrift of the changing currents of the sport.
The case for better football is a three-pronged approach. It starts at the university level, with a clear statement of where the sport is, where GU expects it to be (because it's probably not there now), and what it is willing to do to meet this goal. A $1.5 million budget is a receipt for 2-9 and 3-8 seasons for the forseeable future--is Georgetown OK with that? If not, what is the roadmap to increased funding?
Comparisons matter. Georgetown baseball has gone 24 years without a winning season and this is accepted as a matter of course. The last time the men's basketball team was under .500, they fired the coach. With different expectations come clarity and, presumably, a better focus on what can (and will ) be judged as success. Fans like myself can ask why the MSF stands as a model to inactivity, but if the priorities don't support it, at least we'll know why.
The case for better football continues at the donor level. A clear positioning statement provides the donor base with a mandate on how and to what degree it can provide both substantive and meaningful support. What would one scholarship "buy" Georgetown as to its competitive position? What would ten do? What would 50 do? This is not something the Gridiron Club has done a good job in communicating, but to be fair, it's not like Georgetown has been clear about it, either, athletic or otherwise.
Where is your $10 gift doing the most good? Your $100 gift? Your $1,000 gift? Your $1 million gift?
So, to that end, what is the priority list for Georgetown football? In any particular order, it could be:
The third area for better football is at the team level. Are the players doing what it takes to improve; presumably yes, but is Georgetown providing students with the best coaching to effectively compete? Are we providing the coaches the framework with which to teach? Is Georgetown (as institution, as donors, and as friends) balancing the needs of support with its institutional priorities? (Buying a brand new bus, for example, doesn't mean as much if Georgetown suddenly joins the Ohio Valley Conference instead of the Patriot League.)
Concurrently, with expectations come review. Georgetown's four year record since 2006 can be rationalized and justififed ad nauseum, but it still reflects poorly on the team, its coaches, and the University, absent a set of priorities and expectations. If we don't expect 10-1 every season, fine. But where is the line drawn, and what is the standard by which to judge the team when it does not step up?
The case for better football comes down to one directive: it's time for Georgetown to chart a course and move it forward. Just as the strategy of 1964 was a foundation, not a roadmap for the intevening years, strategy is groundless without a plan in place to meet its goals. It doesn't have to be two stone tablets from the mountaintop--various constituencies can be valuable in the dialogue and GU might be surprised at how a few key individuals could add significantly to the conversation for the very reason that they were asked to do so.
The question has never been "can Georgetown compete?" Of course it can. The question isn't "will Georgetown compete?", either--with resources, that question answers itself. The question is, at least on this blog, "tell us where you want to go, and let's get there together".
That's not just a good idea. It's a better one.
So, what can be learned from the previous two installments of this series? Just two points, I'm afraid.
One, Georgetown cannot effectively compete without increased support. Two, that Georgetown cannot, on its own, afford the level of support needed to effectively compete.The key sentence in these two points is not "cannot"; instead, it is "effective"--what is the effective level of competition which Georgetown sees in its program? Amidst the annual budgets and the storm clouds of a Patriot League arms race, this is the question that needs definition.
Every school answers it, even subconsciously. The effective level of competition at Notre Dame is to compete for a national championship; when it falls short, failure is seen as the result. It's been 22 years since ND was awarded a national title and they've gone through five coaches as a result.
The effective level at Boston College is not to expect national title considersation but to aim for a New Year's Day bowl bid. The fans come to BC to see a winner, but Jan 7 on the calendar is not the sole criterion for the program.
In I-AA, similar decisions follow. It took a quarter century, but the effective level of Villanova is to annually compete for the I-AA title, and they did it, spending about 18% of a $25 million athletic budget to get in a position to do so. Fordham spends almost as much, even in its formerly non-scholarship days, but its effective goal (for now) is to make the I-AA playoffs, where post-season success is a notable accopmplishment but not an expectation.
Jack DeGioia and Dan Porterfield have reiterated a refrain amidst the grumbling over the state of the football program: there is a place for football at Georgetown. But concurrent with the talk about whether the curent philosophy is a workable one for the future, the University has to do a better job to answer what that place is, to restate the effective level of competition it expects from its players and coaches, and by extension, the effective level of expectations that the fan base should commit to.
Nearly forty years ago, former athletic director Frank Rienzo advocated a tiered system for Georgetown athletics based on budgets, traditions, and the competitive landscape, and defined them in specific. The "national" sports were those where the goal of competing for the national championship was a stated one, and these sports would get the program and scholarship support to make that a reasonable goal (basketball, track, and later, lacrosse were identified thusly). A second tier, the "regional" sports, were not built for NCAA titles but were otherwise capable of competing within a conference and limited scholarship support would be provided to strive for occasional post-season honors (soccer, golf, rowing etc.) A third tier, the "local" sports, offered more in competition than performance, without scholarship support, and where the post-season was a lofty goal but by no means an expectation (baseball, swimming, field hockey). The Big East conference didn't always agree (e.g., they didn't want any of its sports funded at a local level), but the general framework existed to this day.
As to football, it was considered a regional sport. Is is still such, and can it be funded as such in the future?
Among GU sports, football ($1.5 million) trails only basketball and track in program expenditures, but as a percentage of expenses (1.6%) it is the lowest spend among any of its peers. A school like Lafayette spends 36% of its entire athletic budget on football alone--a similar outlay at GU would devote a Big East-sized $10.4 million to football. But Georgetown is not Lafayette.
An outsider can assume Georgetown does not want to be Notre Dame in football; if it did, it is failing miserably. It does not appear to want to be BC, either. Does it aspire to compete programmatically and philosophically with Villanova? What about Holy Cross? Duquesne? Sacred Heart? Or something even less? For a number of years GU got along in the D-III world and excelled in the MAAC because many of its its member schools had even less of a commitment; not surprisingly, most of these are in the football graveyard today. The past ten years of the Patriot have rendered the 1993 cost contwainment model somewhat obsolete. A move by Fordham to open the door to 60 scholarships could make it dangerous.
Answering the question to what is Georgetown's effective place in the college football firmament sets in course the follow-up--how to excel in that framework. A school doesn't have to compete for a bowl game or a national title to crerate a positive experience for coaches, players, and fans. But absent a set of clear marching orders, it can run adrift of the changing currents of the sport.
The case for better football is a three-pronged approach. It starts at the university level, with a clear statement of where the sport is, where GU expects it to be (because it's probably not there now), and what it is willing to do to meet this goal. A $1.5 million budget is a receipt for 2-9 and 3-8 seasons for the forseeable future--is Georgetown OK with that? If not, what is the roadmap to increased funding?
Comparisons matter. Georgetown baseball has gone 24 years without a winning season and this is accepted as a matter of course. The last time the men's basketball team was under .500, they fired the coach. With different expectations come clarity and, presumably, a better focus on what can (and will ) be judged as success. Fans like myself can ask why the MSF stands as a model to inactivity, but if the priorities don't support it, at least we'll know why.
The case for better football continues at the donor level. A clear positioning statement provides the donor base with a mandate on how and to what degree it can provide both substantive and meaningful support. What would one scholarship "buy" Georgetown as to its competitive position? What would ten do? What would 50 do? This is not something the Gridiron Club has done a good job in communicating, but to be fair, it's not like Georgetown has been clear about it, either, athletic or otherwise.
Where is your $10 gift doing the most good? Your $100 gift? Your $1,000 gift? Your $1 million gift?
So, to that end, what is the priority list for Georgetown football? In any particular order, it could be:
- Finishing the MSF
- Securing better competition
- Improved recruiting budget
- Merit scholarships
- Need based aid
- Coaching salaries
- Media (TV, radio contracts)
- Travel
- Program support
- Game day activities
- Ancillary support (cheerleaders, marching band)
- Training and athletic support
The third area for better football is at the team level. Are the players doing what it takes to improve; presumably yes, but is Georgetown providing students with the best coaching to effectively compete? Are we providing the coaches the framework with which to teach? Is Georgetown (as institution, as donors, and as friends) balancing the needs of support with its institutional priorities? (Buying a brand new bus, for example, doesn't mean as much if Georgetown suddenly joins the Ohio Valley Conference instead of the Patriot League.)
