The Hoya Blue Perspective on Student Attendance

Maybe if the Hoya Blue wasn’t half asleep at the game. Get some sleep- you don’t contribute much in the front row if you are just going to stand there looking like you are going to topple over. Don’t go out the night before if that’s what it takes. One side of Verizon clearly has more energy than the other.

“Hoya Blue can’t manufacture that kind of dedication if students simply aren’t interested, and since I can’t tell you what made me love the Hoyas, I don’t know how to make other people feel that way.

…

Despite how it may look, we’re not just sitting around with the same apathy as the rest of the student body. We are trying, and if anyone has any ideas on how to manufacture that kind of love for the Hoyas without brainwashing the mediocre fans into our almost-cult like devotion, I’d love to hear it."

This is a misunderstanding of the objective. The goal isn’t to turn hundreds of students into cult-like superfans or Mr. & Ms. Georgetowns who are so devoted that they will go to dozens of random games out of a sense of obligation to the school. Those types of people are great, but they’re rare and will remain so. And you’re certainly not likely to create them by trying to shame them into it, blaming them for being apathetic or insufficiently interested, which seems to be the reflexive, if understandable, reaction of many people on the message boards.

The goal is to make attending sporting events something that is A) fun and B) expected.

What percentage of the student body cares deeply about a capella or Southeast Asian dance? Probably not very high. And yet Cherry Tree Massacre and Rangilla are as popular as ever. Because there is both a sense that it will be fun, regardless of one’s depth of knowledge about what’s going on, and because there’s an expectation that these things are an important part of the Georgetown experience (says the guy who went to Rangilla once and to Cherry Tree never). There are other examples (Foxfields, Relay for Life, and of course Homecoming).

Focus on these two aspects and don’t worry about trying to convert students into diehards. That will come as a natural byproduct, especially if the team – and its bandwagon – gets rolling.

Everyone is more than welcome to come to our Hoya Blue meeting tonight at 9pm in ICC 107.

But we are very happy to report that we are starting a committee that will be meeting at 8:30 (same room) to plan for a ‘NOVA PEP RALLY OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. We’re hoping to get lots of people involved and put on a super fun, super enthusiastic pep rally in red square the Friday before the Grey Out (so, the 24th). Come join us if you’ve got ideas to share or if you want to help make this happen!

Coming from a student, Hoya Blue has little to no presence on campus. I think that the problem of student enthusiasm has several root causes:

1. Cost. While I completely understand that student season tickets are a great deal, the price is far more than a lot of the student body, especially casual fans, are willing to pay. I have friends that go to several top basketball/football schools, and most can attend games for FREE. Many of my friends opt not to buy tickets primarily because of the price. A common attitude around campus is “I’m not going to pay $120 when I can probably only go to half the games.” I understand that.

2. Transportation. It is an absolute disaster getting to/from games. As mentioned above, trying to bus students straight to the verizon center would be a logistical nightmare, but as things stand it would only be an improvement. If I am trying to plan out my day around the game (which I do), I generally have to add 1-2 hours onto the front end of the start time and another hour onto the back of the game. A basketball game should not be a 5 hour production.

3. Lack of enthusiasm. I will not assign blame for this point. I think there are several factors that led to the current situation. First of all, the last class to see a highly successful season (read: final four in 2007) graduated last year. We have had several disappointing seasons following that. Even last year, there was a lot of excitement on campus, which died with Chris Wright’s hand. Secondly, Hoya Blue really has no presence. Short of the weekly emails (which are suspiciously absent or late some weeks), I have no interaction whatsoever with them.

Solutions:
I don’t know what the solution is. One possibility would be to start off the season in McDonough (I think they used to do that, it was before my time). I think that would generate some excitement and would get a lot more students involved. Having even one game on campus, early in the semester, would be amazing for both the students and the team. Also, I think the pricing and transportation need to be addressed.

I watch every game and try to go to most home games. I think that a good proportion of the student body watches the games as well. However, there is a significant disconnect between support and attendance.

the circulator runs from Wisconsin Ave to Mass and 7 every 10 minutes… judging by the amount of students on the circulator on game days, i bet 95% of students do not know that.

anybody who takes the bus to rosslyn and goes from rosslyn to metro center and switches to the red line… well if i thought that was the easiest way to get to the game i probably wouldnt go either.

