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"It's Been A Summer" (Part 4)
Sports Entrepreneurs and the 365 Day Approach to Hoya Fandom

By John Hawkes

Jeff Green's battle with Roy Hibbert in McDonough Gym this summer was a defining moment for the Kenner League and its new breed of die-hard summer holdover fans. However, the previous summer, Jeff also helped usher in a new era of sports promotion at Georgetown…by battling a 900 pound cow on a farm in Harvest, Alabama.

The GUHoyas.com article "Down On The Farm" generated a considerable amount of fan interest (and laughter) on the HoyaSaxa.com message boards when it was published at the end of August 2005. Ostensibly a recap of Jeff Green and Tyler Crawford's trip to the Alabama home of point guard Jonathan Wallace, the article conclusively proved that the man who is arguably the Big East's leading Player of the Year candidate and who thoroughly dominated Aaron Gray during the second half of a Big East game last season…is petrified of a brown moo cow named Bessie.

Sure, there's a message about teamwork embedded in "Down on the Farm"-Tyler Crawford remarks on his impressions of the Wallace family, "Everybody in the family was disciplined. They all had different jobs but at the same time they were working together." But the lasting image from the article remains Jeff Green, a bucket of feed at the very tip of his lengthy power-forward wingspan, looking like he's going to bolt at the first sign of movement from his bovine companion.

Truth be told, the recent "cult of personality," if you will, surrounding Georgetown's men's basketball team probably began months before Jeff and Tyler went down to Alabama, the first time future Hoya Blue President Kurt Muhlbauer decided roman numerals would totally rock on the back of a shirt, the front rows of the student section simultaneously made the connection between Roy Hibbert, the musical group Survivor, and a Starbucks coffee drink commercial, or somewhere in Fargo, ND, Chris Tiongson was driving across the tundra when Fountains of Wayne came on his car radio.

The rapid growth of student interest in men's basketball over the past two seasons has been something of a viral phenomenon. This is to say, you could attribute the rise in interest in the team as much to a buzzer-beating win over Notre Dame or a triumph over Duke as you could the proliferation of "Jeff Green's Mom" on the iPods of undergrads.

Put another way, basketball is popular on campus again because the team just made the Sweet 16 and beat Duke, Pitt, and Syracuse at the MCI Center last season. But basketball is now a phenomenon on campus because the wave of publicity and participatory cheer surrounding the team has given every undergrad-even non-basketball fans-a stake in the team.

This is somewhat easier to accomplish with the flagship sport at Georgetown University. The men's basketball team is already scheduled for twelve nationally televised games this season. Visibility on campus is never a problem-Roy Hibbert is called "The 7'2'' Sensation" for a reason. Big Roy, The Drill Sergeant of Desire, The Dagger-they're somewhat of a special case.

Barring something on the order of a Final Four appearance by the men's lacrosse team, it's a safe bet that no other Georgetown teams will be featured on a prominent national telecast this calendar year. Yet this doesn't mean that it's impossible to create a viral phenomenon around Georgetown's "other" sports. Further, despite the lack of cows to strike fear into the heart of a power forward, the stories of teamwork and preparation over the long summer months are just as compelling for GU's fall sports athletes.

For this reason, I was especially excited to see the debut of the "Georgetown Summer Journals" series on GUHoyas.com this summer. Over the course of nine weeks during the dog days of summer, three Georgetown athletes-Senior forward Ricky Schramm of the men's soccer team, Junior goalkeeper Jade Higgins of the women's soccer team, and Senior defensive lineman Roosevelt Donat-kept fans up to speed on their respective squads' training regimens, travels, and team-building activities.

Reading about the dedication and effort Ricky, Jade, Roosevelt, and their teammates put into their sports during the offseason is, at least to me, as impressive as reading another salutary preview article naming Jeff Green to a pre-season all-Big East team. Being a fan of a sport like men's basketball is a great participatory activity, but it's not always the most personal of experiences. One of my lasting memories of attending soccer games while a student at Georgetown, by contrast, was of just how many students came out to North Kehoe (and Harbin) Field to support their floormates, friends, apartment co-habitants, etc. Whereas I was just as likely to see Mike Sweetney on SportsCenter as in New South, my freshman year roommate was on the GU swim team, several floormates went out for the crew team, and I lived down the hall from a future starting fullback. Most students have some sense of the dedication it takes to be a Georgetown varsity athlete, if not personally then through a close friend, and much of the support for these teams comes from friends supporting friends.

What the Summer Journal series has done is capture that appreciation for the effort of Hoya varsity athletes and brought it to an even larger audience, at a time when most fans wouldn't naturally think of these sports. It certainly doesn't hurt that all three of the summer authors are exceptional writers, and took great care to be beyond meticulous in their recaps of everyone's summer activities (reading the soccer pieces in particular has given me an unusually comprehensive knowledge of American amateur soccer leagues).

Whether the summer articles have had a tangible impact on the increase in student attendance for soccer and football this season is difficult to measure. But I couldn't help but smile when I first heard the Hoya Hooligans chant "Feed the Schramm and he will score…" at the St. John's game a few weekends ago (he did by the way).

Many Georgetown athletes also kept busy off the field this summer. During the off-season, Hoya football fans had the opportunity to read in feature articles on GUHoyas.com about how four players-Alex Buzbee, Brian Tandy, Matt Bassuener, and David Fajgenbaum-balanced work and workouts. As full as the GU sports calendar has become for fans, it can hardly compare to the daily schedule of Buzbee, who worked a 9-5 internship for Representative Peter King on Capitol Hill and raced home for 6:15 workouts with teammates at Yates Field House, or Tandy, who frequently clocked noon to close shifts at the local Pizzeria Uno. Basseuner, who spent the summer locally as an intern for USA Football in Vienna, has a unique measure of football experience, as undoubtedly the only member of the GU team with prior experience as an on-air commentator for Spanish language football broadcasts.

Fajgenbaum's story-one that has been a frequent feature on GUHoyas.com over the past several months-is an important read for fans for reasons far beyond the gridiron. David, who was recently named to the American Football Coaches Association "Good Works Team," held the second edition of the "Boot Camp to Beat Cancer" through his Students of Ailing Mothers and Fathers (AMF) Support Network, raising $20,000 for cancer research. Fajgenbaum's story is a compelling one in and of itself-the acronym AMF is in honor of his mother Anne Marie who passed away in 2004 from a brain tumor. But his subsequent works to raise money for cancer research and draw attention to the AMF Support Network, which works with students dealing with bereavement issues, makes David a model for all Hoya fans and alumni to emulate.

At the very least, I can say that I've gained a great amount of respect for all of the Georgetown athletes profiled this summer. Moreover, I've paid a lot more attention to each of them during the season so far this year.

Whether we're watching a soccer game and thinking about Andrew Keszler diving across his line like Czech Republic National Team goalkeeper Petr Cech (as Ricky Schramm suggested we do in his June 13th Summer Journal), thinking about Matt Basseuner analyzing the Dallas Cowboys' running game on Spanish television, or Jeff Green running away from a cow…

…the important thing is we're thinking about them at this point in the year.

To be continued...