It’s that time again: the dreariest two weeks of the year around at GW. Not the start of class, but rather the annual onset of an affliction known as Gridiron Blues. Symptoms may include, but are not limited to: that heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you flip on the TV and see no less than 127,000 screaming collegians painted in their respective school’s colors hysterically cheering every kickoff; or maybe the red-face we get when arguing that GW should take some of the tuition money they’ve been hoarding and allow us to be a part of America’s passion.

Instead, we will read and re-read dozens of stories about the basketball team, which doesn’t play until November. “I saw Maureece Rice walking around with a band-aid on his finger! IS HE OKAY?!”

We could use a better way to release the energy.but it shouldn’t be football. Just ask someone from the school just up the hill. Having no football team is better than having a pathetic one.

Georgetown’s football team is an embarrassment, and we’re better off for not having a team like theirs. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a few minutes to peer into the world of a losing tradition I like to call “Hoya Suxa.”

The suffering of Georgetown football fans is not a new thing, although it might be worse now than ever before considering their performance last Saturday. The Hoyas managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and lose 35-28 to juggernaut Stony Brook, who came into the game ranked No. 221 in Division I. The last time Georgetown fielded a team with a winning record was almost a decade ago (1999), back when most of the other teams were probably too preoccupied with preparing for Y2K to properly plan for the football game. Since then they have reeled off an entirely unimpressive 26-51 record (.337 win percentage).

I know it’s an old joke, but in that very same span, GW has lost 51 fewer games. Both the school itself and the student body population at Georgetown have shown their displeasure in obvious ways. The “stadium” over there began as joke and, like the team, has devolved into a point of humiliation. It seats only 2,500, less than many high school stadiums across the country. The average attendance for homes games last year was only 2,016, leaving room for almost 250 more couples to attend regularly (guys like to use this as leverage against their girlfriends, as in “if you don’t give me the back massage I asked for, I’m making you go to the football game with me next Saturday”).

While such known college powerhouses like Carson-Newman, Central Florida Community College, Washburn, John Carroll U., and Delta State are all represented in the NFL, Georgetown cannot say the same. If there’s one thing the Michael Vick saga has shown us, the NFL doesn’t look kindly on a bunch of dead dogs.

But really, you say, can it be that bad? Why don’t you ask Greg Isdaner, a current football player at West Virginia University. As a high school senior Greg scored a 1230 on his SATs and was accepted into Georgetown, where his parents and 15 other family members had graduated. Rather than play there, he decided to attend West Virginia, where coach Rich Rodriguez offered him an opportunity. Things apparently got so bad at home after he shunned Georgetown that he had to spend time living with friends during his senior year of high school. Of course, it was better to be exiled from home than to have to live in real disgrace: putting on a Hoyas football jersey. Don’t believe anyone would actually go through this? It’s on ESPN.com, I dare you to look it up.

So let this cautionary tale of Americana gone bad serve as fair warning to us all: next time we wish we could just get a freakin’ team, look just up the street and see what it would be like to be truly embarrassed. Not to mention the fact that some mediocre third-string quarterback would probably steal your girlfriend. Be proud to wear your GW Football: Undefeated T-shirt, for a Georgetown T-shirt won’t ever be able to claim the same.