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"Shotgun Draw!"
Dealing with 'The Demoralizer' and Fixing the Fledgling Football
Fan Base in Hoya Blue's New Era (Part 5A)

By John Hawkes

It’s a crisp autumn evening this Friday the 13th, the sort of light jacket weather that along with the changing colors of leaves marks the transition between seasons. As I stroll past the O'Donovan cafeteria in the shadow of the Multi-Sport Facility, I'm reminded of the many Friday nights I spent during my teenage years in Florida up in the bleachers watching our academic powerhouse High School's football team more often than not get blown out by a larger public school. Even at a school with little football tradition—during my four years we made one playoff appearance that resulted in a blowout loss—Friday nights at the stadium were must-see events. From the sports fanatics to the chess club, everyone had their school planners marked with the date and time of the next game.

What's more, as my High School was composed primarily of magnet programs that drew students from across the county, we traveled remarkably well for a consistently below-.500 squad. At the 2-3 road games I'd attend each season, I could be sure to find dozens, if not hundreds, of my fellow classmates in the visitor's stands. For myself and my fellow sports fanatics and chess club members, the beginning of the fall season meant more than the onset of the college application process—it meant the arrival of one of the few social traditions that reliably brought the entire school together.

Close to a decade later and well past my High School football days, I'm passing by Leo's on my way to another social tradition that brings an entire school together. This crisp Friday the 13th evening marks the 2006 edition of Georgetown's annual Midnight Madness celebration. Equal parts tailgate, pep rally, and sporting event, Midnight Madness marks the official beginning of the men's basketball season. Unofficially, it also represents the last time most students will give any significant thought to another Georgetown sport until give or take the third weekend in March. Despite this fact, Midnight Madness also provides an important insight into how student football culture at Georgetown can be repaired.

A personal favorite columnist of mine is Gregg Easterbrook, the self-consciously nerdy sage behind the “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” NFL column that currently runs weekly on ESPN.com. A hallmark of Easterbrook's style is his ability to write simultaneously in the persona of an intellectual and an aggrieved everyman—at the same turn he may apply a rigorous statistical measure to determine the efficacy of third down blitzes, then entitle the section “Stop Me Before I Blitz Again!”

I see a similar duality in the work of Hoya Blue. A thread emerging in my recent discussions with the club's Executive Board is how proud they are of the infrastructure they've managed to build over a year-plus in charge. The long-term future of the club, they claim, is more secure than ever because of their work in developing an Executive Board of officers with defined responsibilities, a system of dorm captains and volunteer rewards to ensure the club membership is motivated, and a functioning relationship with the Student Activities Commission and the Athletic Department, who combine to provide the majority of the club's funding. And yet, Hoya Blue's current president will likely always be known not for infrastructure improvements to the club or his logistical ability; no, he'll be remembered as a guy in a wig and face paint.

Hoya Blue's long-term future is secure because of a rigorous intellectual approach to building a functioning organization, if not a business. But the club functions the best, in the end, when its members take on the aggrieved everyman persona and devise a creative solution to a gap in school spirit. Whether it has been a Head Hoya Hooligan, a Stag Barbecue, or a Halloween costume contest at a women's volleyball game, back-to-basics school spirit, a little elbow grease, and a tin of face paint are the core elements of Hoya Blue's success.

Recently, Gregg Easterbrook devoted two separate columns to an out-of-the-box theory purporting to explain the success of two of the NFL's leading units—the Atlanta Falcons offense and the Denver Broncos defense. In an era of multiple-formations and defensive schemes, Easterbrook claims the Falcons and Broncos have achieved success by embracing the simplicity of High School football. For the Falcons, this means a commitment to establishing a running game then exploiting defensive aggressiveness with play-action and rollout passes. In the Broncos case, Easterbrook lauds their eschewal of multiple defensive formations, pre-snap movement, and (predictably) frequent blitz packages in favor of a by-the-book 4-3-4 defensive set on almost every play.

The message is clear—sometimes the most “revolutionary” change can be achieved by embracing tried-and-true methods. Establishing the run is still the most effective way to create a dangerous passing game. Efficient, reliable defense does still win championships.

In my opinion, the golden rule for any sports promotion on campus can be summed up in five words:

It's supposed to be fun.

