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Generation Burton, Meet Generation Hester
(Are We Ready For Some Football, Part 2)
By John Hawkes

In the opening essay of the Generation Burton series, I laid out two main themes that my subsequent articles would focus on. The first was the following:

1. The new generation of Hoya student fans can learn a great deal from the successes of Generation Burton when it comes to promoting the basketball team and developing a strong student fan base. Conversely, they must also learn from and beware of the many pitfalls myself and my fellow students fell into by the end of our years at the MCI Center.

The following is the story of one of those pitfalls:

I always made it a point to attend the first informational meeting for Hoya Blue every school year, even though the last couple times I was probably one of only a couple non-freshman there. If you've read the first essay in the series, you know how Hoya Blue's first meeting in September 2000 set the stage for a great year of promotions-from football through lacrosse season-and made sure the students were excited about Hoya sports from day one.

Two years later, my roommate Jon and I attended the first Hoya Blue meeting of the year, held in White-Gravenor. We stood in the back of the over-capacity lecture hall and listened in on the introductory speeches given by the members of the Hoya Blue board in attendance-probably 10 people overall. Each member in turn gave a short speech about Hoya Blue and the activities the club would be engaging in.

About halfway through the speeches, a few things became apparent. Every member seemed to making a big deal about future Hoya Blue pre-game parties and only passing references to actually going to games. Every member who spoke mentioned drinking or "getting wasted," but none talked about anything to do with promoting games on campus. And nobody had mentioned any team besides men's basketball.

That is, until one member about 2/3 of the way through thought of the football team...only to quickly change his mind.

"The football team sucks, nobody cares about them anyways."

That's a paraphrased quote by the way. I can't recall the exact formulation of the statement. But the two thoughts therein were clearly expressed, on that I am absolutely confident in my memory. And it doesn't change the impact of the statement or the extent of the problem it represents.

A poll of the audience at some point that night revealed that nearly everyone in the audience that night was a freshman. How do you think most of the students in that class feel about the GU football team today? And this was the official athletic supporters club on campus giving them the message. If Hoya Blue isn't even on board with the football team, how on earth is the student body ever going to be?

The men's basketball program at Georgetown is now and always will be the number one draw for student sports fans. For Hoya Blue and for the folks down at Sports Promotions in McDonough, basketball is their best friend. Unfortunately, for many other sports on campus, and I would say for the larger culture of sports supporters on campus-which is the reason I'm writing these long essays, after all-basketball is their worst enemy.

Simply put, one of the biggest pitfalls Hoya Blue and others have become trapped by is the attitude that basketball is the only sport that deserves attention on campus. This is the attitude that produces half-full stadiums and full tailgate lots on Homecoming Days. It is the attitude that leads to Hoya Blue board members being accused of caring more about gaining insider access to Midnight Madness or interviews with basketball coaches than about doing the groundwork to get others to games. And it's the attitude that produces statements like the one about the football team above.

We need to end the notion on campus that the sports season begins on the second or third Friday night in October at Midnight and ends when the Hoyas get knocked out of the NCAA or NIT tournament. We need to end the notion that football and other "minor" sports don't matter.

Or, since we're mostly basketball fans here after all, how about we do something positive? Like recognizing that the student fan base for football, and soccer, and lacrosse, and baseball, etc. can actually help out the fan base for basketball in a number of ways.

Think of it this way:

Strong Football Fan Base in September = Stronger Basketball Fan Base in February

It's clear we're not there yet on the football side of the equation. There seem to this author to be three roadblocks to building a bigger student fan base for Georgetown football:

1. No Organization
2. No Interest
3. No Excitement

So for the remainder of this article, let's talk about how we can overcome these roadblocks and build a stronger student fan base for Georgetown football...and how football can help out with the quality of the basketball fan base over on the other side of the equation.

Roadblock #1: No Organization

The story of the Hoya Blue meeting above is admittedly a rather extreme example. It is important to stress that every Hoya Blue board member at the time didn't necessarily feel the same way as the individual who made the comment. Some of them-maybe most of them-probably thought that GU football was a worthy cause to promote.

What I can't say, though, is that I saw that year or last year any real effort made by Hoya Blue to organize fans for football games during the season. Given their singular focus on promoting drinking over cheering, the only football game you'd have seen the Hoya Blue board at would have been possibly the Bud Bowl. I personally believe this was merely a symptom of a larger breakdown in an organization that desperately needs new leadership-but that's an issue for a whole other column.

So we're starting essentially from ground zero here. But the good news is, we've got a roadmap for how to do this. We've already talked about one of the pitfalls Generation Burton fell into regarding football, but we can also look to one of Hoya Blue's greatest successes as a guide.

In my column on "Precinct Captains," I opened with the story of the signs I used to hang on my door during my freshman year. Many of these were signs designed and distributed by Hoya Blue as part of their promotions campaign for football and soccer-some even with neat slogans like "The Clash of the Jesuits" for a game with Fordham. I, along with a bunch of other regular-old Hoya Blue general members, would come down to White-Gravenor every week and pick up a new batch of signs to hang up around where we lived.

