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Generation Burton, Meet Generation Hester
(Are We Ready For Some Football?)
By John Hawkes

As I went for a walk this afternoon around my apartment here in Washington, I became engulfed in one of the great annual rites of passage in our culture-Freshman Move-In Day. Amidst an armada of Sport-Utility Vehicles and stacks upon stacks of plastic storage cubes, I couldn't help but look upon the hundreds of incoming freshman and their parents with a small sense of nostalgia for my own first day of college.

Probably the thing that sticks with me the most from my Freshman Move-In four years ago though is the amount of time spent together with my fellow classmates. While the overall purpose of Freshman Orientation weeks is to welcome students to a new campus, what's really going on is each student trying to fulfill their goal of meeting as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. And Orientations tend to deliver on this, usually up some mix of social events and contrived ice-breakers to build a greater sense of community among the new class.

Some people (myself included) find a lot of the Orientation activities kind of corny. They do have their moments, though. Standing on the Village C hill with 1,600 students singing along for what was for most of us the first time while the Pep Band played the Fight Song was cool. And you have to admit that Freshman Orientation is one of the few things that will ever unite an entire class even for a brief moment-especially since Georgetown started doing separate Graduation ceremonies for each of its schools.

The story of Generation Burton is about one of those times when my entire Freshman class-indeed all of Georgetown University-was united as one. The NCAA Tournament run of Georgetown's men's basketball team, and indeed the entire 2000-2001 season, brought the campus together for a common purpose and created an atmosphere of excitement throughout the student body that hasn't been duplicated since.

What was so unique about that moment after the Arkansas game, when all of the people on my floor poured out of their rooms into the hallway cheering, was that not all of us were basketball fans. That's one of the great things about college athletics in my opinion-even if some people aren't even remotely interested in the sport taking place, the opportunity to cheer for your school or alma mater can still be meaningful and can still bring people together. And that's something I think Georgetown could use a little more of.

The catalyst for those celebrations on the night of March 15, 2001 was, of course, Nathaniel Burton's buzzer-beating layup that lifted Georgetown over Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The fact that the game had been so important and its ending so dramatic only added to the excitement of the moment. Perhaps the only way you could have improved on it would have been if the game had occurred at the MCI Center instead of in Boise, and everyone watching had been able to see the game in person.

I imagine we would have stormed the court.

Whether you're a fan of the increasingly common (and controversial) trend or not, storming the court (or field, depending on the sport) has taken its place in college athletics as one of the most dramatic displays of emotion from a group of fans. My intention here isn't to debate the merits of rushing the court/field as a proper means of celebration, or even whether it's truly "spontaneous" any more. What I will say though is this: if going to watch their school's team compete represents the increasingly rare coming together of all students behind a common purpose, and rushing/storming represents the happiest of emotional reactions to an amazing game or ending by all of these united students, then maybe these events have a larger importance than we realize, even if we do find them silly or sometimes dangerous.

While the Georgetown-Arkansas game doesn't technically count since the game was held thousands of miles away, Generation Burton did see four cases where Hoya fans stormed the court or field after a victory:

February 1, 2000, MCI Center: Georgetown 61 Louisville 59
February 24, 2001, MCI Center: Georgetown 72 Syracuse 61
January 28, 2002, MCI Center: Georgetown 75 Syracuse 60
...and finally...
September 23, 2000, Kehoe Field: Georgetown 57 Butler 56 (OT)

Don't remember that last one? Well, maybe it's time Generation Burton met Generation Hester.

In a number of ways, the origin of "Generation Hester" is similar to that of "Generation Burton". They cover the same time period-Fall 1997 to Spring 2004. Their namesakes-Nathaniel Burton and Gharun Hester-both graduated in the same year (2000). In both cases, a number of other players from the same time period made contributions that could have been worthy of naming a generation after them. On the basketball team, there was Mike Sweetney, Kevin Braswell, and Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje. On the football teams of recent years, David Paulus and Luke McArdle come to mind. Yet both Burton, in his final year a bench player, and Hester, a star wide receiver, earned their status on the strength of the lasting memory of one game that helped define the era for the Hoya sports fans of their generation. For Burton, it was the Arkansas game. For Hester, it was that Butler game on Homecoming Weekend in 2000.

The most significant thing Nathaniel Burton and Gharun Hester have in common though, aside from having a generation named after them of course, is that they were teammates on Georgetown's basketball team. The interesting thing is, many of the folks who will read this column may have as much of a personal memory of Gharun Hester as a bench player on the basketball court than as a starter on the gridiron. One could legitimately argue, in fact, that more Georgetown alumni are likely to remember Hester's clutch 3-pointer in the third overtime of Georgetown's first round win at Virginia in the 2000 NIT than anything he ever accomplished on Kehoe Field.

That Virginia game and Hester's unlikely turn as hero have an intriguing status in the lore of Generation Burton. It wasn't the only multiple overtime game during those years; in fact, two seasons later Georgetown and Notre Dame played a four-overtime game at the MCI Center. And in terms of significance as a post season success, the UVA game was later surpassed by the 2001 Sweet Sixteen appearance and even the run to the 2003 NIT Championship game.

