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"The Founding Fathers"
(Or How 'The Ambassador,' The Grizzly Bear, The Kid Who Ranted and Raved as if He Had Contracted Rabies, And a Whole Cast of Diehards Stormed a Constitutional Convention and Finally Got to Take Hoya Blue to a Whole 'Nother Level (But Had No Comment at the Time--After All, There Was an Election to Be Won))

During the last month and a half, the Hoyatalk community has had the occasion to "celebrate" the anniversary of two important moments in the recent history of the Georgetown basketball program.

March 15, 2006 marked the fifth annual celebration of "Nat Burton Day"-a "holiday" I invented to commemorate Nat Burton's game-winning layup against Arkansas in the first round of the 2001 NCAA Tournament.

A little over a month later, as many D.C.-area Hoya fans prepared to attend the April 20th Hoya Hoop Club Banquet, we recalled the fateful day two years before when the "Breaking News" box on ESPNews brought the announcement of the hiring of John Thompson III as men's basketball coach.

In what I'd like to think is a sign of how Hoya fans have collectively moved on from the turmoil of the period between 3/15/01 and 4/20/04, no attention was paid whatsoever to another anniversary falling in the late spring-the night Craig Esherick's firing was announced (March 16, 2004 if you're wondering).

Each of these moments earns "anniversary" status not just because of their defining importance to the recent history of Georgetown basketball. We remember not only the moments, but exactly what we were doing the moment Burton's layup rolled in off the left side of the rim, or our television rolled over to ESPNews after an NIT game or our morning shower.

In their own way, Nat Burton Day, the beginning of the JT3 era, and the Esherick era brought an entire campus together around the men's basketball program for a brief but memorable time.

May 4, 2006 marks another important anniversary for fans of Georgetown's men's basketball program. But this one is different.

Most of the people I interviewed for this article actually had trouble remembering details from the night in question.

There was no ESPNews coverage of the outcome…only a hastily assembled press release written by a participant and given to HoyaSaxa.com.

Finally, not only did the event in question not bring the entire campus together-only about 40 people showed up-it didn't even bring all the candidates together for an election.

May 4, 2006, is the one-year anniversary of the election that created the newly-reformed Hoya Blue as it existed this season.

As far as events go, it hardly warrants mentioning. From start to finish, the election lasted less than an hour, most of which consisted of small talk. Most of the preparation by the candidates and their supporters turned out to be completely unneeded. To say you could have blinked and missed the election wouldn't be that hyperbolic-one student with RA obligations actually did miss the vote by arriving late.

So why celebrate the anniversary of a non-event?

The Thread

At 4:20pm on April 5, 2005, the thread "Hoya Blue to Become Official?" appeared on the Hoyatalk message board with a link to an announcement on GUHoyas.com of the "Hoya Blue Constitutional Convention and Officer Nominations."

It took Hoyatalk heavy-hitter GUHoya2007 (later Kurt Muhlbauer…at this point, he was mostly known by reputation and the somewhat bad-ass moniker "007" even to people who sat within a few feet of him in the student section at games) exactly six minutes to spring into action, encouraging every Hoyatalk-reading student to show up in Team Room A at McDonough Arena in one week. Within minutes, seemingly everyone in 007's Little Black Book of Hoya Fandom had received an Instant Message or chatted him up offering their support-by 4:47pm, Kurt had already compiled a list of five people who "Want In on the New Hoya Blue" (the list would later turn out to include four members of Hoya Blue's new Executive Board and one Dorm Captain).

One of those five people was Thomas Ryan (who I've almost never heard referred to by his Hoyatalk name "TBird41"), who expressed the sentiment of the spirit-obsessed student contingent on that afternoon:

"Well, I was trying to do work, but well, now I have no chance."

Two things happened that afternoon on Hoyatalk and across campus:

The first was that more and more students started to step up and offer their services to the effort at creating a "new" Hoya Blue. One of the most interesting offers came from Jimmy McAndrews, then a High School senior, who pledged his support for the following August when he'd arrive on Georgetown's campus.

There was a clear theme to many of the posts from students that afternoon. The type of volunteer that "We" (007 almost immediately started using the pronoun to refer to the group of students that would come to the first meeting and later the election) were looking for would be "truly devoted" or "truly passionate about Georgetown athletics." 007 pledged to be "open to advice from everyone who is dedicated" and stated that the collective "We" needed to "get as many people as possible involved." As the election drew closer, he'd stress the need to "reach out to everyone and create a true feeling of unity."

The second thing that happened was that Hoyatalk got in touch with its inner government major. Tom Ryan got the party going right away…his alternative to working that afternoon included a detailed rundown of his thoughts on the five items announced in the GUHoyas press release as discussion items for the upcoming meeting: organizational mission, organizational responsibilities, officer election/removal process, constitutional amendment process, and open forum. The following day, from several time zones away in the former Soviet Union, Steve Medlock (writing under the geographically-appropriate pseudonym StPetersburgHoya) chimed in with a seven-point plan of suggestions for the future Hoya Blue constitution.

