UPDATE: The Patriot League has released statements from the presidents of all of its football schools, including DeGioia’s:

“Georgetown offers 29 varsity sports and is committed to Division I football as part of its broadbased approach to intercollegiate athletics. Since 2001, Georgetown has been committed to competing in the sport of football as an associate member of the Patriot League.  This has allowed the University to compete with institutions that shared the same academic values and need-based financial aid philosophy.

“Georgetown will continue its membership in the Patriot League in the sport of football and explore all of its options, including our ability to compete as a need-based aid program.  We remain committed to our goal of providing our student athletes with an unparalleled academic experience and an athletically competitive football program.”

ORIGINAL POST: Today, the Patriot League announced that it will allow its member schools to begin to offer football scholarships for the first time. The conference already allows its schools to offer scholarships in all other sports.

The change in policy resolves the quandary created by Fordham’s decision to offer football scholarships, beginning with the class that enrolled in 2010. As a result, Fordham has been ineligible for the league championship game for the past two seasons and none of its games against conference opponents counted toward league standings.

According to a statement from the league’s Council of Presidents,

Starting with the class entering school in the fall of 2013, each school will be permitted to award no more than the equivalent of 15 athletic financial aid awards each year to incoming football student-athletes, including transfer student-athletes. The total amount of all countable financial aid awarded to all football student-athletes may not exceed 60 equivalencies in any year.

Georgetown University is one of the league’s seven football-playing members, but it has not supported moving to scholarships. ”I am not supportive of moving to a scholarship program. I don’t believe that fits the ethos and the culture of Georgetown,” University President John J. DeGioia said in August. DeGioia’s full statement on scholarships is available below.

This fundamental shift in the nature of the Patriot League comes after Georgetown football’s first winning season since 1999. In November, head coach Kevin Kelly said, “No one will ever forget this football team. They might not realize it today, but someday they will understand it. We have to celebrate this season.”

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The Chronicle of Higher Education just released its annual list of the top U.S. producers of Fulbright students, and for the second year in a row, Georgetown made the cut!

With 10 current students and four recent alumni winning Fulbright scholarships, Georgetown won a spot on the list of U.S. research universities with the most Fulbright students.  The number of Georgetown-affiliated students winning Fulbrights is a little lower than it was in 2008, when 15 current students and 3 alumni were awarded scholarships.

Things look pretty good, though, when you consider Georgetown’s Fulbright acceptance rate.  With 36 students applying and 10 being granted scholarships, Georgetown’s acceptance rate is 27.8 percent, the 17th highest of the 39 research universities listed.

According to the awkwardly translated Bahrain News Agency, the Crown Prince of Bahrain visited campus on Wednesday and met with University President John J. DeGioia. The Bahrainis report that Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa was looking in on the many Bahraini students at Georgetown and weighing the possibility of expanding post-graduate scholarships.

We got a tip that His Royal Highness had an 8:00 reservation for dinner at Morton’s and promptly dispatched a pair of paparazzi to grab a picture of the Prince with his reported team of nine body guards. The Prince was more clever, however, and snuck around into a back alley to enter through the restaurant’s kitchen.

University spokesperson Erik Smulson never got back to us to explain what the prince was doing on campus. What’s up with all these shadowy visits by Middle Eastern leaders, anyway?

Posted by Chris Stanton, News Editor