Concurrently, with expectations come review. Georgetown's four year record since 2006 can be rationalized and justififed ad nauseum, but it still reflects poorly on the team, its coaches, and the University, absent a set of priorities and expectations. If we don't expect 10-1 every season, fine. But where is the line drawn, and what is the standard by which to judge the team when it does not step up?
The case for better football comes down to one directive: it's time for Georgetown to chart a course and move it forward. Just as the strategy of 1964 was a foundation, not a roadmap for the intevening years, strategy is groundless without a plan in place to meet its goals. It doesn't have to be two stone tablets from the mountaintop--various constituencies can be valuable in the dialogue and GU might be surprised at how a few key individuals could add significantly to the conversation for the very reason that they were asked to do so.
The question has never been "can Georgetown compete?" Of course it can. The question isn't "will Georgetown compete?", either--with resources, that question answers itself. The question is, at least on this blog, "tell us where you want to go, and let's get there together".
That's not just a good idea. It's a better one.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Case For Scholarship Football
In the midst of discussions about conference realignment, the issue of scholarships and football at Georgetown, a Big East school that does not play football within its conference, has led those inside and outside the Georgetown community to ask what the role football scholarships should play in its future. This is the second of a three part series on the subject asking this question across a spectrum of possibilities: the case for a scholarship funding model.
For 60 years, the concept of scholarships in football has been so foreign to Georgetown that it was hardly worth discussing--only 30 or so alumni that ever earned a football scholarship are still in the alumni records. Prevailing wisdom told us that scholarship football was dropped over cost and, therefore, could never be conceived again. A corollary to this argument suggested that scholarship athletes were somehow "less" academic minded and thus unfit in the first place.
The first argument is false. So is the second.
If you think the cost of scholarship tuition killed Georgetown football in 1950, think again. The total cost of 81 scholarship tuition bills in 1950 totaled $36,450, or about the cost of one such tuition in 2010. Even adding room and board, books and travel, the cost of the student-athletes covered less than half the annual loss that season, one complicated by low gate receipts (three home games) and considerable travel (at Penn State, at Tulsa, at Boston College, at Miami, at Fordham, at Holy Cross). For the most part, football was doing its part on and off the field, but renting an NFL stadium for crowds of 6,000 a game and traveling across the country for games were a dead end.
And for the better part of 45 years, football at Georgetown has existed with a central premise that football was for students and not for scholarships; in general, because Georgetown could not afford them in the first place, and in specific that it could always cobble a schedule of like-minded schools to maintain competitive parity. But within six months, that framework could change; and with it, both a challenge and an opportunity for Georgetown to revisit scholarship football will be at hand.
By December, Patriot League presidents are expected to vote on a measure allowing athletic scholarships in football. Led by Fordham, it is said to have the support of at least two other PL schools, who could convert need-based aid to grant aid with little difficulty. At least two other schools could favor it if the impact to its budgets by the covnersion could be worked out. For Georgetown (and to a lesser extent, Bucknell) the competitive impact would be devastating. In three games against scholarship opponents last season, GU was outscored a combined 73-16 at halftime.
Of course, the University would not be forced to play such competition, but times have changed. When GU rejoined NCAA play in 1970, there were over 110 schools in the Northeast playing nonscholarship football in what is now Division III. By 1995, in Division I-AA, there were 35 simialrly situated programs in the region, not counting lower division schools. If the Patriot opts to go to scholarship after the 2010 season, just nine non-schoalrship I-AA opponents would remain (Ivy League + Marist) , the balance having either gone scholarship in the Northeast Conference, or in the case of most of the former MAAC, dropped the sport entirely.
For a long time, scholarship sports at Georgetown were considered the province of basketball and track, and not much else. Owing to recent Big East requirements, limited scholarships have been raised in baseball, golf, lacrosse, soccer, and volleyball. In fact, only one NCAA sport at Georgetown is not allowed to sponsor any athletic scholarships...at least for now.
The case for scholarship football is an example of taking the next step--not for abandoning the institutional and financial principles that have guided the sport over these last two generations, but to enhance it, bringing with it a segment of student-athlete who is frankly disappearing on the campus: the middle class student. Unable to qualify for need-based aid, unable to pay tuition, this is the lost generation of would-be Hoyas ending up at places like Villanova, Stony Brook and Duquesne for the simple fact that these schools could offer aid for their future and Georgetown couldn't.
What if it could? What would it mean for Georgetown competitively and institutionally if it did?
"To be a competitive team in scholarship I-AA football alone, from 57 to 63 scholarships are needed and that is not an insignificant expense in a program such as Georgetown’s," wrote the previous column, and that is true--but it's not an either/or proposal, e.g., zero or 57. What would two, four or even six scholarships a year allow the coaching staff to reach a prospect who could have a transformative effect on Hoya football if only he could afford to attend? Is the next Colt Brennan (a player who was said to have been interested in Georgetown while attending Worcester Academy in 2002) out there, if only GU could have offered him (or any comparable recruit) something less than $35,000 in loans, or more, for the privilege of attending?
Let’s again take a look at the five factors which can be used to evaluate a football funding model, adapted from a 2004 study at Rice University.
Philosophy of Competition: Absent an offer it could not refuse from the Big East Conference, this argument is not about an 85 scholarship Division I-A program playing at FedEx Field. Nor is it to realign with the likes of Delaware and Georgia State in the Colonial Athletic Association. If the Patriot League adopts a scholarship model, how do scholarships affect its philosophy of competition? Surprisngly, not that much,a t least to those who upgrade. With the players still being held to the admissions tandards set by the school and the league, the scenario is that some students can receive an education based on need, while others are receiving that same education based on the gifts of alumni and constituents. The element of competition, to field a team representative of the student body doesn't change, but is otherwise enhanced, because absent the middle class that carries a median income from $50,000-$150,000, athletics at Georgetown becomes an exercise of the very rich and/or the working poor.
Rev. O'Donovan's vision of football to “utilize the game of football to create an environment and atmosphere among our students, faculty, and community on an autumn Saturday afternoon and bring to our campus a school spirit on a fall day that is desperately needed” by playing peer institutions that shared similar academic philosophies is maintained, if only that Georgetown could better compete with Patriot teams (6-43 since 2001) and even Ivy teams (1-10 since 2003), which it seems less capable of doing under its present funding formula, and practically infeasible as these other programs pursue better recruits through either athletic scholarships or enhanced aid policies in the Ivy.
Peer Institutions: Each Patriot League school has a budget twice that of Georgetown, most of it in financial aid. For a school like Fordham, that number is almost three times in scope. If Georgetown can only offers $10,000 in aid to a recruit but Fordham can ofer a free ride, where does that kid go? Now, extend that to five other PL schools, and if Georgetown can't compete on the field now, what will it look like in a few years? And while Georgetown is among the median of Ivy schools by football budget, these schools have begun to implement a new facet of financial aid which figures to give it an insurmountable advantage over Georgetown on a strict need for need basis.
Athletic competition in any sport is best suited with comparable opponents and comparable missions. Forget the Big East for a moment--if Georgetown can't compete with Holy Cross or Penn, what's left? Duquesne and St. Francis, old rivals in the Division III days? Both are now building towards 40 scholarships. Wagner? Sacred Heart? Stony Brook? On their way to 40, too. The schools of the Pioneer League do not offer scholarships but range in distance from Marist (Poughkeepsie, NY) to San Diego. A schedule with the likes of Campbell (NC), Jacksonville (FL), and Valparaiso (IN) would do nothing to promote Hoya Football among an increasingly apathetic student and alumni population.
Should Georetown find the gifts to add the equivalent of 57 scholarships, opportuntiies for games with Big East foes are not out of the question. Colgate, for example, plays at Syracuse this year, and Fordham will play Connecticut in 2012, but that's not the destination, a competitive experience is. Because the cost of education demands greater support for the student athlete, not choosing to act is a decision in and of itself.