In many ways, this was one of the more significant activities Hoya Blue undertook while I was at Georgetown. For one, it was clear that by doing this, the Hoya Blue folks in charge recognized that promoting football and other non-basketball sports was important. On another level, they also seemed to get the idea that building a grass roots network of volunteers would serve them later.

Much of the "Precinct Captains" article talked about how to build such a grass roots-level network to get more motivated students involved with the sports promotions "campaign" and to educate new fans about the sports teams at Georgetown. I drew a lot of analogies to political campaigns in the article, namely to the idea of "canvassing" voters, which I feel to be one of the best methods of communicating information directly to voters and getting them out for your cause.

Football at Georgetown is kind of like a candidate that's polling high in the "Don't Know/Not Sure" column on their Likeability surveys. That's always a signal that the campaign needs to do a better job telling the public who Candidate X is. Canvassing voters is always a good start.

Football is our Candidate X. And it's time Hoya Blue and its grass roots network go to work canvassing on its behalf. Getting out the word about Hoya football-game times, star players, pre-game events, etc.-serves two purposes. There's no reason that Bob Benson shouldn't have name recognition close to that of John Thompson III. And with any luck, maybe Georgetown's starting quarterback can become as noticeable on campus as our starting point guard.

Well, once they name a starting quarterback anyhow.

For the football program, the publicity should increase in the number of student fans, and produce a more knowledgeable and excited group of them at that. But it also has longer-lasting benefits for Hoya Blue beyond the fall season. Because the same student volunteers who help spread the word about football are now going to be more willing-and better trained-to do the same during the basketball season. Moreover, the students for whom the football experience was their first taste of GU athletics will now be hungry for more with other sports; and the excitement built up earlier on in the school year among the returning die-hard fans can carry on through to the height of Big East basketball season.

Roadblock #2: No Interest

Promoting basketball games is easy-after all, most people arrive on campus with at least some functional knowledge of the team and its players. And most current students have been to at least one game at the MCI Center during their time on the Hilltop and can relate that experience to others. But how do you promote a sport like football with a narrower existing fan base and of which few on campus know a great deal?

Three ideas come to mind here, all of them focused on targeting "Hard Sell" and "Hardly Ever" fans, which admittedly is most of the GU student population when it comes to football:

Make It Noticeable: To some extent, this is covered in the section above on building Hoya Blue's grass roots network. A good way to make something accessible-whether a candidate or a football program-is to provide the core audience with information. Every sign Hoya Blue volunteers put up, every article someone writes in "The Hoya" or HoyaSaxa.com, and every pep rally at which Hoya Blue introduces coaches and players helps to better inform the student population about the football program. Simple put, nobody's going to notice the team has a game unless they're told-whether by word of mouth or a bunch of flyers and signs all over campus. Make it easy for people!!

Make It Accessible: The current version of Harbin Field is only aesthetically pleasing by comparison to the final version of Kehoe Field. Harbin Field has one other distinct advantage over its predecessor: it's near Harbin...and Village C and the Southwest Quad dorms. One of the things I liked to do in the afternoon during my freshman year was head over to the lounge on my floor and look out over a soccer or lacrosse game on Harbin Field. At the very least, a number of GU students overlook the field on which football games are played, and hundreds are within shouting distance of the playing field. For them, there's no excuse for not knowing there's a game going on.

This accessibility greatly increases the odds that a random student will walk out of their dorms to check out what's going on the stadium if there's something exciting going on. Or even if they're just bored.

True story-Georgetown won its first ever Patriot League game 32-31 over Bucknell in 2002. I went to the first half of the game, which ended with GU down 17-0. I returned to my Village A apartment because I had a ton of work and errands to deal with. With a few minutes gone in the fourth quarter, I noticed on the scrolling ESPN ticker that GU had pulled within 24-20, and I ran back down to the stadium and caught the finish. And in the process caught one the best endings to a game I've seen in person. All because I was close enough to the stadium-like most kids on campus are-to walk right to it on that quick a notice.

Perhaps the greatest thing making football games accessible-the price. Students get into games for free, encouraging them to come down to their first game without forcing them into a monetary commitment. Or to stop by for just a quarter and not have to worry about being out eight bucks. And this at a time when basketball season tickets have risen from $60 a season in 2000-1 to $85 this season.

Make It Fun: Of course, even if football games are cheap and close, it's still a hard sell to get people to go if they aren't convinced that they'll have a good time. College football is my favorite sport personally-I don't understand how games don't sell themselves sometimes. But this is GU, remember. Even for basketball, roughly half the student body falls into the category of "Hardly Cares"-the folks who you'll never EVER get to come to a game.

So how come Midnight Madness is so full all the time? Because it's not just about the team-it's also about the student performances, the student-faculty basketball game, the local radio D.J.s working a pizza box relay game. Midnight Madness doesn't just attract hard core basketball fans-it also attracts non-traditional "fans" looking for some entertainment.

Fortunately, Hoya Blue can be of the best organizations on campus at providing entertainment for the masses. Hoya Blue was part of last year's widely popular Hoyapalooza and Saxapalooza, two events combining food, drink, and entertainment in the spirit of the fondly-remembered Block Parties of yore. These events were successful because they attracted a broad cross section of the campus community and were a legitimately good time. Moreover, they were lauded in the campus press for providing evidence that GU students could pull off an event that included drinking on campus that was both orderly and inclusive to all students (even those under 21).