But as a exciting, memorable, makes-you-want-to-rush-the-court-if-only-it-had-been-at-MCI-and-not-University-Hall kind of game, it's hard to beat. Many of the older members of Generation Burton still look back on the UVA game as their favorite. In fact, if you travel over to HoyaSaxa.com's Georgetown Basketball History Project and read through the "Classic Games" archive, you'll find that the UVA game even has a full-length essay devoted to it, such is the esteem to which it is held by students and fans of that era.

Hester's other big moment, the Georgetown-Butler football game in 2000, is a lot like the UVA game in the way it's remembered. In terms of significance for the GU football program, the Butler game is dwarfed by Georgetown's first Patriot League victory over Bucknell two years later and a few hundred yards down the hill at Harbin Field (incidentally, nobody tried to storm the field afterwards). In truth, Butler wasn't even a good team that year. But if, like me, you were there that Saturday afternoon, you'll remember that game for some time.

I think the recap on the HoyaSaxa.com football page after the game got it right when it said: "If it wasn't the most important game in GU grid history, it may count among the most exciting."

For the record, it was a darn exciting game. No less than five Georgetown records were set in that game that still stand today, including David Paulus's single-game marks for Passing Touchdowns (6) and Passing Yards (462), and the highest combined score in a game (113). Gharun Hester himself set records for receiving touchdowns (5) and yardage (271)-in nine receptions no less-and hauled in the game-tying touchdown pass from Paulus with only six seconds remaining in the game. Georgetown trailed at various points in the game 21-7, 28-17, 42-31, and finally 50-43 with only 2:07 remaining before rallying to send the game into overtime. After Georgetown scored a touchdown and extra point on the first drive of overtime, Butler responded with a touchdown of its own. On the ensuing two-point conversion, Butler's attempted fade pass to the far corner of the end zone fell harmlessly out of bounds, and Georgetown had a 57-56 victory.

And yes, after the game, about 20 students did storm the field. Some of them, including freshman John Hawkes, helped carry Jack the Bulldog off the field on their shoulders.

Exciting games-whether they be overtime thrillers in football or buzzer-beaters in basketball-don't need any lasting significance to be memorable. That doesn't mean they're not significant; on the contrary, an exciting game is one of the biggest boosts you can get towards promoting the next game (or season) on the schedule. This means not only more interest from student fans, but also better promotions from Hoya Blue and Sports Promotions, who know they have a hot product on their hands.

I know personally that the Arkansas game, and the entire Sweet Sixteen run, did wonders for the interest level in the basketball team the following pre-season. I imagine the same was the case for the beginning of the 2000-2001 season, thanks to the UVA game that most students got to see on ESPN. And in a season of disappointment and disinterest, one of the few times the student fan base was in a good mood and fired up was after Courtland Freeman's last second dunk beat St. John's in mid-January.

In one of the previous columns in this series, I talked about the different groups of student fans at Georgetown. One of these groups was called the "Hardly-Evers". Here's what I wrote about them:

"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."

Simply put, exciting games bring out fans. Students who would "hardly ever" go to a game are suddenly going to think real hard about it if one of their friends comes back telling them stuff like: "That game was freakin' amazing!!!" or "You will NOT believe what happened at Kehoe/MCI/Harbin today!!!".

But here's where the stories of "Generation Burton" and "Generation Hester" diverge.

To use the parlance of political pundits, Georgetown's football program never really got that post-Convention "bump" after Hester's big moment on Homecoming Day 2000. Nor has attendance or overall student interest in the program risen all that much as a result of Georgetown's entry into the Patriot League. You were far more likely to find students talking about Georgetown's first Big East win of the basketball season than Georgetown's first Patriot League win ever in 2002. It's a given that far more of them went to the former.

In fact, the sad truth is, when you read through the recaps and recollections of the Georgetown-Butler game in the Georgetown student press and on HoyaSaxa.com, almost every writer notes that the game was noteworthy as much for its outcome as for the hundreds of Homecoming revelers in the Lot T parking lot who never walked up the hill to see the game that day.

Today, Lot T is a staging area for bulldozers and construction workers, and Georgetown football has moved down the hill to Harbin Field. For the most part, the students haven't yet come in huge numbers.

Georgetown's football program and its fans is at a similar crossroads to that facing its basketball program. Generation Burton's fans greeted a new coach during their time on the Hilltop, following their team to the Sweet Sixteen, and bid a not-so-fond farewell to their coach in their final days. Generation Hester's fans-the same group of students-saw (or rather, some of them saw) their team welcomed into a new conference, then slowly work their way towards respectability, earning their first and second conference victories in their second full season in the Patriot League. And now, appropriately, they leave the next generation of fans construction plans-for a new Multi-Sport Facility and hopefully with it one day soon a top-of-the-conference caliber team with a fan base of student and alumni to match.

And here's where Generation Burton and Generation Hester are different.

The legacy of Generation Burton, I hope, will be about recapturing something that once was-a dedicated and numerically strong student fan base.

The legacy of Generation Hester, I hope, will be about building something that has never been-the very same fan base for the football team.

So how do we get there?

Part 2 follows here.