The same sentiment that will build a student section of 2,000-plus fans spread out over three levels at the Verizon Center was the one that brought hundreds of my High School classmates who weren't even remotely interested in football out to the stadium every Friday night. The same selfless devotion to school spirit that motivates a blue wig-clad Senior to devote hours of his Saturday morning to passing out cheer sheets once inspired a High School cheerleader to spell out the name of her team at a Pep Rally in front of the entire student body.

The same Pep Rally that got every student at my High School fired up for a Homecoming game (and out of sixth period)…happens on a Friday night every October at McDonough Arena.

If there's one piece of general advice I could offer to Hoya Blue about how to fix student football culture on our college campus, it would be to remember what it was like on your High School's campus.

Sometimes going back to basics is the first step to thinking outside the box.

Any offense in football—whether the Atlanta Falcons, the Suncoast Chargers (my High School), or the Shotgun Draw!—is subject to the parameters of four downs. A successful offense is at its most basic predicated on moving the football more than ten yards in up to four plays. A consistent offensive rhythm—moving the chains—is the surest way to score with some level of frequency.

Likewise, the most successful Hoya Blue promotions are predicated on incrementally increasing student participation and support for a given Georgetown sport over a certain period of time. The basketball student section has grown steadily each of the past three seasons. The Hoya Hooligans gradually established a devoted and imposing group of regular GU soccer fans. Thanks to Hoya Blue promotions, students attend volleyball games.

In the final part of this series, I will be making a number of proposals for how Hoya Blue can work towards incrementally increasing student support for football on campus— “moving the chains” of football culture, if you will. In doing so, I will be drawing a parallel between Hoya Blue and a football offense—a somewhat unusual choice I admit, given the title of this series. However, I feel that in the same way Gregg Easterbrook believes the most effective NFL offenses take cues from High School football on establishing a consistent tempo then adjusting to a defense's overpursuit, Hoya Blue's football efforts will ultimately work best if they establish a consistent promotional strategy then adjust to the constraints placed upon them by the factors previously addressed in this series such as low fan interest, a largely uninteresting on-field product, and the lack of a pre-established fan culture.

Though offensive styles vary, from the Run-n-Shoot to the Triple Option, each of the four downs in football can be said to have a general character. If we are to compare Hoya Blue to a football offense, we must first observe the parallels between an offensive game plan and a sports promotion strategy.

The following are general descriptions of each of the four downs in football:

First Down offers a chance to establish a desired style or tempo for a game. Particularly early in games, teams tend to featured bread-and-butter running plays on first down in the hopes of achieving a healthy gain and setting up an easy conversion later in the series. First down provides the most fitting opportunity to “get back to basics” on offense.

Second Down provides a chance to adjust offensive play calling to suit the needs of the team's current situation. Success on first down will produce a second-and-short situation, compelling an offensive coordinator more often than not to attempt a second running play. On the other hand, a failed first down play or a penalty might result in second-and-long, greatly increasing the chances of a pass. Second down thus is concerned with assessing a situation and developing an appropriate response.

Third Down presents a sense of urgency, as failure to achieve a first down may force a punt. Whether third-and-short or third-and-long, the desired objective of a first down is sufficiently crucial that precise plays are drawn up with these situations in mind. If there is such a thing as a “go-to” play in football, it is on third down. As important as the play call, however, is the execution of that strategy—precision is at a premium on third down, be it the timing between quarterback and wide receiving on a quick slant, or the wherewithal of a tight end to extend his out route a yard beyond the first down marker.

Fourth Down is quite simply a do-or-die situation. Borne out of desperation or occasionally deception, failure to convert fourth down abruptly ends the offensive series. Whether fourth-and-inches or fourth-and-forever, the necessity of conversion makes available all means—and offensive coordinators frequently expand the options available from their playbooks in these key situations. This can mean anything from a tackle-eligible pass to a seldom-used five wide receiver formation is in play. The potential results of fourth down however are limited to two: feast or famine.

In the remainder of this series, I will provide 12 suggestions for how Hoya Blue can improve student football culture at Georgetown University. These will be divided into three “possessions” for organizational purposes. These possessions will be named for three distinct periods of Hoya Blue's football promotional calendar: “Before the Season,” “During the Game,” and “After the Game”. Within each possession I will outline four “downs” corresponding to promotional strategies. Each football down and its characteristics will correspond to a suggested Hoya Blue promotional strategy in the forthcoming section.