Talent: What can Georgetown University offer a recruit? A great education-- assuming, of course, he can get in and find a way to pay for it. Talented recruits, especially those at the upper end academically, have a lot of choices and fewer are willing to take on tens of thousands of dollars in loans just to play for Georgetown when peers can (and will) offer essentially an loan-free education for attending its school. Opening up the door to more talented student-athletes can only help Georgetown's cause, mindful that it still has the ability to accept and reject prospects on academics--a scholarship is not a blank check.
While a generalization, I've used this analogy to explain the corner Georgetown is with recruiting. (The assistant coaches may disagree on degree, but it's one man's opinion.) If there are 1,000 prospects for GU out there, Georgetown is basically restricted to the top 100 by grades. Of those 100, 40 are below $50,000 income, 40 below $100,000, and 20 above it. Of the 40 below $50,000, 30 will get scholarships elsewhere, with the Georgetown fighting for 10 with the rest of the Ivies and PL. Of the 40 in the middle, 30 will get scholarships elsewhere, but Georgetown can't offer any competitive aid, and will be in the running for 2 or 3. Of the 20 at the top, half will get aid through the Ivies (details below) and Georgetown is fighting for the remaining 10 with the six other PL schools. So for 1,000 recruits, Georgetown is fighting for maybe 2% of the pool (albeit with an 0-11 record and the MSF), and that's assuming the 2% are difference makers and not second teamers. A football scholarship plan could expands the prospect pool from 200-400% without necessitating a change in academic standards. If you can't afford Georgetown, and Georgetown can't make a competitive offer, you're out from the start.
In the previous column, it was written that "a non-scholarship athlete understands priorities off the field take precedence to those on it, and so do the coaches." Well, so do scholarship athletes, maybe more so. The record of Georgetown scholarship athlete community stands on its own across many sports, and football should be no different.
Institutional & Constituent Support: The word "scholarship", to some, reads "open admission"--it's a reeflection that top teams in football and basketball show little attention to the SAT and grade range of the overall applicant pool and recruit on NCAA minimums, and Georgetown Basketball is widely perceived to to recruit well below the competitive nature of the admissions pool as a whole.
Few make this claim about lacrosse athletes being open admits, or soccer, or any of the schoalrship athletes. Each sport has a range of admissions opportunities (the so-called "stretch" versus "reach") and what works in basketball may not work in soccer, for instance. Scholarship football does not require open admission--it is a reflection of talent and financial need in an era where the middle class cannot afford to attend the University, and can be consistent with the admissions policies already practiced in sports like lacrosse and soccer, neither of whom are painted with the broad brush of uninformed opinion that basketball has been portrayed with over the years.
Yes, but who's going to pay for it?
Economics: If there are insuficient University resources to support scholarship football, fine. It's got to come from constituents. The Univesity's focus is rightly on need-based aid over the next five years, which could also be of gain for need-based recruits. Leveraging the Gridiron Club to raise money for full and half-scholarships (yes, a half grant can be powerful gift of and by itself) is an attractive option. To the $250,000 annual goal discussed in the previous column, that's five scholarships a year in recruiting, or two full grants and six half grants, however they are divided. That doesn't sound like a lot, but a coach that had these options for the student-athlete where Georgetown is a contender would be a tremendous selling tool for a a special student athlete who, quite frankly, can't consider affording Georgetown otherwise.
But let's revisit the change agent that is spurring this document: If Patriot League schools offer scholarships, Georgetown is all but non-competitive. Further complicating this dilemma is the effort from Ivy League schools to essentially eliminate loans as part of a financial aid formula.
For 50 years, tuition at nationally competitive universities has increased with no end in sight. It cost somewhere around $2,500 a year to attend Georetown in 1960, about $4,500 in 1970 and just under $8,000 in 1980--while expensive, each was less than half the median income of the United States household. Since 1980, median household income has increased by 139%, but the cost of education has increased 513%, and with fewer federal aid options available, the cost of one year at an Ivy or PL school eclipses the household income for over half the nation.
In past years, Ivy and PL schools followed similar aid forumulas that made it theoretically comparable to accept an offer from Brown versus, say, Colgate. That has changed. Examples are noted at FinAid.org:
And they are not alone. In addition to schools like Duke, Stanford, North Carolina, Caltech, and more than two dozen no-loan programs among major colleges, Patriot League schools are getting into the fray: At Lafayette, no loans are offered to families with a HHI under $60,000, and cap loans above this at $2,500 a year. A similar program is found at Lehigh.
Where you won't find this--football or not, is Georgetown. The money's not there. And as Ivy and PL schools become more competitive aid-wise, scholarship or not, the means by which Georgetown can remain competitive for students and student-atheltes becomes ever less productive. Donor-initiated scholarships do not solve the issue, but it can help.
At the Georgetown web site, there is a brief interview with graduating lineman Jon Medina, who played three seasons before being sidelined by injury. "When I first began looking at Georgetown, all I saw was the sticker price,” he said. “The scholarships I received were essential to my attending Georgetown,” he says.
As the price of higher education takes more people out of the ability to pay, Georgetown need to consider all options to get the best students to look beyond that price tag and to the enduring value of a Georgetown education. "When enrollment is open to the best, we not only fulfill our mission, we not only fulfill the ambition of our founder, we not only serve those who gain otherwise inconceivable access to a first-rate education, but we enhance the experience of all who come to Georgetown," said GU President Jack DeGioia in his introduction to the 1789 Scholarship Imperative. For football's sake, engaging donor-supported scholarships must also be part of the discussion.
For 60 years, the concept of scholarships in football has been so foreign to Georgetown that it was hardly worth discussing--only 30 or so alumni that ever earned a football scholarship are still in the alumni records. Prevailing wisdom told us that scholarship football was dropped over cost and, therefore, could never be conceived again. A corollary to this argument suggested that scholarship athletes were somehow "less" academic minded and thus unfit in the first place.
The first argument is false. So is the second.
If you think the cost of scholarship tuition killed Georgetown football in 1950, think again. The total cost of 81 scholarship tuition bills in 1950 totaled $36,450, or about the cost of one such tuition in 2010. Even adding room and board, books and travel, the cost of the student-athletes covered less than half the annual loss that season, one complicated by low gate receipts (three home games) and considerable travel (at Penn State, at Tulsa, at Boston College, at Miami, at Fordham, at Holy Cross). For the most part, football was doing its part on and off the field, but renting an NFL stadium for crowds of 6,000 a game and traveling across the country for games were a dead end.
And for the better part of 45 years, football at Georgetown has existed with a central premise that football was for students and not for scholarships; in general, because Georgetown could not afford them in the first place, and in specific that it could always cobble a schedule of like-minded schools to maintain competitive parity. But within six months, that framework could change; and with it, both a challenge and an opportunity for Georgetown to revisit scholarship football will be at hand.
By December, Patriot League presidents are expected to vote on a measure allowing athletic scholarships in football. Led by Fordham, it is said to have the support of at least two other PL schools, who could convert need-based aid to grant aid with little difficulty. At least two other schools could favor it if the impact to its budgets by the covnersion could be worked out. For Georgetown (and to a lesser extent, Bucknell) the competitive impact would be devastating. In three games against scholarship opponents last season, GU was outscored a combined 73-16 at halftime.
Of course, the University would not be forced to play such competition, but times have changed. When GU rejoined NCAA play in 1970, there were over 110 schools in the Northeast playing nonscholarship football in what is now Division III. By 1995, in Division I-AA, there were 35 simialrly situated programs in the region, not counting lower division schools. If the Patriot opts to go to scholarship after the 2010 season, just nine non-schoalrship I-AA opponents would remain (Ivy League + Marist) , the balance having either gone scholarship in the Northeast Conference, or in the case of most of the former MAAC, dropped the sport entirely.
For a long time, scholarship sports at Georgetown were considered the province of basketball and track, and not much else. Owing to recent Big East requirements, limited scholarships have been raised in baseball, golf, lacrosse, soccer, and volleyball. In fact, only one NCAA sport at Georgetown is not allowed to sponsor any athletic scholarships...at least for now.
