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"Shotgun Draw!"
Dealing with 'The Demoralizer' and Fixing the Fledgling Football
Fan Base in Hoya Blue's New Era (Part 2)

By John Hawkes

It's overcast, mid-50s with wind gusting in from the Potomac River-a different sort of "ideal" football weather. I'm tossing a pigskin across the Village A rooftop with a few members of Hoya Blue. Though it's only a few minutes after noon, several dozen die-hards have already gathered in the apartment of Hoya Blue's President Kurt Muhlbauer and Communications Officer Matt Kamenski for a pre-game event ahead of Georgetown's football game this afternoon against Lehigh. Thus far, Hoya Blue's burgeoning football fan base has serenaded no less than three campus tour groups passing across the rooftop with a variety of songs and pro-Hoya propaganda, rocked their way through an entire AC/DC Greatest Hits CD, and eaten a mountain of breakfast food prepared by several Hoya Blue officers, including Bridget Geraghty, who's appropriately dubbed her contribution "Top-Notch-Toast".

In nearly two years of following the new Hoya Blue regime, this is the best attended pre-game event I've seen for a football game. Yet there's something a bit off about the direction this football tailgate is heading. It starts when AC/DC is replaced by another staple of Hoya pre-game events-nodak89. It continues as now, every few passes or so we throw out on the deck, we're drawn back to Kurt and Matt's patio door, where a cheer goes up from the party-goers crowded in front of the living room television. A few passes…Brandon Bowman converts a reverse dunk…a few more fade routes…Jon Wallace pulls off the spin move…a heroic rescue of the football off the 300-level roof…Ashanti Cook's deep three pointer.

Eight and a half months later, nothing sets a Georgetown football tailgate off the hook like the basketball team beating Duke.

A few minutes before the scheduled 12:45pm shutdown of the tailgate, I get a call from the stands at the MSF asking when I'm showing up at the football game. I stall for a few seconds, as I'm currently glued to the television set watching Duke chip away at Georgetown's lead in the final minutes of regulation. The Duke game is a rare case for me in which a transcendent personal moment plays out exactly on videotape as I recall it doing so in real life. This is to say-the final four minutes of regulation really did last about twenty minutes of real time. A second call to my cell phone convinces me to give up with about 90 seconds remaining on the clock (and roughly 10 minutes of real time). I clang down the metal Village A staircase against the background of a Duke tape-watch cheering track I've nearly memorized at this point, the sounds of the Georgetown Pep Band gradually coming into earshot as I jog down the hill past New South.

There's a line in Raymond Borgone's column about this season's opening football game that caught my attention:

"But if Kelly were able to point to Georgetown's supportive, passionate and loyal student fans," Ray writes, "it might just be enough to convince some talented young players to be Hoyas."

Hoya Blue is keenly aware of the positive impact their supportive, passionate, and loyal student fans can have on prospective Hoya recruits. Five nights after I attend the Lehigh tailgate, I'll return to Hoya Blue's unofficial rooftop headquarters to chronicle a dozen volunteers who devote a Thursday evening to making poster-sized signs for visitors to Georgetown's Midnight Madness, among them future Hoyas Chris Wright, Chris Braswell, and Omar Wattad.

Likewise, everyone in Hoya Blue is aware that the combination of a memorable game and a strong performance by the student section can make all the difference. The implication is clear in the signature quote Raymond used in his Hoyatalk profile for most of the previous year, taken from then-High School senior Dajuan Summers after the Duke game:

"That was crazy that was off the hook. That's what's up!"

As I walk up the ramp into the MSF, I find the normal student section predictably empty-nearly every member of Hoya Blue planning on attending today's game will be running down the New South hill just as soon as the student section rushes the court at the MCI Center.

"What took you so long?" my friend asks.

"Oh, just trying to watch the end of the Duke game, everybody's coming in a couple minutes."

"You know…it doesn't look good when a big group of recruits are visiting and they just looked up at an empty student section." Not quite off the hook.

So how do you evaluate the performance of Hoya Blue and a group of student fans in a situation such as the Lehigh game?

