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May 15: Part One

2007 marks the 15th season for Division I-AA (aka Football Championship Subdivision) football at Georgetown University. It's come a long way. It's got a long way to go.

One can take the years to date and divide them into two distinct periods: the seven years from 1993 through 1999, and the seven from 2000 through 2006. The early years were heady times, a big fish in a small pond, granted, but with optimism and momentum. Georgetown showed steady progress every single year from 1993-99, from a four win season to start to consecutive nine win seasons by 1999. It defeated Holy Cross in two of three years and was a goal line stand short of a three game sweep. A conference upgrade was around the corner, and a replacement for crumbling Kehoe Field was in the planning stages.

So here it is in 2007. A better program in every way but the results, the decade has not been an easy one for the program. Of its 20 regional and academic peers in I-AA, Georgetown is 15th in the size of its budget, 17th in wins, and last in attendance. The recruiting and financial advantages owned by other Patriot League (PL) schools have contributed to only five Georgetown wins in 39 league games since 2001. And much like its predecessor field, the unnamed and unfinished Multi-Sport Field (nee Facility) tells the outside world that progress in football at Georgetown remains on hold.

It's the wrong message, at exactly the wrong time.

In 2007, this is a team with promise, potential, and, as they say, a great story to tell. Some of Georgetown's best student athletes make significant commitments to this sport, and give back to Georgetown and the community in ways that only a few understand. And the wins are coming. So why is this story not getting out to the students, the alumni, and the community?

Over the next ten weeks, this column will attempt to open some discussion about the fan experience at Georgetown and why this support provides the foundation for the program's future success. We hope to discuss why people do or do not support the program, what can be done to improve game-day experiences and program-wide communication by the University, and extend the goodwill fostered by men's basketball beyond the hardwood.

If that seems like a lot to ask in 2007, imagine it in 1993.

"Our football staff inherited a program that was probably one meeting away from being discontinued," wrote former coach Bob Benson in 2001, "and very few people who actually cared about the direction the program would take."

Benson's success, and ultimately his struggle, was inexorably tied to the idea of the Multi-Sport Facility, a $22.5 million athletic complex which could not only get football off the roof of Kehoe Field, but attract the kind of opponents that would interest fans more accustomed to point guards than left guards.

"This new facility will be designed and built to bring the history and tradition of Georgetown University and the Georgetown football program to our impressive campus," he wrote. "It will be built with the idea that it has been here for years. It is a vision: Play peer institutions...place it in the center of campus. Create a new school spirit among our students, faculty, and the community, and bring an environment with a wonderful aura of history and tradition to the Georgetown campus."

A proposed design for the Multi-Sport Facility, circa 2002.

Bob Benson put a fair amount of blood, sweat, and tears into the project. Trouble was, the University did not follow Benson's lead. Kevin Kelly is under no similar mandate to get it built on his powers of persuasion--he knows that without wins, he won't get 13 years to make it happen. Today's Georgetown message is built on getting players to win, whether they're playing on a patch of dirt or a shiny new stadium.

Winners draw a crowd, or at least they should. Georgetown's success in the MAAC drew surprisingly little, though, especially from a student body weaned on basketball. Today's students see much of the same not only from the team, but the University itself.

"The fact that the University does not respect the football program enough to schedule other important activities around it sends a not-so-subtle message to students that football isn't all that important," said HOYA columnist and Hoya Blue executive Ray Borgone, who recalled how Georgetown scheduled mandatory academic seminars for freshmen against a home football game last season, and a popular student activities fair the year before. "You wouldn't see that type of thing done against a home basketball game," he said, "[and] you wouldn't see it happen at a Division I football program.

"If Georgetown football is going to "matter" to the common student," added Borgone, "the University is going to have to treat the football program like it does in fact matter."

In a sense, that was this series is all about--to bring different voices to the table to ask what is going on now and how football can matter to the Georgetown community, sooner rather than later.

Let's review the topics for this off-season:

We want to discuss what it will take to get a representative student section not only in September, but in November.

We want to discuss what it will take to transform the fan-unfriendly Multi-Sport Field surroundings into a true destination for Saturday afternoons.

We want to discuss what it will take to reach out to just a small fraction of the 35,000 Georgetown alumni within an hour of the campus and invite them to games with Yale and Cornell.

We want to discuss what it will take to reach out to the alumni of Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey to bring the Hoya spirit to historic Franklin Field in October, for the first Georgetown game in Philadelphia since 1948.

We want to discuss what it will take to engage the Washington media to elevate its coverage of Hoya football in print, radio, TV, and online.

We want to discuss what it will take to sell out up to three home games in advance this season. (That's right, in advance.)

We want to discuss the untapped potential of marketing and merchandising can leverage goodwill as well as revenues for the program.

We want to discuss why it's not only fundraising, but friend-raising that can elevate the financial support of the team when it desperately needs it.

Lots of issues to deal with, so join us for the discussion.

A home game with Yale is exactly four months from this day. The team will be ready. Is Georgetown?

May 29: Extending the base of student support.
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