The case for scholarship football is an example of taking the next step--not for abandoning the institutional and financial principles that have guided the sport over these last two generations, but to enhance it, bringing with it a segment of student-athlete who is frankly disappearing on the campus: the middle class student. Unable to qualify for need-based aid, unable to pay tuition, this is the lost generation of would-be Hoyas ending up at places like Villanova, Stony Brook and Duquesne for the simple fact that these schools could offer aid for their future and Georgetown couldn't.
What if it could? What would it mean for Georgetown competitively and institutionally if it did?
"To be a competitive team in scholarship I-AA football alone, from 57 to 63 scholarships are needed and that is not an insignificant expense in a program such as Georgetown’s," wrote the previous column, and that is true--but it's not an either/or proposal, e.g., zero or 57. What would two, four or even six scholarships a year allow the coaching staff to reach a prospect who could have a transformative effect on Hoya football if only he could afford to attend? Is the next Colt Brennan (a player who was said to have been interested in Georgetown while attending Worcester Academy in 2002) out there, if only GU could have offered him (or any comparable recruit) something less than $35,000 in loans, or more, for the privilege of attending?
Let’s again take a look at the five factors which can be used to evaluate a football funding model, adapted from a 2004 study at Rice University.
Philosophy of Competition: Absent an offer it could not refuse from the Big East Conference, this argument is not about an 85 scholarship Division I-A program playing at FedEx Field. Nor is it to realign with the likes of Delaware and Georgia State in the Colonial Athletic Association. If the Patriot League adopts a scholarship model, how do scholarships affect its philosophy of competition? Surprisngly, not that much,a t least to those who upgrade. With the players still being held to the admissions tandards set by the school and the league, the scenario is that some students can receive an education based on need, while others are receiving that same education based on the gifts of alumni and constituents. The element of competition, to field a team representative of the student body doesn't change, but is otherwise enhanced, because absent the middle class that carries a median income from $50,000-$150,000, athletics at Georgetown becomes an exercise of the very rich and/or the working poor.
Rev. O'Donovan's vision of football to “utilize the game of football to create an environment and atmosphere among our students, faculty, and community on an autumn Saturday afternoon and bring to our campus a school spirit on a fall day that is desperately needed” by playing peer institutions that shared similar academic philosophies is maintained, if only that Georgetown could better compete with Patriot teams (6-43 since 2001) and even Ivy teams (1-10 since 2003), which it seems less capable of doing under its present funding formula, and practically infeasible as these other programs pursue better recruits through either athletic scholarships or enhanced aid policies in the Ivy.
Peer Institutions: Each Patriot League school has a budget twice that of Georgetown, most of it in financial aid. For a school like Fordham, that number is almost three times in scope. If Georgetown can only offers $10,000 in aid to a recruit but Fordham can ofer a free ride, where does that kid go? Now, extend that to five other PL schools, and if Georgetown can't compete on the field now, what will it look like in a few years? And while Georgetown is among the median of Ivy schools by football budget, these schools have begun to implement a new facet of financial aid which figures to give it an insurmountable advantage over Georgetown on a strict need for need basis.
Athletic competition in any sport is best suited with comparable opponents and comparable missions. Forget the Big East for a moment--if Georgetown can't compete with Holy Cross or Penn, what's left? Duquesne and St. Francis, old rivals in the Division III days? Both are now building towards 40 scholarships. Wagner? Sacred Heart? Stony Brook? On their way to 40, too. The schools of the Pioneer League do not offer scholarships but range in distance from Marist (Poughkeepsie, NY) to San Diego. A schedule with the likes of Campbell (NC), Jacksonville (FL), and Valparaiso (IN) would do nothing to promote Hoya Football among an increasingly apathetic student and alumni population.
Should Georetown find the gifts to add the equivalent of 57 scholarships, opportuntiies for games with Big East foes are not out of the question. Colgate, for example, plays at Syracuse this year, and Fordham will play Connecticut in 2012, but that's not the destination, a competitive experience is. Because the cost of education demands greater support for the student athlete, not choosing to act is a decision in and of itself.
Talent: What can Georgetown University offer a recruit? A great education-- assuming, of course, he can get in and find a way to pay for it. Talented recruits, especially those at the upper end academically, have a lot of choices and fewer are willing to take on tens of thousands of dollars in loans just to play for Georgetown when peers can (and will) offer essentially an loan-free education for attending its school. Opening up the door to more talented student-athletes can only help Georgetown's cause, mindful that it still has the ability to accept and reject prospects on academics--a scholarship is not a blank check.
While a generalization, I've used this analogy to explain the corner Georgetown is with recruiting. (The assistant coaches may disagree on degree, but it's one man's opinion.) If there are 1,000 prospects for GU out there, Georgetown is basically restricted to the top 100 by grades. Of those 100, 40 are below $50,000 income, 40 below $100,000, and 20 above it. Of the 40 below $50,000, 30 will get scholarships elsewhere, with the Georgetown fighting for 10 with the rest of the Ivies and PL. Of the 40 in the middle, 30 will get scholarships elsewhere, but Georgetown can't offer any competitive aid, and will be in the running for 2 or 3. Of the 20 at the top, half will get aid through the Ivies (details below) and Georgetown is fighting for the remaining 10 with the six other PL schools. So for 1,000 recruits, Georgetown is fighting for maybe 2% of the pool (albeit with an 0-11 record and the MSF), and that's assuming the 2% are difference makers and not second teamers. A football scholarship plan could expands the prospect pool from 200-400% without necessitating a change in academic standards. If you can't afford Georgetown, and Georgetown can't make a competitive offer, you're out from the start.
In the previous column, it was written that "a non-scholarship athlete understands priorities off the field take precedence to those on it, and so do the coaches." Well, so do scholarship athletes, maybe more so. The record of Georgetown scholarship athlete community stands on its own across many sports, and football should be no different.
Institutional & Constituent Support: The word "scholarship", to some, reads "open admission"--it's a reeflection that top teams in football and basketball show little attention to the SAT and grade range of the overall applicant pool and recruit on NCAA minimums, and Georgetown Basketball is widely perceived to to recruit well below the competitive nature of the admissions pool as a whole.
Few make this claim about lacrosse athletes being open admits, or soccer, or any of the schoalrship athletes. Each sport has a range of admissions opportunities (the so-called "stretch" versus "reach") and what works in basketball may not work in soccer, for instance. Scholarship football does not require open admission--it is a reflection of talent and financial need in an era where the middle class cannot afford to attend the University, and can be consistent with the admissions policies already practiced in sports like lacrosse and soccer, neither of whom are painted with the broad brush of uninformed opinion that basketball has been portrayed with over the years.
Yes, but who's going to pay for it?
Economics: If there are insuficient University resources to support scholarship football, fine. It's got to come from constituents. The Univesity's focus is rightly on need-based aid over the next five years, which could also be of gain for need-based recruits. Leveraging the Gridiron Club to raise money for full and half-scholarships (yes, a half grant can be powerful gift of and by itself) is an attractive option. To the $250,000 annual goal discussed in the previous column, that's five scholarships a year in recruiting, or two full grants and six half grants, however they are divided. That doesn't sound like a lot, but a coach that had these options for the student-athlete where Georgetown is a contender would be a tremendous selling tool for a a special student athlete who, quite frankly, can't consider affording Georgetown otherwise.
But let's revisit the change agent that is spurring this document: If Patriot League schools offer scholarships, Georgetown is all but non-competitive. Further complicating this dilemma is the effort from Ivy League schools to essentially eliminate loans as part of a financial aid formula.
For 50 years, tuition at nationally competitive universities has increased with no end in sight. It cost somewhere around $2,500 a year to attend Georetown in 1960, about $4,500 in 1970 and just under $8,000 in 1980--while expensive, each was less than half the median income of the United States household. Since 1980, median household income has increased by 139%, but the cost of education has increased 513%, and with fewer federal aid options available, the cost of one year at an Ivy or PL school eclipses the household income for over half the nation.
In past years, Ivy and PL schools followed similar aid forumulas that made it theoretically comparable to accept an offer from Brown versus, say, Colgate. That has changed. Examples are noted at FinAid.org:
- Brown: Eliminated parent contribution in financial aid formula. Eliminated any loans for household incomes (HHI) under $100K, caps total indebtedness to $20,000 for any student with a HHI over $150,000.