First Downs will be basic, bread-and-butter promotional strategies that are already a well-established part of the Hoya Blue promotional playbook.

Second Downs will involve ways to adjust existing promotional strategies to the realities of football culture, whether by adding new components or pursuing new directions.

Third Downs will focus on tried and true methods of building fan support, the sort that are guaranteed to yield positive results.

Fourth Downs will “open up the playbook” of Hoya Blue, and include completely new promotional strategies, or ideas that have as of yet never been applied to football.

To put it very simply—if Hoya Blue executes the gameplan laid out below, it is my belief that they'll win over a substantial portion of the sports-conscious student body to Georgetown football.

Possession #1: BEFORE THE GAME

Recently, The Hoya published a two-part feature by Harlan Goode that followed the Georgetown football team's week-long preparation for its November 11th game against Lafayette. [“Longest Day of the Year,” 11/10/06; “Long Weekend, Long Season,” 11/14/06] Filled with insightful commentary from GU football players and coaches, the feature is a rare look at Georgetown football on a deeply personal level—the second part opens with Brent Craft crying in an empty locker room, perhaps the single most effective image to date at capturing both the frustration and intense dedication that characterize Georgetown football.

Poignant images aside, Harlan Goode's two most important insights as I read them are relatively obvious but unstated; they're revealed in the structure of his feature. First, he opens the feature with a team meeting in the Intercultural Center at 6:45am on a Tuesday. Second, in the entirety of his feature, Harlan devotes only 10 paragraphs to describing the actual Georgetown vs. Lafayette game.

The implication is clear: success on the football field is a result of intense preparation and groundwork, often begun far before and in a remote location from the time of the game.

So it goes with Hoya Blue as well.

At the same time Harlan Goode and the Georgetown football team were in Easton, PA for the Lafayette game, I was sitting in the Verizon Center watching the Hoya basketball team open their 2006-2007 season against Hartford. Basketball is unquestionably Hoya Blue's marquee promotion, and the one for which the club devotes the most time and effort. Preparation for the season begins far in advance of the opening tipoff. If one were to write a feature on Hoya Blue's preparation for basketball season this year, they would almost certainly need to begin the story two and a half months earlier, on a Friday night in late August when club volunteers set up tables on Harbin patio and the entrance to Darnall Hall and sold t-shirts and basketball tickets to freshmen moving into their dorms.

Selling t-shirts and building an email sign-up list serve the same function for Hoya Blue as Coach Kelly going through offensive formations with his team on a Tuesday morning—they establish familiarity. A football team that skillfully and effortlessly runs offensive play calls reaps the rewards of early-week preparation, as the school spirit club that paints a sea of gray in a student section sees the fruits of long hours spent during the late summer selling season ticket packages.

For Hoya Blue to establish an offensive “rhythm” with its football promotions, they need to begin from the moment they walk on campus.

FIRST DOWN: No Slacking Off during NSO

Earlier this week, as I was outlining this section of the column series, a picture appeared on my laptop's screensaver. In the picture are three Hoya Blue volunteers who worked the Harbin patio table on the first night of New Student Orientation. The banner that adorns the front of the table reads:

As a result of the combined effort of the Hoya Blue tables and pre-school year order forms mailed to incoming freshmen, over 1,000 basketball season tickets were sold by the end of New Student Orientation. Students and parents alike flocked to fill out order forms, buy up “I Bleed Hoya Blue” shirts, and…yes…watch a DVD of the Georgetown-Duke game being played on a laptop computer. Whenever I see that picture on my screensaver, I'm reminded of how far Hoya Blue has come as a promotional force on campus in just over a year's time.

I'm also reminded, however, of what I don't see in the picture: any reference to the Georgetown football team. While at the time of freshman move-in over a month and a half remained until Midnight Madness, the football home opener against Holy Cross was the following Saturday. On more than one occasion during my visit to the Hoya Blue NSO tables, I asked volunteers why there were so few references to the football team in Hoya Blue's literature and in the photo collages that decorated the tables. Most of the time, my answer came in the form of someone sheepishly pointing at one or two photos of football players scattered amongst numerous crowd shots from the Verizon Center.

