Opinion: Patrick Ewing Jr.'s Critical Comments About Georgetown Fans Come at Wrong Time

At a time when being a fan of Georgetown basketball has become more of a chore than a joy to watch, Patrick Ewing Jr.'s critical comments about Hoya fans haven't been well-received.

Many Georgetown fans have been clamoring for the program to provide more access to members of its program for a couple of years now, as other programs increasingly embrace social media and give their fans more of an inside look into their programs.

After Patrick Ewing Jr.’s appearance on the latest episode of Hoya Locker Room, a livestream show hosted by Georgetown legend and 1984 national champion, Gene Smith, Hoya fans may want to reconsider whether more access is a good thing, after some of the quotes that Ewing Jr. gave during the 54-minute interview with Smith and former Georgetown basketball manager Markhum Stansbury Jr. (1989-91).

Sunday’s interview with Ewing Jr. was notable because it was a rare chance to hear a notable member of the program speak at length about the program, and also take questions from Smith and Stansbury about some topics related to the program that Hoya fans don’t get a chance to hear members of the program answer very often.

One such topic was that of the fans, and how they could look to stay connected to the program and continue to support them, even as the program continues to make questionable efforts itself to show its appreciation to its fans.

There were many directions that Ewing Jr., whose official title with the university is Men’s Basketball Alumni Relations Coordinator, could have gone in answering the question. He could have thanked the fans for the support they’ve given the team so far this season. He could have talked about the program’s desire to do more for its fans in the future to thank them for the support they’ve shown during COVID. He could have mentioned incremental improvements Georgetown has made to its social media accounts to provide fans with more access to their team this year.

Instead, Ewing Jr. decided to speak for 10+ minutes about the inconsistency of Georgetown’s fans, comparing them to fan bases from schools such as national powerhouses like Duke and Gonzaga, and suggesting that Georgetown “teach our students how to be fans that way.”

There were some good things that Ewing Jr. had to say during his appearance on HLR, but his comments about the fans, that come during a season in which Georgetown is dead last in the Big East at 0-5, are tone-deaf at best, and insulting at worst.

That they came one day after a home game against Villanova that saw an outstanding showing of support from the Georgetown students makes it all the more peculiar that Ewing Jr. would decide to harp on a perceived lack of support by the students at this specific point.

“I remember being like, when I get to Georgetown, I want to sell this thing out as much as possible,” said Ewing Jr. “I want our crowds to be hyped, because the college atmosphere that you see when you watch a Duke game at Cameron [Indoor Stadium], you see the students going like this and having fun, you want to play for people like that.”

“But then you come to a Georgetown game sometimes and the student section is 300 students deep and you’re like, ‘Man, what am I playing for?’ I’m not even playing for Georgetown at this point because Georgetown isn’t even here supporting us.”

Ah, right, comparing Georgetown fans to Duke fans, who get to cheer on a perennial title contender, in their on-campus arena that is easily accessible to students. Very similar situations! I wonder what else is missing…Maybe a few wins?

“I can’t say that in my 10 years here that the group [team] always felt they were supported,” continued Ewing Jr. “Like, I felt a lot of support when we were winning championships, but it’s easy to support the team that’s winning the championship.”

“I felt a lot of support last year after the Big East Tournament that I didn’t feel the rest of the year. I felt a lot of support last year during the Big East Tournament that I don’t feel right now as we go through this little skid right now,” said Ewing Jr.

“It’s always easy to support the winners. But can you support us when we’re not playing as great as we want to be?”

LITTLE skid?!

These quotes come off as yet another sign of a program that takes its fans and their support for granted.

Never mind the fact that it’s difficult for students to take a 20-minute bus ride into downtown to go to a game. And that’s if there’s no traffic.

Or that we’re still in a pandemic, where being in a large indoor crowd still brings risk with it.

And then there’s the whole, ya know, winning thing, which Georgetown hasn’t been doing much of, Big East Tournament championship or not.

Georgetown fans have been supporting a team that hasn’t been doing much winning of any significance for the past 8-9 years, so to argue that the fans have only been supportive of winning teams is, well, false, because Georgetown hasn’t been a winning program for a while now, and yet fans (some of them) are sticking around.

If anything, the success of last season’s Big East Tournament championship was a reward to Hoya fans who have been desperate to cheer on anything that is mildly resembling of a winner.

Last season, was the exception, not the standard, for Georgetown in the last 10 years. That Patrick Ewing Jr. didn’t acknowledge the fans who have stuck it out— and that number is rapidly dwindling!— through this sustained stretch of losing basketball is mildly shocking.

Ewing Jr. brought up comparisons to Indiana, Duke, and Gonzaga during his interview, citing how those fans are consistently loud and in large numbers for every home game, no matter the opponent. The differences between Georgetown and those schools are numerous, but let’s just start with the fact that each of those schools has an on-campus arena, which makes attending games way easier than it is at Georgetown.

There’s also the fact that fans of those teams are way more likely to see a win than fans of Georgetown are today, and that matters for the casual/bandwagon fan who goes to a game just to be entertained and to cheer on a winner. Every school has this type of fan. Winning is what draws them out more, something that Georgetown isn’t doing much of.

It’s also easier to show up for a nonconference game against a weak opponent when you’re a fan of a team that doesn’t play down to its competition and is prone to an upset by a mid-major, like Georgetown has been in recent years. Are people in this program really expecting Georgetown fans to show up in droves on a Saturday afternoon to see them play a weak midmajor team such as, say, Dartmouth, only to then watch their home team get upset? Can you blame fans for being a little reluctant to show up right now?

“When our guys are winning, it’s easy for us to be rowdy at a lot of games,” said Ewing Jr. “It can’t just be we’re rowdy when Syracuse comes, when Villanova comes, when St. John’s comes. We have to have that support all the time.”

“I think a lot of it might have to do is we have to teach our students how to be fans that way,” continued Ewing Jr., who was comparing Georgetown fans to “rowdy” Duke fans.

Lesson #1 when trying to get more fans to your games: Don’t suggest the fans who do attend your games could be better.

Georgetown basketball expects blind loyalty from their fans still. They could get away with it in the 80s and the 90s when they had the wins and the championships to show for it, but expecting fans to still show the same support in 2022, especially when the team looks headed for what could be the worst season in the history of the program, record-wise, is foolish.

The goodwill is all but dried up between this program and its fans, and comments like the ones made by Ewing Jr. won’t do anything to engender any more support from the fanbase right now.

Georgetown has plenty of problems to address right now. Its fans— those that remain these days— are not one of them. When this program gets back on the right track and shows that it can create a culture of sustained winning again, the fans will show back up at home games.

Saturday’s game against #11 Villanova showed that there is still a hearty appetite among the students to cheer on the men’s basketball team. But you will never get a “rowdy” atmosphere like the ones you see at Duke or Indiana games until you start consistently winning. And right now, Georgetown needs to focus more on what it can do to simply win a couple of basketball games in a row, and less about what the fans’ role in all of this is.