- Columbia: Eliminated parent contribution,repalced all loans with grants. No debt for HHI under $60,000.
- Cornell: Eliminated parent contribution for HHI under $75,000. Caps loans at $3,500 per year for HHI under $120,000, caps loans at $7,500 above $120,000.
- Dartmouth: No loans for HHI under $75,000.
- Harvard: No parent contribution needed, no loans offered. Families with HHI over $120,000 expected to pay no more than 10% of their income for tuition.
- Pennslvania: No loans.
- Princeton: All loans converted to grants.
- Yale: No parent contribution under $60,000, sliding scale of 1%-10% of income expected to pay for tuition.
And they are not alone. In addition to schools like Duke, Stanford, North Carolina, Caltech, and more than two dozen no-loan programs among major colleges, Patriot League schools are getting into the fray: At Lafayette, no loans are offered to families with a HHI under $60,000, and cap loans above this at $2,500 a year. A similar program is found at Lehigh.
Where you won't find this--football or not, is Georgetown. The money's not there. And as Ivy and PL schools become more competitive aid-wise, scholarship or not, the means by which Georgetown can remain competitive for students and student-atheltes becomes ever less productive. Donor-initiated scholarships do not solve the issue, but it can help.
At the Georgetown web site, there is a brief interview with graduating lineman Jon Medina, who played three seasons before being sidelined by injury. "When I first began looking at Georgetown, all I saw was the sticker price,” he said. “The scholarships I received were essential to my attending Georgetown,” he says.
As the price of higher education takes more people out of the ability to pay, Georgetown need to consider all options to get the best students to look beyond that price tag and to the enduring value of a Georgetown education. "When enrollment is open to the best, we not only fulfill our mission, we not only fulfill the ambition of our founder, we not only serve those who gain otherwise inconceivable access to a first-rate education, but we enhance the experience of all who come to Georgetown," said GU President Jack DeGioia in his introduction to the 1789 Scholarship Imperative. For football's sake, engaging donor-supported scholarships must also be part of the discussion.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Case For Non-Scholarship Football
In the midst of discussions about conference realignment, the issue of scholarships and football at Georgetown, a Big East school that does not play football within its conference, has led those inside and outside the Georgetown community to ask what the role football scholarships should play in its future. This is the first of a three part series on the subject asking this question across a spectrum of possibilities: first, the case for the existing non-scholarship funding model.
Sports teams are like houses. You can’t tell how tall you can build until you check the foundations.
When Hofstra and Northeastern dropped football last year, the sport literally disappeared from these campuses. The foundation was only as good as the 63 scholarships that they spent on them, and there arose no salient efforts to continue the sport outside this model.
When Georgetown dropped scholarships in 1951, football never really left. In his brief term as president of Georgetown (1949-52), Rev. Hunter Guthrie was no friend of athletics, and by cutting 81 scholarships, he thought that would be the end of it. Instead, football hung around through 13 years of full-contact class intramurals, with coaches and fans at weekly games. That effort helped provide the foundation for club football, which would not have survived if the talent and interest wasn’t there in the first place. Were it not for club, the move to Division III would have been roundly opposed by an administration which still viewed football as some sort of Trojan horse upon academia, but in reality wasn’t so afraid of a sport which it saw with the students it was teaching in the classrooms every day.
Similarly, the move to the MAAC and the Patriot League could not have taken place—or survived-- without the foundations set in place during the Scotty Glacken era. Glacken knew the value of scholarship football—after all, the Washington D.C. native he won a scholarship to Duke, which propelled him into the AFL and later to a prominent position in the DC investment community, but he also understood the role of a non-scholarship program, too. “I’d like consideration to be a given to a boy who is a good student and if it happens he also plays football, that’s all the better,” Glacken told The HOYA in 1973. “If we’d have financial support from the University, it would give us something to work with.”
The case for non-scholarship football is an example of what works—the foundation is in place, need not be torn up, and absent the capital investment to do so, remains a cost effective investment for the University for what remains an extracurricular activity and not a revenue source or auxiliary enterprise.
Georgetown offer scholarships in a number of sports, from fully funded teams (basketball), to scholarships divided across much of the team (track, lacrosse, soccer), to a handful across various sports (golf, volleyball, baseball, etc.). Football is non-scholarship as much by rule as by direction—the Patriot League does not allow for merit-based grants and the Hoyas have not competed within a division of conference where scholarships were permitted since reviving football in 1964. To be a competitive team in scholarship I-AA football alone, from 57 to 63 scholarships are needed and that is not an insignificant expense in a program such as Georgetown’s.
Let’s take a look at five factors which can be used to evaluate a football funding model, adapted from a 2004 study at Rice University. While the concept of scholarships offers promise, a need-based aid model remains within a framework Georgetown can better live with.
Philosophy of Competition: As one digs into the foundations of football at Georgetown, the building blocks for the sport have always relied foremost on the student experience, or, as it was once referred, “football for fun”. Viewed against the bright lights of the Big East and the NCAA Final Four, this may seem a bit anachronistic. But viewed against its own foundations, it’s not. As outlined by former President Leo O’Donovan S.J., the non-scholarship model allowed GU to, in the words of former coach Bob Benson, to “utilize the game of football to create an environment and atmosphere among our students, faculty, and community on an autumn Saturday afternoon and bring to our campus a school spirit on a fall day that is desperately needed” by playing peer institutions that shared similar academic philosophies (e.g., Patriot and Ivy teams). The value of national recognition is subordinated to competing for the institution and for the game.
Peer Institutions: Athletic competition in any sport is best suited with comparable opponents and comparable missions. A community college is not Georgetown’s peer, neither is a school in the Southeastern Conference. While GU has met schools across the academic and athletic spectrum over 122 years of varsity football play, the present cohort of schools to which Georgetown is most closely identified are schools which maintain competitive non-scholarship football programs: generally, Ivy and Patriot league programs, while excepting a handful of programs above its football weight class (Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame) and a one or two below it (Johns Hopkins, Chicago). As long as this group continues to play football within this model, it’s a good home that Georgetown can live with institutionally, and compete reasonably with. Yes, Georgetown’s poor records in the Kelly era are a legitimate topic of concern, but the outcomes are not the result of its peers.
Peer competition is important to Georgetown. A low-scholarship conference (<20 scholarships) does not exist, while the closest mid-range league (21-50) would realign Georgetown which schools such as Wagner, Monmouth, and Stony Brook. At the highest levels of I-AA football (51-63 scholarships) is the Colonial Athletic Association, with teams such as Richmond, William & Mary, and Villanova. These are competitive peer schools, but at a significant price and at the loss of meaningful competition with the Patriot and Ivy League. As to major college peers (I-A), the tradeoffs of 85 scholarships, renting RFK Stadium or FedEx Field, and trading Brown and Yale for Pitt and Syracuse represents a quantum leap in admissions, budgets, and support, with the exposure of several million dollars in losses if game attendance or TV revenues do not match expectations.
Talent: Georgetown has always drawn students that are driven by academic success in the framework of a well-rounded education, and football should be no different. A non-scholarship athlete understands priorities off the field take precedence to those on it, and so do the coaches. This does not preclude greater success in the sport after college (the Ivies regularly send graduates to NFL training vamps, for example), but does not overwhelm it.
Georgetown does not play football as a mere avocation, of course. It recruits, trains, and expects players to be driven to be competitive on the field and, when successful in recruiting, can bring to the Hilltop great-student athletes in a sport. But it also expects a balance off the field to which a non-scholarship model is particularly accommodating. Since financial aid is awarded by the University on need and not on performance, the decision whether to play does not put one’s academic attendance into jeopardy. No one is “pulling” a scholarship for being a third string quarterback. If a football player is forced into a choice between the weight room and the classroom, that’s a choice no one at GU wants to put someone into.
Institutional & Constituent Support: The more competitive the college, the more scrutiny is placed upon admits. Georgetown has never been comfortable from an institutional point of view with special admits, sports or not. Even the concept of 3 or 4 men’s basketball players a year outside the traditional SAT ranges still causes an amount of institutional indigestion, unfair or not. By following an admissions policy that accepts students based on academic performance and admits based on the same financial aid formula available to any accepted student, football can seek to avoid the pushback that Georgetown is somehow weakened by a disproportionate share of special admits within a class.