On one hand, the group of "supportive, passionate, and loyal student fans" did follow a few minutes behind me, arriving en masse a few minutes prior to the opening kickoff. To a person, every student fan I saw at the pre-game event was in the stands for the first play of the game (they were joined by quite a few that decided to sleep in as well). By any stretch of the imagination, Hoya Blue's promotion for the Lehigh was one of, if not the most, successful football efforts since the changeover in leadership prior to the 2005-2006 academic year. The crowd that migrated from the Village A rooftops to the MSF bleachers was the most vocal group of fans I'd sat with since the previous year's Homecoming comeback victory against Fordham.

That is, until Lehigh ran "The Demoralizer"-a 2 yard TD pass from Sedale Threatt to Frank Trovato with 14 seconds to go in the first half that gave the Mountain Hawks a 14-3 lead.

The party was over at that point.

The majority of the student section made the long hike back up the hill at halftime, never to return, as Lehigh piled two second half touchdowns on the demoralized Hoyas to claim a 28-3 victory.

There isn't much Hoya Blue or anyone can do to cure the impending sense of doom that follows a well-placed Demoralizer. The truth is, though I stayed until the bitter end, I suspected that Lehigh had iced the game with their half-ending touchdown. Many of the students who headed for their dorm rooms were merely long-time Hoya football fans making an educated decision based on experience. What they missed in the second half-98 yards of total offense and zero points for the Hoyas-hardly seems a must-see when balanced against a matinee Big Ten contest on ESPN, a plate of pancakes in Leo's, or an extra hour and half of make-up sleep.

But even if Hoya Blue can't do much to control the likelihood of students staying through the final ninety minutes of a game such as the Lehigh contest, what of the fifteen minutes prior to the game?

One thing Hoya Blue certainly cannot control is the weather. For half of the Saturdays thus far that Georgetown has hosted home football games, poor conditions have prevented them from holding pre-game tailgates outside in the vicinity of the MSF. While 51 degrees and gusty is to some ideal football weather, it doesn't lend itself particularly well to a group of tailgaters mingling on an exposed rooftop. Thus, instead of a barbecue grill, prior to the Lehigh game several dozen Hoya Blue members were huddled around a television watching Georgetown-Duke yet again.

That Hoya Blue has such a powerful marketing tool as the Duke tape is a blessing. The tape has been played everywhere from road trips to NSO tables to Leo's, and it's one of the best selling points for Georgetown athletics and Hoya Blue itself.

But perhaps when it comes to football, the Duke game is both a blessing and a curse.

Leave aside for the moment the unfortunate coincidence that the end of the Duke game tape contributed to the student section being near-empty up to a few moments before kickoff of the Georgetown-Lehigh game. The more significant point here is not that the tape ended a few minutes later than ideal-it's that the tape was shown in the first place.

Hoya Blue's leaders are always careful to seem as welcoming as possible to new members. One of the fears communicated to me by a Hoya Blue board member about the Lehigh event recently was that since the weather forced the tailgate indoors, it would by consequence make it seem less inviting to newcomers to the club. Despite this, a scan of the living room that morning indicated that newcomers composed a surprisingly high percentage of the attendees for an event of this nature at this point in the year.

In cases such as this, the Duke game is a convenient icebreaker. It's the ultimate conversation starter-everyone has a story from January 21, 2006. Whenever I watch the tape in the presence of freshmen or other Hoya Blue "newcomers" I always notice how they gradually start to ask questions about what it was like being in the MCI Center that afternoon. Almost inevitably, the connection is made-join Hoya Blue, and with any luck in a few months you'll be storming the court after beating the #1 team in the nation.

Hoya Blue more than likely made several connections with newer members at the Lehigh tailgate.

The problem is they did it without a single reference to the football game.

The demoralizing fact is that it was probably a smart idea.

Whether it's in the strategic planning of Hoya Blue, the mind of a Georgetown freshman just waking up on a Saturday morning, or the actions of the University's administration, the simple but demoralizing fact…and the number one recurring obstacle to building a true football culture at Georgetown…is that football simply isn't very high on the totem pole.