I’m a class of ‘00, which could also stand for the number of NCAA wins we had in my four years. We absolutely sucked out loud, and our best crowds would be for Syracuse and that would be 12-13k. And 8-9k of that would be Cuse fans. I live 3 states away and have been to more games in the last 4 years than I went to in my four years of school. We found it much more fun to watch some of the most ridiculous Hoya basketball games in the history of Georgetown from the couch in our basement (with free beers/free food/accessible bathroom) than to have to experience them in person. And I understand many of the theories: constant late season collapses/bad luck with injuries, shitty home schedule/times, bad communication on campus here and there, kids more worried about studying/getting a job (to some extent, I mean come on, it’s 3 hours of your life). I understand all of that. And we aren’t alone. I saw Villanova/Cuse this year in Philly, and it looked like our crowd against American. But I digress.

The one thing that I just can’t wrap my head around….the transportation. Honestly, is it that expensive to carpool to the games? 3-4 people in a taxi? what is that, $5 a head? I was as big a 99%er in college as anybody I knew, and I was able to pull that off when needed. Seems like that argument holds no water at all. But yeah, it’s not the same as walking to your on campus arena to watch your team. I understand that. It’s a shitty predicament that I hope becomes better

should be added for no other reason than to remove the excuse of not having direct transportation. In reality though it would be — and often was even during my dreadful Esherick era days - a utilized service by a large portion of students. Almost every bus was packed and it was a relatively efficient way to get to games, especially for Sat noon tip-off when traffic is light. Most people drank on the bus and it was a pretty good party atmosphere that translated into the student section. Logistics werent that bad as there was almost no traffic on the side of Verizon where Coyote Ugly was and Graffiatos currently is. I’ve heard two excuses for the discontinuation of this program: 1. Too many students would leave early. This is silly. As various posters have pointed out, have the shuttles leave at the horn after the game or just don’t have return service- a lot of kids stay out downtown at the bars, on the mall and just dont need a ride back immediately. The ones that do can take a cab, bus or metro. 2. The cost. You cant tell me it isnt worth it for the AD to pony up for 5-10 buses for circa 8-12 home games a year. If it was worth it for the lean years of the Esherick days, it’s certainly worth it now. This type of expense should get prioritized over a bunch of things.

In no way does this solve the problem, but it’s at least one more step in the right direction to build off of. Also, people won’t be able to keep pointing at this issue as the sole reason they didn’t go to the game…

Here’s a thought schedule an early non-conference battle early in the season and make it a gray out game. Get the entire fanbase involved and do a marketing blitz of fan packages for the run-of-the-mill fans who frankly show up religiously if the opportunity presents itself. Create a cheaper donation price for access to tickets and specials. The early gray out will create an early season spirit that can run through the season plus freshman will get a taste of the magic and want more of it and same goes for regular off the street fans.

Get the die hard fans to motivate the students to come to games, why is it the Carrier Dome is always decked out in a sea of orange? Embrace the die hards and the students will follow

Glad to see Hoya Bleu is as irrelevant, worthless and entitled now as it was when I was in school.

HB needs to realize that it doesn’t have ownership over fandome. To those who run HB: know your role as a facillitator of enthusiasm, but don’t act like you’re all better fans than those who are not involved. There are plenty of reasons for someone not to join. I’m a fan of a number of sports teams, but I don’t have to join a club to prove it—not in the “real world” and not as a student. There are plenty of rabid student Hoyas fans who are not members. Encourage and appreciate their commitment to the same cause rather than judging them for not formally joining your group.

Also, the school bussed students (mostly Freshmen) to games during the 2002-03 season I know. Not sure if they did it for other years. I know they don’t do it anymore, but the point is that it’s far from impossible. If the demand is there (this is where HB can be valuable) the cost per student is fairly low and the benefit to the school (both in ticket sales and non-financial benefits) is fairly high.

Finally, and mostly unrelated, looking back on my time in DC, I’m glad the team plays off campus. It’s a good opportunity for students to get out of the insulated world of Georgetown and to have a fun day/night in a completely foreign part of the city. And as an alumnus in the District I was incredibly glad that I didn’t have to deal with the zoo of an on campus arena in order to attend games.

So, one thing that isn’t helping is being defensive or showing your frustration. It can be frustrating as all hell, and you might want to smack some of the posters who are going after you, but it really doesn’t help to get sucked into flame wars or send out emails / tweets that are anything but positive. You start getting defensive / despondent, it really doesn’t help. Even when some people are acting like HDCs.

Keep reaching out to the Casual Hoya / Hoyatalk community for ideas (alums are a huge resource for ideas and students read these sites as well) and to help drum up support.

And good to hear you guys are doing a Nova Pep Rally. Events that promote the games help drum up support and help increase your presence and are generally pretty fun.

It’s all Anne Kester’s fault.

Bitch single-handedly is ruining the house party scene and school spirit/basketball interest among underclassmen.

I base this on absolutely nothing.