A related factor is constituent support. A school like Villanova or even Fordham (which is moving to scholarship football) counts upon major donors to fund scholarship expenses. A major constituent base is, for now anyway, not developed at Georgetown. In 1976, the Gridiron Club proposed raising money for 50 need-based financial aid awards a year, or an annual commitment of $250,000, and fell far short. Thirty five years later, even $250,000 (now the equivalent of five scholarships per year) is a Gridiron Club goal and not an expectation. Absent a major giving drive, University-generated financial aid provides the only reliable means of support to student-athletes and can be expected to continue to do so.
Economics: If academic, peer, and institutional considerations don’t drive this conversation, economics do. For a broad-based athletic program such as Georgetown, there are simply insufficient revenues at hand to commit to athletic scholarships required between football and comparable women’s sports. Many schools that can offer full scholarships in football do so with a vastly abbreviated men’s sports program—Vanderbilt, for example, has just 29 male athletes in all remaining sports outside football, basketball, and baseball. Outside of these same three sports, Georgetown has over 300 male student athletes.
Yes, peer schools like Duke, BC and Notre Dame are able to run broader-based programs, but do so with significant television contract revenue Georgetown does not have, and overall budget roughly twice GU’s size. If a future TV contract wanted to pay Georgetown $20 million a year, perhaps then we can talk. Absent that kind of revenue, and amidst the rising cost of a full tuition grant at Georgetown, much (though not all) of the scholarship talk becomes moot.
Bear in mind that the cost of 81 full football scholarships (tuition, room, board, books and fees) in 1950 dollars totaled just over $100,000. In 2010 dollars, the cost of 81 grants is over $4.6 million. Double it, and that’s $9.2 million in men’s and women’s scholarships that would need to be supported every 12 months. The current scholarship budget for all 29 Georgetown sports combined is less than $6.5 million.
And in a dark, bottom-line way, that’s another reason why Georgetown is playing football in 2010 and Hofstra and Northeastern is not. The operating expenses of GU football totaled just over $256,000, net of financial aid and coaches salaries. It’s a much easier answer for Jack DeGioia to answer when an angry alumnus asks why we’re spending $250,000 on a losing football team as opposed to, say, spending seven or eight million on a losing team in a time of fiscal austerity. Leveraging the financial aid resources of Georgetown University makes football not just an expense but an investment that pays dividends—in students, in alumni, in giving, and in providing the kind of well-rounded college experience that a Hofstra or Northeastern doesn’t have anymore.
No one denies that the cost of attending Georgetown weighs heavily upon recruiting and, ultimately, with on-field success. Fortunately, the University’s top campaign initiative, the 1789 Scholarship Imperative, fits the program to a tee. The campaign aims to raise $500 million in need based aid over five years, the same need-based aid that could be raised by football consituents directly for the program. As written earlier this year,
A non-scholarship foundation, too modest for some and perhaps not for others, nonetheless allows for the two most precious resources of a college sports program: a present it can afford, and most importantly, the promise of a future to build upon.
Sports teams are like houses. You can’t tell how tall you can build until you check the foundations.
When Hofstra and Northeastern dropped football last year, the sport literally disappeared from these campuses. The foundation was only as good as the 63 scholarships that they spent on them, and there arose no salient efforts to continue the sport outside this model.
When Georgetown dropped scholarships in 1951, football never really left. In his brief term as president of Georgetown (1949-52), Rev. Hunter Guthrie was no friend of athletics, and by cutting 81 scholarships, he thought that would be the end of it. Instead, football hung around through 13 years of full-contact class intramurals, with coaches and fans at weekly games. That effort helped provide the foundation for club football, which would not have survived if the talent and interest wasn’t there in the first place. Were it not for club, the move to Division III would have been roundly opposed by an administration which still viewed football as some sort of Trojan horse upon academia, but in reality wasn’t so afraid of a sport which it saw with the students it was teaching in the classrooms every day.
Similarly, the move to the MAAC and the Patriot League could not have taken place—or survived-- without the foundations set in place during the Scotty Glacken era. Glacken knew the value of scholarship football—after all, the Washington D.C. native he won a scholarship to Duke, which propelled him into the AFL and later to a prominent position in the DC investment community, but he also understood the role of a non-scholarship program, too. “I’d like consideration to be a given to a boy who is a good student and if it happens he also plays football, that’s all the better,” Glacken told The HOYA in 1973. “If we’d have financial support from the University, it would give us something to work with.”
The case for non-scholarship football is an example of what works—the foundation is in place, need not be torn up, and absent the capital investment to do so, remains a cost effective investment for the University for what remains an extracurricular activity and not a revenue source or auxiliary enterprise.
Georgetown offer scholarships in a number of sports, from fully funded teams (basketball), to scholarships divided across much of the team (track, lacrosse, soccer), to a handful across various sports (golf, volleyball, baseball, etc.). Football is non-scholarship as much by rule as by direction—the Patriot League does not allow for merit-based grants and the Hoyas have not competed within a division of conference where scholarships were permitted since reviving football in 1964. To be a competitive team in scholarship I-AA football alone, from 57 to 63 scholarships are needed and that is not an insignificant expense in a program such as Georgetown’s.
Let’s take a look at five factors which can be used to evaluate a football funding model, adapted from a 2004 study at Rice University. While the concept of scholarships offers promise, a need-based aid model remains within a framework Georgetown can better live with.
Philosophy of Competition: As one digs into the foundations of football at Georgetown, the building blocks for the sport have always relied foremost on the student experience, or, as it was once referred, “football for fun”. Viewed against the bright lights of the Big East and the NCAA Final Four, this may seem a bit anachronistic. But viewed against its own foundations, it’s not. As outlined by former President Leo O’Donovan S.J., the non-scholarship model allowed GU to, in the words of former coach Bob Benson, to “utilize the game of football to create an environment and atmosphere among our students, faculty, and community on an autumn Saturday afternoon and bring to our campus a school spirit on a fall day that is desperately needed” by playing peer institutions that shared similar academic philosophies (e.g., Patriot and Ivy teams). The value of national recognition is subordinated to competing for the institution and for the game.
Peer Institutions: Athletic competition in any sport is best suited with comparable opponents and comparable missions. A community college is not Georgetown’s peer, neither is a school in the Southeastern Conference. While GU has met schools across the academic and athletic spectrum over 122 years of varsity football play, the present cohort of schools to which Georgetown is most closely identified are schools which maintain competitive non-scholarship football programs: generally, Ivy and Patriot league programs, while excepting a handful of programs above its football weight class (Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame) and a one or two below it (Johns Hopkins, Chicago). As long as this group continues to play football within this model, it’s a good home that Georgetown can live with institutionally, and compete reasonably with. Yes, Georgetown’s poor records in the Kelly era are a legitimate topic of concern, but the outcomes are not the result of its peers.
Peer competition is important to Georgetown. A low-scholarship conference (<20 scholarships) does not exist, while the closest mid-range league (21-50) would realign Georgetown which schools such as Wagner, Monmouth, and Stony Brook. At the highest levels of I-AA football (51-63 scholarships) is the Colonial Athletic Association, with teams such as Richmond, William & Mary, and Villanova. These are competitive peer schools, but at a significant price and at the loss of meaningful competition with the Patriot and Ivy League. As to major college peers (I-A), the tradeoffs of 85 scholarships, renting RFK Stadium or FedEx Field, and trading Brown and Yale for Pitt and Syracuse represents a quantum leap in admissions, budgets, and support, with the exposure of several million dollars in losses if game attendance or TV revenues do not match expectations.
Talent: Georgetown has always drawn students that are driven by academic success in the framework of a well-rounded education, and football should be no different. A non-scholarship athlete understands priorities off the field take precedence to those on it, and so do the coaches. This does not preclude greater success in the sport after college (the Ivies regularly send graduates to NFL training vamps, for example), but does not overwhelm it.