It is admittedly harsh to blame Hoya Blue for focusing so much of their attention on men's basketball. Aside from being far and away Georgetown's marquee sport, it also offers the club their most visible and effective recruiting pitch to prospective members. That the club has a tangible service to offer in ticket sales (that will in turn earn them a small commission) only increases the incentive to focus on basketball.

However, this relationship works in the reverse as well. Basketball does provide an exciting product for Hoya Blue to promote, unlike football for the majority of recent history. However, Hoya Blue has not always had a Sweet 16 team to promote. That basketball has remained an integral part of student culture at Georgetown during Hoya Blue's existence is because the club has consistently treated it as worthy of a lofty status. The club devotes extra volunteer time to writing cheer sheets for games. They organize road trips to away game. They begin promoting basketball far before the season starts at NSO.

If football is to become an integral part of campus culture, Hoya Blue needs to treat it as if it is worthy of that status. This means football needs to become a core element of Hoya Blue's New Student Orientation promotional strategy.

As Hoya parent Philip Newman put it in HoyaSaxa.com's football roundtable:

“Every year 1,500 new students enter Georgetown. For the most part, they know nothing about Georgetown football. Make football opening day part of the orientation program.”

Hoya Blue's table should not only advertise the selling period for men's basketball tickets—it should advertise the first home football game of the season. This year it occurred on the first post-NSO weekend; next season the Hoyas home opener is two weekends into the year, on September 8, 2007 against Lafayette.

In addition to stacks of ordering forms, Hoya Blue should pass out football schedule magnets and promotional flyers to arriving freshmen.

Establishing momentum for the football season means acknowledging that, as important as basketball season is to Hoya Blue, it starts with Midnight Madness in October. There is nothing wrong with selling your most valuable asset in men's basketball at NSO. But there is no reason to leave football under the table.

Midnight Madness is a crucial element of basketball culture at Georgetown because it sets a celebratory tone for the season and re-connects students with their team. With football struggling from a lack of on-field excitement, on-campus buzz, and on-sight recognition for its players, a pre-season Pep Rally would greatly increase the visibility of the program and its credibility with students.

One of the cornerstones of the NSO program is a pep rally. A fitting opportunity for building a buzz about fall sports, the NSO pep rally has unfortunately over the years been a hit-or-miss affair, with the attendance of sports teams, coaches, and even Hoya Blue's role waxing and waning. Though the NSO Pep Rally when done well can be an asset—and former Head Coach Bob Benson often performed with great skill and enthusiasm on stage in front of 1,600 freshmen—a separate football-focused event run by Hoya Blue prior to the first home game of the season would give the team the attention and atmosphere it surely deserves but has been sorely lacking over the years.

SECOND DOWN: Such an Individual DOES Exist for Football

Perhaps the most underappreciated strength of Hoya Blue's current leadership is their ability to adjust to the realities of their membership base.

“[Hoya Blue] is great at letting other people get involved,” club Vice President Michael R. Segner told me earlier this year, “and we're not stringent about controlling everything.”

Nowhere was this more evident during the fall sports season than with men's soccer.

Without a true soccer die-hard on the Executive Board, Hoya Blue's soccer operations were run by Peter Keszler, a dorm captain who was recruited by the club's leadership because of his connections to the soccer team (his older brother Andrew was a goalkeeper) and given a modest budget and free reign to promote games as he saw fit. The most memorable Hoya Hooligan however was Matt Hare, the boisterous Brit whose creative chants and songs animated fans and occasionally intimidated opponents.

Segner was quick to stress that Hoya Blue was happy to allow Matt to lead by example in the student section. “We didn't demand that we did our cheers,” he reminded me, “We let him do his and worked with him.”

In doing this, Hoya Blue is following the third of four overarching themes I once laid out for the “Generation Burton” column series:

The people who are the most passionate about Georgetown athletics and care the most about building a strong student section are the best people to put in charge of promoting games to other students. There is no substitution for this.