I don’t know why people who go to the games are yelling at each other about this. The Hoya Blue meetings are open meetings, and the alum gamewatches are just as public.

Personally, I don’t want anyone to come to games that doesn’t want to be there. That’s far more annoying. I want people to want to come, but if they don’t feel like it, I’m not going to drag them out of bed for it. I don’t really think noon is that early to wake up even if you’ve gone out, but I also don’t expect an ordinary person to care as much as me about Providence. The people that know me fairly well know that my whole family went here, and I’ve been a fan for most of my life. That’s the case with a huge number of the people posting here. If you don’t fit that demographic, I’m not really going to go out of my way to make you be somewhere where your presence will just be irritating.

I don’t know how many times people at the front of the line will complain about people who got there before them being “rookies.” Kenchillian himself is guilty of that. If they are abiding by basic social line protocol, disparaging them simply because they are younger than you is a pretty dumb thing to do. Maybe that’s why they don’t want to go early or go at all.

You really want to inspire fans you need to make it fun to go to these games. The same old three cheers over and over are what have people sitting down by the under 16 in the first half. As lifelong fan, and a senior undergrad, I’ve seen all the phases of different promotions to get people siked up. There was the braswell face cut outs, the roy eye of the tiger chant, jeff green’s mom, the beat pitt newspapers, the JTIII symbol after intros, and the current zombination pre tipoff etc. These all get the students fired up, but after awhile they fade out. Innovate and then you’ll have some real fire from a student section.

Take a trip to cameron where they all show up soaked to mock gary williams, to the zoo where they read newspapers during intro, throw the newspapers up after their intro, and shred them up to toss in the air after the first basket, let alone their entire student section arm in arm swaying back and forth during the national anthem; go to Wake Forest to see their hypnotic umbrellas and cutout heads behind the basket. That’s how you get the casual fan to show up. Be fun and creative. Not just Let’s Go Hoyas, and Defense chants. Its no coincidence that the toughest placest to play are also the most fun for students to attend.

Let me just preface this by saying that I’m a junior at Georgetown and I’ve loved Georgetown basketball since I’ve gotten here as much or more than some of the people on this blog. But the general feeling of these comments that I’m getting is that if you’re not going to almost all of the games, then you’re wasting your time at Georgetown and you probably shouldn’t have come to the school in the first place. Additionally, if someone is not going to games, it’s probably because they’re lazy, hungover, or just generally suck as a human being. While I have certainly been frustrated with the attendance of some of my peers, I’ve been even more upset with some of the things said on Casual Hoya about this issue. I know I’ve missed games because I’ve had to go to practice for the division one team that I’m on, and I have peers who have missed games for other equally important reasons. If I had my way, I would go to every single game. But I, like plenty of other students, have other commitments. I’m not talking about the soulless people who just don’t do anything for Georgetown while they’re on the hilltop. But there are many students who are a major part of the Georgetown community who do so with out going to basketball games. And I, even as someone who lives and dies with every win and loss, don’t really have a problem with that. Obviously I’d love to see more people at the Verizon Center. But I’d also like to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the fact that there is much more to Georgetown University than our men’s basketball team.

But I did go to midnight madness when visiting my sister in ‘02. My bro is a current senior who makes every game that he possibly can, and watches religiously if he can’t.

My suggestion is this:

Have students create “Hoya Pride” videos in the early fall. Advertise an event where all the videos are screened for the incoming frosh/current students (like a week before Midnight Madness) . Have the students present vote for the best video and award a season ticket package to the winning group. In addition maybe have the best video be shown during pregame (Of course all vids on YouTube afterward)

I will put in my two cents and say that the Midnight Madness is LIGHT YEARS more than about anything I’ve experienced related to NU BBall. And it’s really good that there’s such strong alumni support for the program. NU (granted its more akin to georgetown football in terms of success) can’t get its season ticket holders to show up to games. Resulting in a lot of empty courtside seats.

Also, F*** ’Cuse.

Is focus on the freshmen. Do promotions, tables whatever as soon as they step foot on campus to get them tickets. Pass out info on how to easily get to games. Once they make a habit of going freshman year many will continue to go in the later years. A junior or senior is going to figure it out themselves and isn’t going to pay much attention to Hoya Blue. If you can get the frosh involved early, they’ll be trained to go to games throughout their time and this is where Hoya Blue can have the most impact.

1)who are our peers and what are they doing? what programs have fewer than 10k on campus students, and what are they doing well to get the kids to go to games. even better if they are city schools etc. Are there any to 50 schools that have as many students as we do? We all know about Duke, but there have to be more, there have to be some best practices

2) set up some kind of dorm vs dorm, or village A vs henley competitions. how many kids is village A bringin to games, if they dominate hele they win something. same idea for freshman dorm especially (right sized so new south doesn’t get advantage for simplly having more kids)

3) as a former rower, i never gave a hoot if anyone showed up. i just wanted to win. some sports are different.

