Last Monday, U.S. News and World Report came out with an exclusive on America’s best collegiate sports programs. Surprisingly, the Georgetown Hoyas, despite their lack of national recognition in sports other than men’s basketball and men’s and women’s lacrosse, made the top 20. U.S. News surveyed all 321 programs that participate in Division I athletics during the 2000-2001 academic year. The magazine, which produced an Honor Roll of the top-20 programs based on their analysis of the data, did not use a ranking system that adequately represents a true “sports school.”
U.S. News based its rankings upon four categories of achievement: number of varsity sports offered, gender equity, wins and losses and graduation rates. Sanctions for breaking NCAA rules also played a large role, as any school with a major infraction in the last 10 years was automatically excluded from the Honor Roll. Texas Tech is a good example, as its star running back competed while having a 0.0 grade-point average in 1998. Alabama leads the list of rule breakers, with three major violations since 1995. Georgetown has no such violations.
Of the four categories used, Georgetown’s highest rating was in graduation rates of athletes, with an impressive 87 percent. Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) bottomed out the list, at 11 percent. Division I men’s basketball players were cited as a graduation problem, given that only 40 percent graduate within six years.
Aside from graduation rates of athletes, Georgetown wasn’t recognized as having great gender equity, wins and losses or number of varsity sports offered. Yet the Hoyas still made the distinguished Honor Roll.
The rating system used by the U.S. News and World Report is not a fair determinant of what makes a good “sports school.” Are the Hoyas honestly a better sports school then the University of Miami, whose baseball and football teams won national championships, and whose basketball team ended Georgetown’s season?
Normally, when one hears the term “sports school,” one thinks of Ohio State, Florida, Stanford, UCLA and Maryland, schools that perennially rank in top-25 polls and have huge fan bases across the nation. But while the outside focus on Georgetown is always basketball and lacrosse, the Hoyas owe a great thanks to their less mainstream teams. Without track, soccer, field hockey, crew and sailing programs, the Hoyas would get no respect nationally. They’re the reason Georgetown is on the U.S. News College Sports Honor Roll.
Also, the administration doesn’t do as much as it could to foster Georgetown’s athletic prowess. No one wants to come play baseball at a school whose home field is 20 minutes away in Bethesda, Md. Imagine the atmosphere an on- campus basketball arena would bring. Then the Hoyas would have home court advantage, instead of being stuck behind the backboard surrounded by 10,000 D.C.-based Syracuse and Notre Dame fans.
Is Georgetown a top-20 “sports school?” According to reasonable standards, no. Are there great athletes here at Georgetown? Certainly. But fans still can dream of the day when they can boast about the football team battling Penn State to the finish, the baseball team making it to the College World Series or the basketball team once again striking fear in its opponents.
