Opinion: A Conversation with President Wrighton

By Cameron Mays

Recently I had the opportunity to speak directly with President Mark Wrighton concerning non-basketball related matters, but once that part of the conversation finished, of course I had to bring up men’s basketball.

I first mentioned a desire for more investment and interest in the program from the school administration in order to bring the program back into a nationally competitive spot. Without increased funding we will more than likely be stuck in the bottom half of the A-10 for the foreseeable future. 

With basketball being the sport most likely to turn a profit for the University, it is necessary for the men’s basketball team to be successful. If we cannot find that success in this Conference, I told him I think that it may be time to move to a lower league than the A-10. 

He agreed in part about how critical money is in today’s college sports environment, saying that some progress had been made, especially regarding the new coaching staff. However, in the context of this casual meeting, President Wrighton would not go farther in his discussion of giving more money to the program. 

The main challenge he did mention was that even when we have great players or a successful year, with the state of college basketball concerning transfers and NIL, it is hard for a mid-major school to return the necessary pieces to be competitive for multiple years. He called this unfair, as it creates greater challenges for schools like GW.

President Wrighton broadened the scope of his explanation on how money affects the athletics of other private, research universities. First, he used Vanderbilt as an example, saying that Vanderbilt has no business being in the SEC for anything other than baseball. He believes that Vanderbilt will never be good enough at most sports and they should really be a D3 school, but of course would never drop down because of how much money they make being in the SEC. 

On the other hand, schools like Duke, Stanford, and USC have some similar qualities as GW of being recognized research universities, but have much larger endowments than GW. This allows them to give more money to athletics and (usually) be more competitive in their leagues for certain sports. Unfortunately, the revenue gap between schools in major conferences and those in mid or lower major conferences is so great and therefore makes competing difficult.

Then the conversation turned towards our status as a Division 1 program for sports. President Wrighton stated that if he was around for the founding of George Washington’s sports programs, he most likely would not have made us a D1 school. With the location we are in and the focus on academics, a D3 sports program would be better suited for the school in his opinion.

It deeply shocked me that he admitted that, as it seemed like it contradicted his previous statements about how much he enjoys GW sports. How could he both be so positive about our athletics programs, without fully believing we are even competing in the right NCAA division? 

The expectations of school administration and fans are at a huge gap, and a choice has to be made regarding the future of our athletics programs. The current path is not sustainable, but in my opinion, it would be much more work to improve sports at GW than it would be to let them go.