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Generation Burton:
The VCW 6 Theory of Freshman Fans
By John Hawkes

If you've read the introductory essay to the "Generation Burton" series already, you're likely aware that I am particularly fond of the floor I lived on during my freshman year at Georgetown and of the floormates with whom I shared the first nine months of our college experience. Not surprisingly, so are many students at Georgetown. Ask any Blue and Gray or GAAP tour guide which freshman dorm is the best, and they'll always tell you the same thing-the one they lived in when they were a freshman.

During my freshman year at Georgetown, I lived on the 6th floor of Village C West. I still hung out with a lot of those same people I hi-fived on the way down the hall after the Nathaniel Burton game well into my Senior year-in fact, I ended up living with the two guys I watched the game with. In short, I couldn't have asked for a better group of potential friends when I arrived on the Hilltop.

VCW6 was pretty much your average Georgetown dorm floor-beginning with the fact that roughly half of us came from Connecticut, New York, or New Jersey. We did the typical freshman dorm stuff: watched movies in the lounge, made the 2:00am runs to Georgetown Café and Philly Cheesesteak (the destination of the 2:00am food run is another thing that'll always change by Generation at GU), took care of the floormate that passed out in the hallway on Saturday night/Sunday morning.

And, like most freshman, we took in our share of basketball games.

I thought it would be a good idea to use my first real column to focus on freshmen. If the introductory essay was my personal memoirs of life in Generation Burton, I wanted this column to promote the first new group of students-the Class of 2008-that will belong entirely to the next Generation of student Hoya Basketball fans.

And for a good reason. I've always felt that freshmen are the most important constituency of student fans at Georgetown-to Hoya Blue, to Sports Promotions, and to the success of the fan base as a whole. Unfortunately, I believe they're also the most underappreciated.

In the introductory essay to this series, I outlined two main themes Generation Burton was going to explore. One of them was this:

Every student is significant when it comes to creating a strong fan base, and accordingly any successful strategy for promoting the basketball team (or any sports team) must take advantage of the broadest number of students possible.

Taking advantage of the broadest number of students possible means actively recruiting the 1,600 or so new Georgetown students to be part of the rebirth of the student fan base from the moment they arrive in August.

Newness

None of the incoming freshman, to put it delicately, has experienced the turmoil of the previous few basketball seasons in person. That's a plus. Of course, they haven't experienced college basketball from a true student fan's perspective yet either. I arrived at Georgetown as a longtime college basketball fan, and I remember looking forward to finally experiencing games as a student fan. I suspect there are more than a few people like that in the Class of 2008.

But come to think of it, these kids haven't even experienced college yet. Two of my co-workers this summer are college-bound high school seniors, and we are constantly discussing how much they're anticipating "experiencing" college. The first year of college, if we believe the clichés, is about experiencing everything your school has to offer, trying new things, and discovering yourself. If it's fun, a college freshman will probably try it. Hoya sports, particularly basketball, can be pretty darn fun sometimes. It's just a matter of selling that.

The Smorgasbord Effect

Building off the previous point, freshmen are the most susceptible to the gigantic smorgasbord that is the early-semester "club fair". In their zeal to "experience" college, freshmen frequently experiment with as big an array of clubs and activities as they can hold down at once. It doesn't hurt that they tend to have the most free time on average of anyone on campus. For example, in my first semester on the Hilltop, I was involved in some way with six different clubs. By the spring semester, I was down to a solid three. Senior year-just one.

Georgetown's version of the club smorgasbord-SAC Fair-usually happens within the first month of classes. Having been President of a club on campus for a year and a half, I've seen the sign-up lists we'd get out of our SAC Fair table-probably 100 names, 80+ of whom were freshmen. And most of them would show up-at least for the introductory meeting. Our club's table this year was near Hoya Blue's. I know they were doing well, and surely they had a huge signup list-as they always will-filled with freshmen wanting in on the action. The key, again, is selling your club, so most of the newcomers will stay on past the introductory meeting.

They've Already Got Their Season Tickets

Somewhere in between the class registration instructions, the health insurance forms, and the voluminous Freshman Pre-Orientation book on the mass mailing maelstrom that is the summer before freshman year, every new Hoya also gets a little envelope from the Athletic Department. It's not a bad idea-why not capitalize on the excitement of preparing for college and signing up for classes and get mom or dad to plop down $75 for their kid to go to some basketball games.

And it works too. I recently spoke to a source of mine in the know on this subject, and asked them about the rate of student season ticket sales in recent years, specifically the impact of freshmen on these totals.

According to the estimates I received, last year students bought around 900 or so season ticket packages (for the record, that was an increase of 100-150 over the previous year). Of these, "at least half" of the total came from freshmen, including an estimated 90% of those purchased prior to Midnight Madness. In short, not only do freshmen represent the largest group of consumers for McDonough and the basketball office, but also (in theory) the most eager.