You get that sense very directly from a Hoya Blue volunteer of years past telling a group of freshman that nobody cares about the football team, or an editorial in The HOYA questioning whether a football game is the best way to celebrate values of tradition, spirit, and pride.

You get it indirectly every time the student section at the MSF noticeably thins in the third quarter, or you notice how the ones at North Kehoe Field and McDonough Gym have grown exponentially over the past two seasons. You get it in subtle doses in stories and anecdotes over the course of a season.

On September 15, news broke that as a result of discussions between the Athletic Department, Hoya Blue, and University V.P. for Student Affairs Todd Olson, the post-Christmas Break opening of campus dorms would be moved back to Monday January 8th at noon. The change was made to accommodate students returning for the Hoyas' Big Monday contest against Villanova at the Verizon Center that night. As a result, several hundred student fans who otherwise would have been unable to attend the game will be making the trip back to D.C.

Six days earlier, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Hoya Blue decided against holding a pre-game barbecue on Harbin Patio for fears of lack of attendance. A mandatory academic workshop for freshmen had been scheduled for the same day as the Georgetown-Stony Brook game. As a result, roughly 1,600 student fans who otherwise would have had the option of attending what is thus far the Hoyas' only victory of the season were stuck in Gaston Hall. It's not the only time the academic workshop has conflicted with football games; nor is it the only time that a significant drawing event has been scheduled against a football game-in fact, only very recently has SAC Fair's schedule been adjusted to avoid a complete conflict with football games.

The simple fact is that while the administration and athletic department are admirably willing to go the extra mile to make basketball games accessible to students-whether changing the opening of dorms for the Villanova game, arranging a virtual students-only date with Old Dominion at McDonough Arena this November, or offering the Little Gym that Could for a 2nd Round NIT date with Cal State Fullerton in 2005-they rarely take a single step on football's behalf.

Sometimes the second-tier status of football manifests itself on an unconscious level.

Hoya Blue had a busy 24 hours on October 13-14-including Midnight Madness, pre and post-MM parties, and the Bucknell football game. On the night of October 12, I happened to be in the room while Hoya Blue's email promoting these events was drafted and then sent to the club's email listserv. Surveying the block blue and gray letters spread out across the screen, one member of the club noted the disproportionate amount of text devoted to Midnight Madness compared to the football game, which sat at the bottom of the email. They were then heard to remark in a matter of fact manner that the football game seemed like an "afterthought" next to Midnight Madness.

Everyone in the room-including myself-let out something of a nervous chuckle. The unspoken consensus seemed to be that the comment made us a bit uncomfortable, but it spoke a certain truth.

In my original column about football culture on campus, I wrote the following:

"We need to end the notion on campus that the sports season begins on the second or third Friday night in October at Midnight."

At the time, I spoke of the prevailing attitude in Hoya Blue that basketball was the only sport worth promoting on campus.

In the years since, I have documented that the current leadership of Hoya Blue has clearly and consistently made a commitment to supporting every single sport on campus at every single opportunity.

The notion I wrote about-that Midnight Madness is the start of the Georgetown sports calendar-no longer exists. In fact, the premise of my previous Generation Burton column ["It's Been a Summer," 9/25/06] was the expansion of the Georgetown sports calendar thanks in part to Hoya Blue promotions. Hoya Blue's efforts at promoting football over the past two years have been admirable. But they're working against a stacked deck.

A more accurate rephrasing of my point from Fall 2004 might go something like this: We need to fight the notion on campus that the football season ends on the second or third Friday night in October at Midnight.

Basketball is, always has been, and always will be at the very top of the totem pole of sports culture at Georgetown. The beginning of basketball season will always draw students' attention away from other sports on campus, no matter how diligently Hoya Blue promotes these events. Football has always suffered attendance declines in November not only due to poor records, but also the approaching basketball season and the change in fan interest.

What stacks the deck even further now against football is that with Hoya Blue's success at promoting fall and winter sports such as men's and women's soccer, women's volleyball, and women's basketball, there are even more options to entice prospective student fans. Each of these sports has seen attendance and atmosphere increase steadily over the past two years, while football crowds have remained stagnant.