As Georgetown’s men’s basketball team heads into the final games of its schedule, fans find the Hoyas at one of their all-time low points in what has been an utterly forgettable season. It started with a series of transfers. It continued with complete and total annihilation by the two best opponents on the schedule in Connecticut and Duke. And it culminated with a defeat to a team that lost a sizeable fraction of its team due to penalties resulting from a sex scandal. Yes, Georgetown lost to St. John’s, giving the Red Storm what will likely be their only conference win of the season.
This program is no longer in a descent. Georgetown has hit rock bottom and it’s drilling for China.
Earlier this season, The Washington Post ran a story about how sad it was that Georgetown and St. John’s had fallen to such depths. After the loss to St. John’s, GU graduate and former Voice writer Barker Davis ranted about the program’s descent in The Washington Times. During the Syracuse game, ESPN’s Andy Katz prowled the sidelines to try to find out when GU was going to fire Head Coach Craig Esherick. And in Thursday’s Post, Tony Kornheiser delivered a blow that absolutely makes me angry: “The Hoyas have tumbled down a manhole in the Big East. And it doesn’t seem like anybody in the athletic department cares.”
He’s right, too. Remarkably, there has been continual praise and support for a coach that has repeatedly shown that he has no control over and is incapable of instructing his players and taking this team in a winning direction. It is as though Georgetown has created it’s own alternate, yet parallel universe where it sees only what it wants to see. I wonder if Joe Lang and Jack DeGioia even notice that their university is the butt of jokes all around the country?
This season is the 20th anniversary of Georgetown’s only national championship in basketball. Of course, you might have missed that since the athletic department has not honored that team in any way before any home game this season. Are they that ashamed of the current state of the program? Did they think that if they didn’t acknowledge how good this program once was, fans wouldn’t notice how far it has fallen?
What angers me the most is that the administration acts as though the opinions of fans (who have spoken with their wallets by not attending games) and players (who have spoken by not attending, or transferring from, Georgetown) don’t matter. For that matter, they act as though the men’s basketball program doesn’t matter.
But collegiate sports, particularly those played in Division I on a national stage, do matter. Athletic programs generate huge revenues for their universities via ticket sales, licensing agreements, TV rights and postseason appearances. Conversely, it takes a lot of money to sustain a Division I team on the national stage. Unfortunately, it takes a reputation of athletic success to pull in those revenues, and that’s something that Georgetown has recently lacked.
Right now, Georgetown, the same Georgetown wallowing in $700 million in debt, is throwing a lot of money into a very expensive program, and the message from the administration is that it’s OK that the program is plummeting below the national radar and veering further and further away from revenue-generating opportunities.
As Tony Kornheiser indicated, the athletic department doesn’t seem to mind that the program is a national laughing stock, likely doomed to finish below .500. And he’s just referring to the athletic disgrace of the situation. Maybe the athletic department doesn’t care. But I, and many other Hoya fans, are quite concerned that Georgetown is happy to throw money away on a program that’s on autopilot to oblivion while tuition is increased and academic departments face cutbacks. If not for reasons of athletic success and maintaining a tradition of excellence, something that every other university in America seems to value, changes in the program should at least be made with a mind toward the economics of the situation.
I’m tired of feeling like administrators have their fingers in their ears and their heads in the sand when it comes to this issue. I ask that if others share this opinion, please voice your displeasure with this apparent indifference. Make signs. Write to the athletic department. Write letters to THE HOYA, as several alumni (including a former employee of the athletic department) have already done.
Athletic failure can be tolerated. Apathy in the face of economic troubles, however, is inexcusable.
Mike Hume is a 2003 graduate of the College and a former Senior Sports Editor of THE HOYA.