So how does Hoya Blue et al. go about "selling" Georgetown basketball-and all sports for that matter? The first step is to know their core demographics. This is where my freshman dorm floor-VCW6-comes in.

Here's the logic behind the VCW6 Theory of Freshman Fans:

I figure that my freshman floor, which like all freshman floors is chosen almost entirely by lottery, represented a reasonable enough cross-section of Georgetown University freshmen. Whenever friends and I would have discussions about what "type" of campus Georgetown was, I found myself referring back to the 6th Floor of Village C West.

One topic that often came up was whether or not Georgetown was the "type" of campus that could support a large basketball fan base. What if the stereotype was true-that Georgetown was chocked full of boring pre-professional rich kids who studied all day and didn't know how to have fun? Wasn't Hoya Blue just wasting time trying to drum up student fans when there clearly weren't many to be had?

Needless to say, I thought the argument didn't hold water. It just didn't reflect the "type" or rather "types" of people I knew from my freshman year. There were fans to be had-we just had to look harder and realize what "types" of people we were dealing with and how to reach them.

So here's the big theory:

There were 32 people who lived on VCW6 my freshman year. Let's assume they represent an average sample of the roughly 1,600 freshmen on campus in a given year. These are the "new" potential Hoya fans Sports Promo and Hoya Blue are after. I figure that in terms of potential basketball fans, you can break down the 32 VCW6 kids into five groups:

The Die-Hards (2-3 people)

The die-hards group represents exactly what its name implies-the die-hard fans who not only own student season tickets, but make it their personal mission to never miss a home game from November through March. They're the ones on the first bus, the ones in the front row with their faces painted, and the ones proudly wearing "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts around campus. In terms of organization, they're the ones most likely to take a leadership role in Hoya Blue, or at least contribute frequently to HB activities.

My friend Jon and I were the two die-hards of VCW6 that year. We went to every game together, almost always on the first bus to MCI. We sat in the same seats next to the same people each game. We went to the Hoya Blue meetings. And of course we watched the Arkansas game in Jon's room.

The Try-Hards (3-4 people)

Try hards do just that-they try hard to make it to every game, but they tend to miss games here of there because of an exam the next day, sickness, an important meeting, whatever. They know the team very well, and when they do go they're right down there in the front rows. Almost all of them own student season tickets they ordered over the summer. They know what Hoya Blue is, but they may or may not have ever been to a meeting or have a shirt.

Youngna lived across the hall diagonally from me freshman year. She was a classic "try-hard". She has season tickets and came to games a lot with friends from our floor and elsewhere. And she was one of the first people I saw after the Arkansas game (and I might add, many times while we were both watching the Hampton-Iowa State game in different rooms).

The Hard-Sells (3-4 people)

Hard-sells take a little more persuasion. If they have student season tickets, they waited until the start of the season, or even December, to purchase them. They show up mostly at Big East games or bigger non-conference games, the pattern of attendance determined sometimes by the opponent, sometimes by their schedule on campus. In terms of knowledge about the team, this group is a notch below Try-Hards, and may be at the game as much for the beer as for the basketball. They don't belong to Hoya Blue, but they'll buy a shirt.

My freshman year roommate Tim was one of the better hard-sells. I still see Tim at a bunch of the Big East games at the MCI Center, usually with a large group of friends. That's a key-if you can get large groups together, people are always more likely to go to games at MCI. Tim was a fan of the lighter-blue "Look Up, See Blue" variety of Hoya Blue t-shirt.

The Hardly-Evers (5-8 people)

They hardly ever go to the MCI Center, unless it's a special occasion. If the opponent's Syracuse (or in this year's case, Duke as well), they'll come down to the ticket window in McDonough and purchase a single game ticket. More than a few take Metro to the game because they didn't realize GU provides school buses. The game isn't so much the big thing-it's whether they're going to have a good time. It's an entertainment thing-they could just as easily go to see the monuments or go to the Tombs, but if basketball's the "it" thing that day, they're on it. This group becomes the bandwagon fans when the team's on a roll.

My friend Jose hardly ever went to games our freshman year. He did get excited about one game though-the Notre Dame game on January 27, 2001. We were 17-1 at the time, and the game was on a Saturday afternoon-a perfect mix for attracting the less-than-casual fan. And he went and presumably had a decent time, except for the fact that we lost. I still remember the conversation I had with him on the floor later that day:

Jose: "Man, our team really sucks."

Me: "Jose!! We're 17 and 2 right now."

Jose: "Yeah, but we got beat pretty badly."

Me: "It was like eight points or something!!"