Georgetown does not play football as a mere avocation, of course. It recruits, trains, and expects players to be driven to be competitive on the field and, when successful in recruiting, can bring to the Hilltop great-student athletes in a sport. But it also expects a balance off the field to which a non-scholarship model is particularly accommodating. Since financial aid is awarded by the University on need and not on performance, the decision whether to play does not put one’s academic attendance into jeopardy. No one is “pulling” a scholarship for being a third string quarterback. If a football player is forced into a choice between the weight room and the classroom, that’s a choice no one at GU wants to put someone into.
Institutional & Constituent Support: The more competitive the college, the more scrutiny is placed upon admits. Georgetown has never been comfortable from an institutional point of view with special admits, sports or not. Even the concept of 3 or 4 men’s basketball players a year outside the traditional SAT ranges still causes an amount of institutional indigestion, unfair or not. By following an admissions policy that accepts students based on academic performance and admits based on the same financial aid formula available to any accepted student, football can seek to avoid the pushback that Georgetown is somehow weakened by a disproportionate share of special admits within a class.
A related factor is constituent support. A school like Villanova or even Fordham (which is moving to scholarship football) counts upon major donors to fund scholarship expenses. A major constituent base is, for now anyway, not developed at Georgetown. In 1976, the Gridiron Club proposed raising money for 50 need-based financial aid awards a year, or an annual commitment of $250,000, and fell far short. Thirty five years later, even $250,000 (now the equivalent of five scholarships per year) is a Gridiron Club goal and not an expectation. Absent a major giving drive, University-generated financial aid provides the only reliable means of support to student-athletes and can be expected to continue to do so.
Economics: If academic, peer, and institutional considerations don’t drive this conversation, economics do. For a broad-based athletic program such as Georgetown, there are simply insufficient revenues at hand to commit to athletic scholarships required between football and comparable women’s sports. Many schools that can offer full scholarships in football do so with a vastly abbreviated men’s sports program—Vanderbilt, for example, has just 29 male athletes in all remaining sports outside football, basketball, and baseball. Outside of these same three sports, Georgetown has over 300 male student athletes.
Yes, peer schools like Duke, BC and Notre Dame are able to run broader-based programs, but do so with significant television contract revenue Georgetown does not have, and overall budget roughly twice GU’s size. If a future TV contract wanted to pay Georgetown $20 million a year, perhaps then we can talk. Absent that kind of revenue, and amidst the rising cost of a full tuition grant at Georgetown, much (though not all) of the scholarship talk becomes moot.
Bear in mind that the cost of 81 full football scholarships (tuition, room, board, books and fees) in 1950 dollars totaled just over $100,000. In 2010 dollars, the cost of 81 grants is over $4.6 million. Double it, and that’s $9.2 million in men’s and women’s scholarships that would need to be supported every 12 months. The current scholarship budget for all 29 Georgetown sports combined is less than $6.5 million.
And in a dark, bottom-line way, that’s another reason why Georgetown is playing football in 2010 and Hofstra and Northeastern is not. The operating expenses of GU football totaled just over $256,000, net of financial aid and coaches salaries. It’s a much easier answer for Jack DeGioia to answer when an angry alumnus asks why we’re spending $250,000 on a losing football team as opposed to, say, spending seven or eight million on a losing team in a time of fiscal austerity. Leveraging the financial aid resources of Georgetown University makes football not just an expense but an investment that pays dividends—in students, in alumni, in giving, and in providing the kind of well-rounded college experience that a Hofstra or Northeastern doesn’t have anymore.
No one denies that the cost of attending Georgetown weighs heavily upon recruiting and, ultimately, with on-field success. Fortunately, the University’s top campaign initiative, the 1789 Scholarship Imperative, fits the program to a tee. The campaign aims to raise $500 million in need based aid over five years, the same need-based aid that could be raised by football consituents directly for the program. As written earlier this year,
- “Georgetown is not 0-11 because of spring practice or the Multi-Sport Facility or assistant coaches--in large measure, it is 0-11 because it lacks the financial abilities of peer schools to recruit and admit football players that can elevate the program. The Department of Education public reports confirm that Georgetown's budget is half that of its closest competitor (Bucknell) and about a third of what Fordham and Colgate spend on football, in large part due to the lack of grant-based financial aid available to recruits. This was a gap the Hoyas faced when joining the PL in 2001 and it has been exacerbated in the intervening years. Whereas Colgate can offer the equivalent of full rides to 55 players on the team, Georgetown can't come close, and relies on loans and work study to fill the gap for recruits... If football is going to dig itself out of the ditch of the past few years, it needs talent, and a lot of talent needs competitive financial aid to keep Georgetown in the conversation--we know good recruits aren't coming to GU for the stadium or the training facilities but if it can be cost-competitive to choose Georgetown over Fordham, over Colgate, or some of the Ivies, the opportunity for competitive gains through recruiting become more realistic.”
A non-scholarship foundation, too modest for some and perhaps not for others, nonetheless allows for the two most precious resources of a college sports program: a present it can afford, and most importantly, the promise of a future to build upon.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Calm Before The Storm
In a week of NBA finals, Stanley Cup Finals, and the hopes of Washington Nationals fans that Steven Strasburg is the next Nolan Ryan and not the next David Clyde (yeah, look it up), the hot topic in the chattering class is college football and whether the University of Nebraska chooses safety and security (staying in the Big XII) or money and prestige (as a candidate for what we could now call "Big Ten+ "). How did it come to this?
Before we point to Penn State moving to the Big Ten and Arkansas deep-sixing the Southwest Conference 20 years ago, remember that these kind of moves are somewhat common across sports, just not among entrenched Division I-A schools. A school like Louisville, for example, has variously belonged to the Southern Intercolelgiate Conference, the Ohio Valley, the Missouri Valley, the Metro Seven, and Conference USA before joining the Big East. Even Nebraska played in two conferences before the Big 8.
Nebraska, an outlier when Big Ten expansion talks began, has moved to the front of the line in recent weeks as Notre Dame has reminded the conference that no means no, and the Big East has taken proactive steps to develop the kind of TV network that gives strength to its members to stay and casts doubts about how effective the Big Ten Network can be in places like, say, New Jersey. Nebraska hasn't said yes but hasn't exactly said no to the Big Ten's open offer either, and has been given an ultimatum of sorts: either commit to the Big XII or the Texas Longhorns are prone to move west to the Pac-10 and take the entire Big XII Southern Division with them.
Nebraska will have a home no matter what they do. But the collateral damage to Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, and Iowa State could be severe. Nebraska's decision, whatever it is (and if you're reading this in September, whatever the decision was) will drive decision making among a host of schools nationwide, if only to escape the game of Division I-A musical chairs with one less chair in the circle. In the 1990's, former national powers SMU and Houston found themselves left standing when the music stopped. This time around, who knows.
And in a strange way, Nebraska's dilemma patterns the inconvenient truth that has been hanging like a cloud over the Patriot League for a year--someone's got to make a decision on football scholarships. For those at Georgetown who have not been keeping up with this (and owing to message board discussions, almost no one has), Fordham spends a considerable portion of its budget on football, almsot three times that of Georgetown and more than any I-AA private school in the nation. They soon realized with the money they are spending on financial aid (close to $3 million a year), converting that to scholarships elevates Fordham to be a legitimate candidate for games with Division I-A schools, who must play schools with 57 or more scholarships to qualify the game for bowl contention. Fordham decided this year to basically ignore the PL's ban on football scholarships beginnign with this recruiting class. The league placed them as ineligible for the PL title but let Fordham maintain scheduling with the other schools, until such time that schoalrships are accepted and Fordham is back in, or scholarships are rejected and Fordham resigns from the league, leaving the PL at the minimum number of schools needed for an NCAA playoff bid.
A meeting of the Patriot League presidents in December 2009 failed to produce consensus on what to do, but the league announced it would come to a decision within a year. This week's summer meeting of the presidents has not to date announced any further resolution and the PL continues towards a self-imposed December deadline to address Fordham's wanderlust.
This decision won't come down to Fordham. It will come down to Lehigh.
