[su_spacer size=”20″]

[su_spacer size=”40″] As a young lad growing up as a rabid Bulldogs fan in Statesboro, I developed an interesting relationship with the upstart football program at the hometown (then) Georgia Southern College. There was of course tremendous love and affection, as was the case with anyone who ever crossed the magnificent man’s path, with the incomparable Erk Russell, the greatest football coach and one of the best men who ever lived.
[su_spacer size=”20″]
Few coaches in the history of football have been beloved and revered at two places. None have been more revered and beloved at two places than Erk Russell.
[su_spacer size=”40″] Coach Russell befriended me at the tennis courts of the Forrest Heights Country Club. He would talk football – primarily Georgia football history – with me to my hearts content. A fellow tennis enthusiast, he played with me a few times as I got older. He won. Those were some of the best days of my life.
[su_spacer size=”40″] As I lived and died with Georgia football, I was, from elementary through middle school, the bat boy and ball boy for the Georgia Southern baseball and basketball teams, coached by two true standouts Jack Stallings and Frank Kerns. In high school, I began my broadcasting career calling multiple high school and Georgia Southern athletic events under the direction of the voice of the Eagles, the legendary Nate Hirsch and his associate Bill Price, two wonderful friends and mentors. I was helping on the statistics crew at baseball and basketball games with their wonderful sports information staff and friends with the beat writers from the Statesboro and Savannah papers, including my friend Donald Heath. Those were wonderful days and memories I will forever cherish. I was living and dying with Georgia football, so anxious to get to Athens, and having a great time working in the business while attending high school and growing up in Statesboro.
[su_spacer size=”40″] As for the Georgia Southern football program, I of course wanted nothing but the best for the great man stalking the sidelines. My father took me to Tacoma, Washington for the 1985 Division 1-AA National Championship Game, and we witnessed Tracy Ham led Erk’s Eagles to a thrilling 44-42 comeback victory to capture the big prize.
[su_spacer size=”40″] But in the back of my head, I never will forget the school’s homecoming parade two or three years before, when Russell had been hired by Georgia Southern President Dr. Dale Lick to resurrect the school’s football program, dormant since World War II. This was 1982 or 1983, the school’s first two full seasons of competition. While watching the parade with a couple of my boyhood friends, I was sickened to see on one of the floats, a Georgia Southern player (an actor of course), standing in triumph with his foot atop the chest of a player in a Georgia uniform. I was 10 or 11. There was no questioning that Georgia would forever be my true love and passion, but I wanted the Eagles to win too. That left an image I will never forget.
[su_spacer size=”40″] Coach Russell was a legend in Athens. For 17 years as Georgia’s defensive coordinator, he created an aura and mystique non-parallel. On his first coaching staff were several former Bulldog standouts, including Hugh Nall, Ricky McBride, Pat McShea and Coach’s son Jay Russell.
[su_spacer size=”40″] But it was clear there were elements around Statesboro that had a chip on their shoulder towards Georgia. Call it an inferiority complex, call it jealousy, call it whatever you will, but I will never forget that image and that’s why I always take to the airwaves and these pages to warn just how badly the Eagles want to beat Georgia.
[su_spacer size=”40″] Statesboro is a great Bulldog town, covered with legions of life-long Bulldog fans. There are numerous students at Georgia Southern who grew up Bulldog fans and still cheer for Georgia.
[su_spacer size=”40″] Perhaps that’s part of it too.
[su_spacer size=”40″] When Georgia Southern achieved University status in 1990, I attended a celebration at the school’s famed “Sweetheart Circle,” partially to scout out the prospects of finding one of my own on a warm summer night.
[su_spacer size=”40″] During an impressive fireworks display that evening, a Georgia Southern official pointed out to the crowd I was with that there was a decree to have “no red” in the light show.
[su_spacer size=”40″] That too ruffled my brow.
[su_spacer size=”40″] As if there was any animosity in Athens that Georgia Southern had achieved University status.
[su_spacer size=”40″] All of that was a long time ago, but there is still a lot of dislike for the Bulldogs within the Georgia Southern community.
[su_spacer size=”40″] There are a slew of people who support and cheer for both schools. My goodness, the number of intertwined family connections with husbands and wives and sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and mothers and fathers who attended one or the other is a DNA Helix-like spiral.
[su_spacer size=”40″] But there is a contingent at Georgia Southern that hates Georgia. I get the reports. The reports that when the Georgia score is announced at Paulson Stadium, that if the Bulldogs are losing, there is a significant cheer.
[su_spacer size=”40″] So for a lot of Bulldog fans who look at this as the big brother giving the little brother a game, but you know who will eventually win, that’s not the thinking in the Eagles camp.
[su_spacer size=”40″] They want this bad. They see a vulnerable Bulldog squad and the opportunity to get a win that would be bigger than their six national championships and 2013 victory over Florida to a large percentage of their fan base.
[su_spacer size=”40″] For a lot of Eagle fans, and not the ones who cheer for Georgia too, the fantasy of one day topping the Bulldogs, of one day having their foot in victory atop a defeated red jersey, that day may just be at hand. It is the best chance they have had to do it on the gridiron. If the Bulldogs aren’t ready, and this thing goes the Eagles way, life for the Georgia people in this state, particularly in Statesboro and Southeast Georgia will be miserable when it comes to football pride. Talk about never hearing the end of it. And after what happened last year, the disaster against The Enemy, it would be a long and awful week leading up to the clash at Grant Field with an 0-2 mark in Georgia’s last two games against in-state foes.
[su_spacer size=”40″] Capturing the state championship is the first step to a re-turn to greatness for the Bulldogs. That begins Saturday night. Meanwhile Georgia Southern tries to complete a decade’s long dream to some that would be a nightmare to those who love the red and black.
[su_spacer size=”40″] [su_spacer size=”40″]