Hoya Blue tastes the results of this passion when Pete Keszler recruits his mother to deliver coolers full of hamburger patties, chopped onions, and cold cuts to their soccer BBQs. They hear it when their student section sings multi-verse songs at halftime, led by a British kid in a Santa Clause hat. They read about it when Pete sends his periodic Facebook messages out to promote the next home game, or hangs up self-made flyers for the game against West Virginia even though it conflicts with a football game.

The quality of sports promotions will always improve when those promoting the game see it as their number one priority and have a sense of ownership in the process.

As Pete lamented earlier in this series, however, there is no Matt for football.

Indeed, I get the distinct sense that while every member of the Hoya Blue Executive board wants to see football succeed, their hearts are seldom into the promotion. Commitments to future home game BBQs are undercut with the inevitable admission that few students attend and that the club always loses money in the process.

Neither should truly be an impediment to promoting football. Nor would they be if a Pete or a Matt were in charge.

The best adjustment Hoya Blue can make before next season to bolster student football culture is to appoint a Head of Hoya Blue Football Operations. Recruitment should be open to any student in Hoya Blue, and based on a simple criterion—how much do you love Georgetown football? Hoya Blue has an immense organizational force behind it, as well as significant finances to support building football the same way it built soccer.

Once Hoya Blue's Head of Football Operations is in place, they should be given a budget sufficient to support pre-game events for all home games, advertisement, and planning at least one event outside of game days. Beyond that, the initiative and creativity of a Hoya Blue volunteer promoting a sport they love and want to see succeed will take care of the rest.

THIRD DOWN: Pick Captains

One of the amusing diversions I've enjoyed during two years of following Hoya Blue during New Student Orientation is trying to predict which students who visit the tables during move-in will eventually become core members of the club. In fact, the first weekend of the school year is about more than building an email list and selling tickets; it is here that Hoya Blue forms the core of its volunteer network of dorm captains.

Selected via application, the dorm captains are Hoya Blue's volunteers in the field; in the same way that Peter Keszler was given control over Hoya Blue soccer operations, dorm captains are given control over a particular residence hall or apartment complex. In addition to traditional tasks such as flyering and manning Hoya Blue tables throughout the year, dorm captains are ostensibly responsible for recruiting their friends and floormates to attend games during the sports seasons.

Imagine my surprise then at the end of September when I approached Hoya Blue about establishing a partnership for a promotion I was helping propose to the Hoya Hoop Club. The Hoya Blue representatives I talked to seemed almost over-eager to participate in the project, which would involve selling a particular product on campus. It offered a perfect opportunity to involve the dorm captains I was told…because they'd had almost nothing to do the entire year.

Why was this? What had brought the dorm captain network to a halt?

Well, Hoya Blue had sold out of basketball tickets and t-shirts.

I can't walk through campus any more, no matter the season, without seeing dozens of flyers for upcoming athletics events and Hoya Blue promotions. That the dorm captains are doing “nothing” is probably something of a misstatement—somebody is hanging those flyers outside of Village C.

But the importance of a dorm captain goes beyond a well-placed flyer. It lies in the conversation that student has with their neighbor, talking up the football team and convincing them to show up at a football game the following afternoon.

Any realistic assessment of football culture on campus will tell you that students need to be convinced to come to the MSF most Saturday afternoons. This is a reality that the Athletic Department and Hoya Blue deal with. But I'm not sure either realizes how much of an asset dorm captains can be in this regard.

Dorm captains don't necessarily need to be given a specific “job” like flyering or tabling to be doing “something” for Hoya Blue—they can have just as great an impact informally on their floor. Providing an incentive for a “job” well done wouldn't hurt however.

Hoya Blue should expedite the appointment of dorm captains as much as possible at the start of the school year, and provide these volunteers with general instructions on promoting football to their floormates. This grassroots approach to building football culture, which will hopefully in many cases take advantage of the entrepreneurial spirit of football die-hards in Hoya Blue, is the best avenue for the club to quickly build a student section.

This student section may well be built on the strength of a group of friends from Harbin 4, or a pair of roommates from Village C who convinced each other to give football a try. Hoya Blue should recognize the efforts of dorm captains who increase attendance in this manner at football games. Records of this can be easily kept on sign in sheets with a listing for Dorm and Floor. Prizes or rewards points can be given to the best performing dorm captains, offering a further incentive to push football attendance.