Sounds like a recipe for a tailgate/BBQ for football season, doesn't it?

Well, maybe.

It would be dishonest for me to say that I wasn't extremely leery of putting the current crop of Hoya Blue board members, many of whom are holdovers from last year's organizational meltdown, in charge of running a side event to a football game that includes drinking. Hoya Blue's board needs to prove to the student body that it has more creative ideas for the organization than merely turning it into a drinking club. Sadly, early reports from my sources this school year indicate that this may not be the case as of yet. I am willing to give them a shot, as we all should be, but I have to say I'm holding my breath.

That doesn't mean that we should scrap the idea of tailgating altogether. On the contrary, last year's Homecoming tailgate was miles and away superior to its predecessors in terms of quality of food and drink, attractiveness to all ages of Hoya fans, and getting people's butts into the seats and not onto the bed of a Ford F-150 while the game was going on.

How about this-let's get the alumni and friends of Georgetown involved. A lot of posters on the Hoyatalk football board have been anxiously awaiting the chance to light up their grills for the start of the season. Why not invite a few of the core student fans and board readers down to the parking lot this Saturday and start a new tradition that we can build on?

Roadblock #3: No Excitement

The Bucknell game at Harbin Field this year is going to present me with a challenge.

See, while Hoyas are playing the Bison, the Canes are visiting the Yellow Jackets.

I've been a Miami Hurricanes fan as long as I've been watching college football. There's a Hurricanes pennant right below the Georgetown one in my apartment. Given that college football is my favorite sport, I religiously follow the Hurricanes football team on TV nearly every weekend during the season. That forced me into a tricky balancing act for four years. Hoyas or Hurricanes?

Most of the time it depended on the game. When Miami played FSU, you could bet I wasn't sniffing Harbin Field that day. When Miami played Syracuse, I worked out a split. Except this year it was close until the end, so I was back in Henle with ESPN Plus on while GU beat up on a non-conference opponent.

And I was one of the bigger GU football fans on campus I like to think.

Georgetown's full of college football fans. The problem is, those teams are Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida State, you name any one of the big BCS conference powers. It's hard for anyone to resist the sexy appeal of the Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry-even if you hate 'em both like I do. Georgetown-Lafayette-September 11, the same day as ND-Michigan-is a bit easier to pass up for the casual fan who isn't up to speed on the Patriot League and can't tell you where Lafayette is. And then there's that segment...ummm, make that majority...of the campus population who isn't up and done with breakfast by 1pm on a Saturday. How do we get them out from dozing off in their Corn Flakes?

Well, not pulling the "the team sucks and no one cares" line at Hoya Blue meetings is a start. And getting someone on Hoya Blue's board to admit there's more to football than Natural Ice, bad hot dogs, and not showing up at the stadium. But we knew that.

We do know that excitement brings out casual fans-the "You Won't Believe What Happened" factor. I don't pretend to know exactly how to recreate that. I leave that to the talented people in charge of promotions in Hoya Blue-and trust me, they are quite talented from I hear about this year's folks.

I'll just say this. In four years as a Hoya, I've seen the following at games I've gone to:

-A Homecoming game featuring 113 points combined, where GU trailed by double digits multiple times in the game and scored to tie with :06 left, then won by a point in overtime by defending a two-point conversion. A game that saw five single-game GU records for yardage and points shattered.

-A Homecoming game the following year where the margin of victory came from GU returning a blocked extra point attempt 100 yards for a 2-point conversion.

-The first ever Patriot League win by the Hoyas, after being down 17-0 at the half. Including a final drive with a fourth down conversion via quarterback scramble and a missed call on an INT. A game in which the GU single-game records for completions and pass receptions were broken.

-The preseason PL favorite and ultimately the I-AA runner-up for the year taken to the wire and escaping after unheralded GU led 19-14 with under 30 seconds to go.

Pretty exciting stuff, huh?

Conclusion

I began this column by talking about one of the annual autumn traditions in our society-Freshman Move-In at college campuses. As I continued writing, another autumn tradition came to pass-the beginning of college football season.

Georgetown will never have the support for or interest in its football team that USC or Virginia Tech have. Nor will we ever see fans get up for a Georgetown-St. Francis game like they would for a GU-Virginia Tech basketball game. I don't think anyone reading this column realistically thinks those should be our goals.

But getting more students interested in the football program is an important goal in itself. So too is building a strong network of volunteers for Hoya Blue, and refining their promotional strategies early on in the year. And so too is injecting a little early-season excitement into the culture of all student fans at Georgetown-whether they know Keith Allan from Marcus Allen or not. Football is a great part of campus culture around the country not simply because of the game, but because it gets folks together-through tailgating, pre-gaming, face-painting, whatever.

Maybe we can make the next big Freshman mixer this Saturday afternoon, down at Harbin.

And maybe they can all learn the Fight Song-you know, the version where Georgetown goes "straight for a touchdown".