It wasn't entirely a surprise that Tom, Steve, or any of the several students who came forward over the next week or so had such a detailed understanding of the direction in which they wanted Hoya Blue to head. I'd personally heard the same types of conversations from many of them throughout the 2004-2005 basketball season. They'd started at a dinner meeting I attended in early September with Kurt (turns out 007 looked very little like James Bond in real life), Matt Kamenski (who fit rather well in person with the name CAHoya07), and Steve Fraser (there are so many Georgetown students from New Jersey that "JerseyHoya34" was never much of a clue).

At that meeting, an intriguing idea was floated. If Hoya Blue as it was currently constituted didn't seem to be doing its job, and there was little hope of breaking down the doors to become more involved in the club, could a group of dedicated students form a competing spirit organization? The consensus seemed to be no-not only would it be extremely difficult, but it might be counterproductive to school spirit to be seen as "competing" with Hoya Blue.

So Kurt, Matt, Steve, and a bunch of student fans hit upon an interesting compromise. During the season, they'd show up early at the gates of the MCI Center. They'd usually sit clumped together in the first few rows of the student section, some wearing blue wigs, some NOT wearing their "We Are Georgetown" shirts but instead one of the letters in GO HOYAS painted across their chest, some just…wearing a hat. They'd put all of their effort into cheering for the basketball team, leading by example.

And every so often, I'd walk through the F Street Entrance on a Saturday morning and notice the group of people waiting in line had grown by a person or two. I'd talk to Kurt and hear about another student he'd met off of Hoyatalk who was interested in building school spirit like he was. I'd hear more and more rumblings about doing something more with their group.

By the time the Postseason NIT rolled around, and Kurt and his crew were hanging up spray-painted signs they'd made to advertise games around campus, they'd become, in a way, a sort of Hoya Blue-in-exile. Though it seemed obtuse to read somebody named GUHoya2007 using the pronoun "We" to refer to an unspecified group, his comments and those of many of the posters writing in the original thread about Hoya Blue were borne out of a full year of discussions and planning. What the announcement of an upcoming meeting in McDonough did was turn many of those discussions from hypothetical to very possible.

Predictably, several members of the Hoya Blue-in-exile assume informal roles in the "process" leading up to the first meeting.

Kurt-who'd made no secret from the moment he walked onto the Hilltop about his desire to be prominently involved in building school spirit on campus-became the point of contact, the focal point of the group's efforts.

Steve Fraser took on the role of strategist, constantly stressing the need to stay "on message". Perhaps his most important task was an informal one; as Kurt joked: "He's making me watch what I say and all." Anyone who doubted how seriously Kurt was taking the upcoming meetings needed look no further than the overly sincere apology he gave at the first joking mention of his infamous "whole 'nother level" comment in the discussion over his potential leadership of Hoya Blue.

Tom was the wonkish one-producing a number of detailed outlines of tasks for the new club and ideas for the new Hoya Blue constitution (which he ultimately wrote over the summer).

Any number of students provided enthusiasm to the group. But one in particular stood out. One of Kurt's instant messages the afternoon the meeting was announced was waiting for Ray Borgone when he got back from class. Ray had never been part of the group I'd see ninety minutes before a game sitting on the floor by the entrance to the MCI Center concourse-he usually sat somewhere near the back of the student section. As far as personalities go, Ray is the polar opposite of Kurt. Kurt's speaking style resembles many of his posts on Hoyatalk-lots of exclamation points. Ray's speaking style is characterized primarily by the fact that if you're in a room with a television, a radio, a cell phone on vibrate…really, anything that makes an audible sound…he's so soft spoken it's almost impossible to hear him.

Yet Kurt and Ray shared a common interest in improving school spirit. The previous month, after he'd started a thread devoted to developing ideas to improve student involvement in Georgetown sports, I'd read the narration over instant message as Kurt searched for a way to get in contact with Ray. They'd kicked around ideas online a number of times since then-yet they still hadn't spoken in person by the time the announcement of the meeting came out. Now they were partners in the same mission.

"We're finally going to have a board in place," Ray wrote at the time, "who is committed to maximizing the resources at Hoya Blue's disposal to get sports spirit up."

It's a rather profound summary of what the upcoming meeting and the Hoya Blue elections were going to mean for the club.

In the first Generation Burton column I wrote after the Hoya Blue election, I said the following:

"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."

From everything I was reading online leading up to Hoya Blue's Constitutional Convention, it seemed like quite a few people in the room were saying almost the same thing.

To Be Continued...