Further, the relationships built while promoting football attendance will pay dividends down the road when the time comes to convince a fellow freshman to put off studying for an exam to take in a game at the Verizon Center.

A promotional strategy heavily focused on freshman attendance is the most appropriate avenue at this point for Hoya Blue and Georgetown football. A similar model is currently being employed at Rutgers University, which aimed the majority of its promotional effort for this football season at its newest group of student fans, who were perceived to be the most impressionable…and the least knowledgeable about the less-than-stellar history of Scarlet Knight football.

Returning to Hoya Blue's go-to grassroots strategy for promoting football will not only build the student section at a quicker pace, it will also train the next generation of club leaders who will be that much more accustomed to focusing on football as a legitimate promotion.

FOURTH DOWN: HOYA BLUE, Football Season Information, hoyablue.net

Despite the football team's abysmal on-field performance this season, it has been a pleasure to follow the Hoyas this season. Much of this has to do with a bumper crop of excellent, diverse writing about Hoya football available to Georgetown fans this season. While a consensus seemed to develop in the HoyaSaxa.com roundtable that TV, radio, and local media coverage of the team was lacking, similar agreement was found over the quality of on-campus coverage of the team.

Two principal sources of in-depth coverage of Georgetown football have been the official athletics website GUHoyas.com and the sports section of “The Hoya”. As I documented in a previous Generation Burton column [“It's Been a Summer,” (Part 4), 9/26/06], throughout the summer months and into the season, Georgetown's athletics website has run a series of feature stories on Hoya football players, highlighting their off-field accomplishments and personal lives'. This represents a vast improvement in the quality and quantity of information available to die-hards and casual Hoya fans alike.

The HOYA has also significantly upgraded its coverage of football during the 2006 season. Senior Sports Editor Bailey Heaps noted in the football roundtable that his paper has increased both its pre-game coverage (including opponent previews and players to watch) and post-game reports (including in-depth game analyses he notes are usually reserved for men's basketball).

Put simply, there is a great deal of information available to students and fans wishing to learn more about the Georgetown football team. Hoya Blue's job is to get that information in the hands of students and create a better informed student section.

When you look at the announcements on the sidebar of Hoya Blue's website, you see notes about joining Hoyatalk, making travel plans for the Villanova and Uconn basketball home games, the shuttle bus system to the Verizon Center, an online ticket exchange, and (recently) the history of Chris Tiongson a.k.a. nodak89. While a few of these items have been added more recently, and some cycle off the list, almost never has a single announcement regarding a football promotion been given a permanent place on Hoya Blue's webpage.

I propose that Hoya Blue devote a new page of its website dedicated to educating students about Georgetown football and the “experience” of being a football fan. The content of this website would include:

--Links to relevant articles about Georgetown football players, whether on GUHoyas.com, The Hoya, or other print media.
--Links to information about the Patriot League, I-AA football, and all of Georgetown's upcoming opponents.
--A Georgetown football events schedule similar to that used by the Hoya Hoop Club (see an example here: http://guhoyas.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/hoya-hoop-club-activities.html ) that includes promotions for each upcoming home game, and any game watch information for road games.
--Regularly updated photo galleries and (if possible) brief recaps of each home game and Hoya Blue promotion in support of the football team.
--Feature sections, including brief articles about a Georgetown football Player of the Week, Georgetown student fan of the week, or future Hoya Blue contests for dorm captains.

Rehauling Hoya Blue's website, or even adding content for football, may seem like something of a low-percentage play. Based on view counts, an average basketball recap posted on Hoya Blue's website and linked on the HoyaSaxa.com message boards will be read somewhere between 400 and 600 times. This assumes a large alumni and student base already drawn to a popular, content-rich website. Football articles and content, it would stand to reason then, would likely achieve far less viewership immediately.

Hoyablue.net cannot realistically ever hope to challenge HoyaSaxa.com as an informational resource, nor as a gathering place for Georgetown fans. However, in its niche as an organizational tool for a student spirit organization eager to educate students about sports culture, Hoya Blue's website can be an invaluable tool for football promotions. By driving its members to the website, Hoya Blue can create not only a more knowledgeable student fan base, but also a more organized one. As view counts go up, so to inevitably will attendance at the MSF.