GMU attendance problems pale in comparison to Georgetown
at least 1/3 of the Athletic Budget goes to Men's BBall and a huge chunk of that goes towards the rental of Cap One
they seem to have turned the corner on the Ewing debacle - but at a large cost as Ewing would not take a buyout and remains on the payroll at full salary
Their OOC schedule is usually among the weakest in D1, usually only playing 1 sub 100 KenPom team at home (Clemson this season) and this season 2 away (UMD & UNC). A large part of the OOC schedule consisted of 300+ KenPom team which none but the diehard fans will support. Cooley has talked about strengthening the OOC schedule.
The Cap One contract allows only a few games (2?) to be played on campus at McDonough, forcing bad games with 2k-3k attendance into the 20,000 seat Cap One arena. A bad visual look even with the 300 level closed off.
As an outsider I believe there were 2 fatal mistakes made by Georgetown.
1) at the beginning of JTII coaching career there was an opportunity to rebuild McDonough Gym into a sunken 6000 - 8000 seat arena. That would have solved multiple capacity problems for both the University and BBall program. Instead, they chose to go to US Air Arena way out in PG County. Now the Georgetown neighborhood will fight anything that brings increased traffic to the area - including a Metro stop.
2) About 5 years, the Marriot Roslyn went bankrupt and was sold. Again, Georgetown could have purchased the land and built a sunken arena a long walk from campus - but 2-3 blocks from a Metro station. I believe with Ewing as coach there was no way to get the large outside donations needed to get this deal done.
Students do not get free admission but instead must purchase tix. Last season Coach Cooley made the student tix free if the students attended the first 4 home games. No such offer for this season. But the team is in the top 50 and climbing.
NIL has changed the game. Donors used to get a summer BBQ dinner with the team, a breakfast practice with the team, seat upgrades, etc., etc. All of that now starts at the $10k donation level.
NIL has also driven up ticket prices, and i have had partial season tix since 2000 and i plan on this being my last season as i see no value in the pricing of lower level seats - my currents seats will be at least $129/game next season, so i will watch the desirable games from my couch.
The One-Stop Web Site For Georgetown University Football
www.hoyasaxa.com