Hoya Blue has it tough. It’s not easy to convince students to become dedicated to anything. While I think it’s important to get students to attend all Hoya sporting events (I went to as many women’s games as mens games during my georgetown career), I think the primary focus at this point, given the low attendance of all games, and that this blog focuses primarily the Men’s Basketball, I’ll focus on Men’s Basketball.

Like I said it’s hard to get students interested in anything, let alone spending $120 + transportation cost + 2 hours of high energy + 2 hours of travel. It’s as simple as that. I disagree with those above that say that the $120 price tag is the problem, since we fill up the stands during big games. That leaves the problems of interest and time consumption.

Getting increased attendance boils down to the following:

• Make it easier to be a bigger fan
• Focus on underclassmen in order to form habit of attendance throughout Georgetown career
• Get people hooked on the drug known as Hoya Basketball early in season
• Incentive to attend even when desire is low
• Focus on freshman in particular to capitalize on their innate hoard mentality

Doing any of these will help solve the attendance problem. Therefore I propose some options:

1) Transportation. I think this is head and shoulders above all other things that keep students away. Occasionally I would second guess whether the trip was worth the hassle. This is especially true as a freshman and sophomore (the key demographic). So here are some things Hoya Blue/Athletics Department can do to improve that situation.

a) Offer information about ways to get to the game. A quick glance at Hoya Blue’s website, there’s no list of ways to get to the Verizon center (or any venue for that matter). Including a paper with the student ticket packet listing a few ways to get to the games would help immensely. If printing hundreds of papers isn’t in the budget, how about at least listing it on the website. Not only will this give students more options, it will help free up the GUTS bus for other people. Some examples of things I wish I knew as an underclassman (in order):

• Circulator from Wisconsin Ave. drops you off 2 blocks away from the Verizon center. Only 4 dollars round trip!!!
• D6 line by the hospital drops you off 1 block from the Verizon center.
• G2 from the front gates to Dupont then metro to Gallery Place
• D1, D2 or D3 line from Wisconsin Ave. and Q st. to Dupont then metro to Gallery Place
• Circulator from M st to Rosslyn then metro to Metro center, then red line to Gallery place
• If using Smart Trip, free transfers!

b) Offer a few shuttle busses to and from the game. I know this was sort of dismissed above for legitimate reasons. But having at least a few to have them for non-conference or low interest games games when desire to make trip is low, but ability to get hooked on Hoya Basketball is highest. I’m not saying ferry everyone there and back, just a few busses. When students show up and lines are too long, they are already committed the time to go to the game and will then find alternate way to get there. On the other hand if they know that everyone will be waiting in line for the GUTS bus with no free-bus relief, students are less likely to even try.

2) Lottery. I know Hoya Blue rewards the dedicated members with chance at post season tickets. But offer to have any students who attend any game to submit a chance for some sort of prize. Were I running it I’d do something like this:

• Advertise and set up table behind student sections to enter lottery
• Draw from the previous games lottery at half time to see who would win a free pizza at half time. Obviously they’d need to be present to claim the prize. Papa Johns may even give a few pizzas for free for publicity’s sake.
• Losing lottery tickets would be added to end of the year pool.
• Draw from end of the year pool at half-time to see who wins big prizes like half-priced next season tickets, pair of tickets for post season travel with Hoya Blue, Casual Award named after the winner.

This way everyone has a change of winning: from dedicated Hoya Blue members to casual watcher, but dedicated attenders with higher probability. This would also give publicity for Hoya Blue by giving students option to sign up for Hoya Blue emails while entering lottery. Casual Note: even as I write this, I feel this is not a great option, but I feel that Hoya Blue name recognition and attendance are desperate enough to warrant such action.

3) Get RA’s involved. Give ticket to RA to organize a trip to one of the early basketball games. Freshman with nothing better to do would sign up and flock to student section with everyone just to see what Hoya Basketball is about.

what is up with the length of the comments on here? if i actually read these, i’d be in danger of missing our next game. brevity people. My suggestion, hoya blue, do you damn job.

So I don’t know if that makes my opinion more or less valuable. I also don’t know if this has been suggested or not. There have been so many opinions from many different people as to what can be done to get students to games. Wouldn’t it make sense to find out why students aren’t going in the first place? Could Hoya Blue or Athletic Department put together a survey asking students how many games they attend, why they do or don’t attend, and what would make them go to more games? If no one knows why people aren’t going then how do you figure out how to get them there?