There are probably two schools in the camp for football scholarships (Fordham, Colgate) and a mix of schools which range from those who could afford it (Lehigh, Holy Cross), to those that could probably be talked into it (Lafayette, Bucknell). The PL may determine that its Ivy alliances and non-scholarship philosophy are more important than games against UConn or Temple, and Fordham will be politely shown the door. But here is where Lehigh holds a trump card--it is arguably the strongest program in the conference and one whose recruiting and revenue base can justify scholarships. If Lehigh gave its presidential approval to scholarships, it's not like the PL is going to throw them out, and its support puts enormous pressure on Lafayette (and less so to Colgate and Holy Cross) to follow suit, pressure that Fordham cannot and does not possess. If the Engineers add 60 scholarships, rest assured the Leopards, Red Raiders and Crusaders won't settle for less. Conversely, if Lehigh stands up for the PL philosophy, it would keep the foundations in place for the entire league and prevent other schools from venturing out on its own.
OK, so no one is going to confuse a Saturday afternoon at Nebraska with Lehigh, but the Huskers' choice of stability and security versus revenue and prestige does mirror what the Patriot League presidents must evaluate. The PL was built on Derek Bok and John Brooks' shared vision of amateur competition among elite colleges, without the pressure and presumed professionalism of "big time" football. The model has been somewhat marginalized in recent years by the erosion of interest in non-scholarship football in the East, the move by the Ivy League to offer more grant money than what is offered in the PL, and the perception that non-scholarship schools are being left behind in recruiting and on-field performance. The days of multiple playoff bids and a PL team in the I-AA championship game seem more distant than ever.
Such temptations come at a price, however, and not only philosophically--the cost of maintaining 57-63 athletic scholarships in football in the Title IX era is not inconsequential. Fordham is able to do it because its football financial aid money was accounted for in the athletic budget, not as general aid received by any eligible student. The transition might be far less palatable to schools which have built its program from general aid and not athletic aid.
Left unsaid for now is where Georgetown fits into all this--frankly, it doesn't. The Hoyas are such an outlier in this discussion, but the results of whatever the league decides will likely have a transformative effect on where we see Georegetown foottball going forward. I'll save the arguments pro and con for another column, but consider this sobering fact of the Kelly era: Georgetown is 1-23 against PL schools, and these are schools without football scholarships. If four, five or six of these PL schools quickly ramped up to 55-60 scholarships, how would the Hoyas fare?
Assuming the PL hasn't reached a resolution this week, and notthing suggests they have, a decision is promised by the end of this year. There are two doors awaiting the league, and these school presidents know that the decision made affect the long term structure and stability of the entire league itself, not just football. Much like the Big XII, it must stand together, lest it hang separately. Fordham has made its choice, but a number of other schools will look to Lehigh to choose which door to collectively pass through.
So will it be the lady, or the tiger?
Before we point to Penn State moving to the Big Ten and Arkansas deep-sixing the Southwest Conference 20 years ago, remember that these kind of moves are somewhat common across sports, just not among entrenched Division I-A schools. A school like Louisville, for example, has variously belonged to the Southern Intercolelgiate Conference, the Ohio Valley, the Missouri Valley, the Metro Seven, and Conference USA before joining the Big East. Even Nebraska played in two conferences before the Big 8.
Nebraska, an outlier when Big Ten expansion talks began, has moved to the front of the line in recent weeks as Notre Dame has reminded the conference that no means no, and the Big East has taken proactive steps to develop the kind of TV network that gives strength to its members to stay and casts doubts about how effective the Big Ten Network can be in places like, say, New Jersey. Nebraska hasn't said yes but hasn't exactly said no to the Big Ten's open offer either, and has been given an ultimatum of sorts: either commit to the Big XII or the Texas Longhorns are prone to move west to the Pac-10 and take the entire Big XII Southern Division with them.
Nebraska will have a home no matter what they do. But the collateral damage to Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, and Iowa State could be severe. Nebraska's decision, whatever it is (and if you're reading this in September, whatever the decision was) will drive decision making among a host of schools nationwide, if only to escape the game of Division I-A musical chairs with one less chair in the circle. In the 1990's, former national powers SMU and Houston found themselves left standing when the music stopped. This time around, who knows.
And in a strange way, Nebraska's dilemma patterns the inconvenient truth that has been hanging like a cloud over the Patriot League for a year--someone's got to make a decision on football scholarships. For those at Georgetown who have not been keeping up with this (and owing to message board discussions, almost no one has), Fordham spends a considerable portion of its budget on football, almsot three times that of Georgetown and more than any I-AA private school in the nation. They soon realized with the money they are spending on financial aid (close to $3 million a year), converting that to scholarships elevates Fordham to be a legitimate candidate for games with Division I-A schools, who must play schools with 57 or more scholarships to qualify the game for bowl contention. Fordham decided this year to basically ignore the PL's ban on football scholarships beginnign with this recruiting class. The league placed them as ineligible for the PL title but let Fordham maintain scheduling with the other schools, until such time that schoalrships are accepted and Fordham is back in, or scholarships are rejected and Fordham resigns from the league, leaving the PL at the minimum number of schools needed for an NCAA playoff bid.
A meeting of the Patriot League presidents in December 2009 failed to produce consensus on what to do, but the league announced it would come to a decision within a year. This week's summer meeting of the presidents has not to date announced any further resolution and the PL continues towards a self-imposed December deadline to address Fordham's wanderlust.
This decision won't come down to Fordham. It will come down to Lehigh.
There are probably two schools in the camp for football scholarships (Fordham, Colgate) and a mix of schools which range from those who could afford it (Lehigh, Holy Cross), to those that could probably be talked into it (Lafayette, Bucknell). The PL may determine that its Ivy alliances and non-scholarship philosophy are more important than games against UConn or Temple, and Fordham will be politely shown the door. But here is where Lehigh holds a trump card--it is arguably the strongest program in the conference and one whose recruiting and revenue base can justify scholarships. If Lehigh gave its presidential approval to scholarships, it's not like the PL is going to throw them out, and its support puts enormous pressure on Lafayette (and less so to Colgate and Holy Cross) to follow suit, pressure that Fordham cannot and does not possess. If the Engineers add 60 scholarships, rest assured the Leopards, Red Raiders and Crusaders won't settle for less. Conversely, if Lehigh stands up for the PL philosophy, it would keep the foundations in place for the entire league and prevent other schools from venturing out on its own.
OK, so no one is going to confuse a Saturday afternoon at Nebraska with Lehigh, but the Huskers' choice of stability and security versus revenue and prestige does mirror what the Patriot League presidents must evaluate. The PL was built on Derek Bok and John Brooks' shared vision of amateur competition among elite colleges, without the pressure and presumed professionalism of "big time" football. The model has been somewhat marginalized in recent years by the erosion of interest in non-scholarship football in the East, the move by the Ivy League to offer more grant money than what is offered in the PL, and the perception that non-scholarship schools are being left behind in recruiting and on-field performance. The days of multiple playoff bids and a PL team in the I-AA championship game seem more distant than ever.
Such temptations come at a price, however, and not only philosophically--the cost of maintaining 57-63 athletic scholarships in football in the Title IX era is not inconsequential. Fordham is able to do it because its football financial aid money was accounted for in the athletic budget, not as general aid received by any eligible student. The transition might be far less palatable to schools which have built its program from general aid and not athletic aid.
Left unsaid for now is where Georgetown fits into all this--frankly, it doesn't. The Hoyas are such an outlier in this discussion, but the results of whatever the league decides will likely have a transformative effect on where we see Georegetown foottball going forward. I'll save the arguments pro and con for another column, but consider this sobering fact of the Kelly era: Georgetown is 1-23 against PL schools, and these are schools without football scholarships. If four, five or six of these PL schools quickly ramped up to 55-60 scholarships, how would the Hoyas fare?
Assuming the PL hasn't reached a resolution this week, and notthing suggests they have, a decision is promised by the end of this year. There are two doors awaiting the league, and these school presidents know that the decision made affect the long term structure and stability of the entire league itself, not just football. Much like the Big XII, it must stand together, lest it hang separately. Fordham has made its choice, but a number of other schools will look to Lehigh to choose which door to collectively pass through.
So will it be the lady, or the tiger?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)