Mason club football on the brink

The Mason club football team running a practice on their home turf on Sept. 20 with thin sidelines.(GMU Football) 

Talk of initiating a Division I football team has been flowing around George Mason for years, but often overlooked is the once great club football team that is now hanging on to survival.

Despite beginning the season with 45 players, the Mason football club team will line up this Saturday against Valley Forge Military Academy with 22 players. The junior college and Division III teams they face each week have between 60 and 80 players on average.

“The only reason why I keep playing is because I don’t want to give up on the other guys who are still coming to practice every day,” junior starting quarterback and team captain Jack Langley said. “There’s a group of 20-or-so guys who are loyal to the team.”

Langley has played quarterback since grade school county football. When he came to Mason he was excited about the opportunity to play collegiate football and even began practicing with the team the summer before his freshman year.

Langley has a strong passion for the game and wants to be optimistic about the club’s future, but that optimism doesn’t run high.

“It’s up in the air right now whether the team can make it, everybody will have to stay healthy,” Langley said. “We’ll still get beat not because we’re not good enough but because we don’t have an offensive line and guys have to play both ways. It’s not like the guys we have don’t have drive, heart and talent, we just don’t have enough of them.”

The team has played two games this year, losing 47-3 and 65-13, and is scheduled to play nine games if the club lasts through the season.

Despite practicing Monday through Friday, they typically don’t have enough personnel to run game-like situations, pitting the offense against the defense.

“Realistically, winning is out of the window,” senior kicker and punter John Moorhead said. “It’s just to have fun for the guys who are still out there.”

Moorhead is one of the core guys who stuck with the team regardless of the adversity. This is his fourth year with the club and he continues to love kicking on Saturdays.

“Nothing is better in the world than hitting a booming spiral punt,” Moorhead said.

And the team punts a lot.

That was not always the case, however. The squad, which was started in 1993 by Dr. Joseph Pascale, had a victorious run in the early 2000s, winning five Seaboard Conference titles in six years. Matt Dyson succeeded Pascale six years ago, but the level of success and interest in the team has gradually diminished.

“It’s mentally tough getting beat every week, but there’s still guys coming to practice every day,” Langley said. “And there are a number of people on this campus who can play football and come out to see what we have and think it’s a joke.”

Langley has been very proactive in trying to save the program.

Over the summer, he works at every open house the club holds for prospective students and takes the recruits on tours of the campus. He also sets up a table on campus the first couple weeks of school each year trying to find students who don’t know about the program.

“There needs to be a huge effort to play football by the administration,” Langley said. “It’s crazy how we have a huge budget and all this going and only 22 guys.”

Another member of the core group of players is Sean Carmichael, a junior wide receiver. He has played organized football for 12 years. His high school team was his favorite squad he has played for because of the camaraderie and the high level of school spirit from the fans that showed up every Friday night.

“I think we can become like that with the right attitude by the administration,” Carmichael said. “But it’s not advertised so people don’t even know we have a football team. I know the spirit is here and people want football, it just needs to be made available to them.”

Although he is hopeful the team can turn things around, Carmichael said the team may be heading for a dead end. He expects the number of players to dwindle even further as the level of adversity rises, making winning essentially impossible.

“I would be destroyed because football is pretty much my whole life,” Carmichael said.

The club finds itself in a tough position in the eyes of the players. They believe the team needs to gain credibility by winning a game, but will be unable to win until the team garners more interest among the students and staff.

With no NCAA football team and perhaps no club team by the end of this year, it is possible that Mason will have no football of any kind.

“I think they’ll revamp the program because I’ve heard the coach talking about it,” Moorhead said. “The school wants us to play so I don’t think they’ll shut us down. I think we just need to find more people.”