For those of you who live or have lived in the nation’s capital, you know there is only one sports team that really affects the life of Washingtonians as a whole, the Washington Redskins. If the Wizards are good, some people rally around them, and everybody can see that Gilbert Arenas is a pretty cool guy. Alex Ovechkin is a national and international sensation, but the Caps barely register on the local sports landscape. There was incredible excitement when Washington finally landed a baseball team, but after building the new stadium, the team moved back to Montreal or something, at least that’s what I assumed since the TV ratings and attendance are at the bottom of Major League Baseball. D.C. United has won four league titles since 1996, but if you don’t know what Barra Brava means, than you also probably don’t know that there is a pro soccer team in DC either. Basically, DC is not a sports town, except maybe during football season.

The only other possible exception is college basketball. Like many urban areas around the country, the Metro area has always been a hot spot of basketball talent. When local college basketball teams are good they can create a buzz in D.C. unlike the Wizards or Capitals. Back in the early 1980s, Patrick Ewing helped create such a buzz and became one of the greatest sports figures in the history of Washington D.C.

Georgetown University was just making its way on to the national scene as an upper echelon university in the late 1970s. The basketball team was starting to emerge as well. The Hoyas made it to the Elite Eight in 1980, and then came Ewing who changed everything. From Day 1 Ewing was something special. About midway through his freshman year, the Hoyas played the 4th ranked Missouri Tigers in a game at McDonough Gymnasium. Missouri was led by All-American Steve Stipanovich. The Hoyas won the game with relative ease, and the national television audience was introduced to the phenomenon that was Patrick Ewing.

Around the city the Hoyas were a unifying force, and as the team’s exposure increased, there were more and more people outside of Washington that started to dislike the Hoyas, which just galvanized the team’s popularity in the city. During his time as a Hoya, there was a kind of changing of the guard in college basketball. The established programs like UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, and St. John’s were starting to lose their superior status.

Ewing helped to bring a relatively unknown University onto level terms with those top programs, eventually surpassing them by winning the National Championship, defeating Kentucky in the process. No school from Washington D.C. had ever managed to even compete with the top teams in the country, much less beat them. Basketball was still the sport played on playgrounds all over the city, and for once, a D.C. school showed that it was just as good as the top teams from Chicago, New York City, or Los Angeles. Over the course of his four years in the nation’s capital, Patrick Ewing became a national icon, and he put Georgetown firmly on the map as a top flight basketball program.

There has never been and will never be another college player in D.C. like Patrick Ewing. Ewing was a pioneer. The athleticism for a 7-footer, the ferocious defense and shot-blocking, and the intensity and intimidation were unheard of at that time. Patrick Ewing set the standard for college hoops in the D.C. area, and whatever other superstar players or dominant teams come through Washington D.C., they all owe a debt of gratitude to what he did to shape the city’s basketball future. Anybody who saw Patrick play in person while he was at Georgetown owes him a thank you also.