The Hardly Cares (16 people)

Georgetown may not be full of library-lurkers with no interest in ever going to a basketball game. However, Hoya Blue is probably never going to get through to roughly half the freshman class. Hardly Cares people are broadly defined as any student who has never and will never attend a men's basketball game. There are generally two varieties in this group:

The first are people who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in basketball or sports in general. There are a million other things they'd rather do with their time. Vicki and Sheila lived across the hall from me, and they probably thought I was bonkers for putting up pictures of Kevin Braswell on my door. If they knew who Kevin was to begin with.

The second are people who may or may not have an interest in sports, even the Hoyas basketball team, but simply don't have the time to make it to games. Steve was the third member of our group in Jon's room watching the Arkansas game. He's a big Lakers fan, he recognizes members of the Hoyas team, he knew Craig Esherick, and he was always interested in talking about the team. It's just that with the countless clubs he was in and with all of his work, the kid barely had time to eat and sleep, much less devote four hours a day 15 times a year to going to games at MCI.

So what does the VCW6 Theory tell us?

Well, assuming it's true, it means that in late August, about 800 potential Hoya student fans are going to arrive on the Hilltop. And it means that we need a general strategy for figuring out how to-that's right-"sell" them on Hoya basketball (and the other sports of course).

Simply put, we need to try and move everyone up a level.

Let's look at the different groups again, only this time I'll estimate how many people they would include in a class of 1,600:

Die-Hards (50-100)
Try-Hards (100-150)
Hard-Sells (200-250)
Hardly-Evers (300-400)
Hardly-Cares (800)

Let's take a moment to recall the earlier data I cited about freshman season ticket package sales. Remember that my source estimated there were around 900 packages sold overall last year, and over half went to freshmen. Let's say for the sake of argument that 450 freshman had season tickets. That encompasses nearly all of the first three groups of fans above. Since many arriving students have already ordered their student season ticket packages, half the battle has already been won. It's just a matter of getting them to games at this point.

Moving everyone up a level means exactly what it sounds like-we should be trying to convert Try-Hards into Die-Hards, Hard-Sells into Try-Hards, and so on. To be more specific:

--Since Die-Hards already come to all the games and Hoya Blue meetings, the goal should be to harness their energy towards promoting the team-whether through formal Hoya Blue events, the Hoya Blue board, or word-of-mouth.

--Better promotion of games, especially early in the season, should help convince Try-Hards to fill in the gaps in their attendance and move up to Die-Hard status. If you make that West Virginia game sound exciting enough, maybe you'll convince someone to put off their Econ studying until they get home at 10:30 from the game. Maybe they'll even join Hoya Blue.

--Hard-Sells should be the main focus of Hoya Blue's promotions. Hitting the ground running with an aggressive promotional strategy, including appearances by coaches, campus-wide get-togethers like Hoyapalooza, and extensive early season flyering from Midnight Madness on, might successfully sell "Hard-Sells" on pre-Big East games, and perhaps a Hoya Blue shirt.

--Hardly-Evers tend to only come for the big games, or if they're convinced they'll have a good time and it's the "in" thing to do. UConn will be a no-brainer to sell as a big game, but so should games like Notre Dame. All the effort we put into promoting the Duke game-signs, cheer sheets, etc., could be done (even on a smaller level) at more and more games. The more fun games are when you're there, the better word of mouth they create, and the better they sell to the average fan.

--Hardly-Cares? Well, chances are there's nothing anyone can do. Half the campus will probably never sit in one of MCI's purple seats. Anyone we get from here is a bonus.

But still-that leaves roughly 3,200 undergraduates "in play". That's certainly enough to eliminate any excuses about Georgetown not having the "numbers" to have a significant student fan base. It's all about knowing how to sell the product to your demographics.

We'll be talking about one way to do that on the grassroots level next week.

A recent thread on the "Hoyatalk" message board noted that the Prelude Program lecture traditionally given by the Men's Head Basketball Coach during Freshman Orientation will be given this year not by John Thompson III, but by Women's Coach Patrick Knapp. The news prompted some discussion over whether the basketball program was missing a vital opportunity to connect with freshman fans at the start of a year in which mending fences between McDonough and the student fan base will be especially crucial.

Personally, I'm not worried by the news. I'm sure John Thompson III will be busy doing something positive for the program elsewhere while the freshmen are getting settled in.

After all, the Prelude lecture with the basketball coach is just a "Die-Hards" kind of event anyhow. Which is cool of course. But there's another event I hope is still part of Freshman Orientation-the one where you learn the fight song. When I was a freshman, we were all out on the Village C hill, the band was there, and the mascot was there. Sure, it seems corny-1,600 people being walked through the "Boola Boolas" and "Choo-Choo Rah Rahs". But there's probably no other time during Orientation better suited for Hoya Blue to step right in and capitalize on the school spirit-from "Die Hards" all the way down to "Hardly Cares".

Whether it's through a speaker, a sign-up list, or a t-shirt sale, hopefully Hoya Blue can gain from the reinforcements coming up the hill by McDonough in late August. Even if we're not quite sure what demographic they fall into yet.