Georgia State for the Big East in 2017
Stuart Nachbar
September 10, 2008
This spring, Atlanta-based Georgia State University announced that it would field a Playoff Subdivision football team beginning in 2010 and hired Georgia Tech graduate Bill Curry to be their first head coach. Curry has an impressive resume; he played under Vince Lombardi and Don Shula in the NFL, coached under NFL legend Bart Starr, and had success as a college coach at Georgia Tech and Alabama. At 65, Curry should be viewed as a program-builder for the full term of his five year contract; it will be up to his successor to bring championships.
With over 27,000 students, Georgia State is the second largest university in the Peachtree State. A member of the Colonial Athletic Conference, the university already plays 16 Division 1 sports. Carl Patton, the university´s recently retired president took a leadership role over the past 16 years to incorporate campus planning into the revitalization of downtown Atlanta and positioned to become a national urban university. Plans are underway for $1 billion in new facilities on campus and the university raised over $127 million in its first capital campaign. (As an aside, I must state that I am briefly acquainted with Dr. Patton. He was head of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when I was a graduate student).
With the hiring of Curry as coach and the availability of the Georgia Dome as home field, Georgia State is better positioned to enter major college football than most public universities.
However, I see two non-football obstacles to gridiron success: less than ten percent of the students live on campus and cross-state academic rivals Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia will not want the newest player on the block to have a favorable long term agreement to play in the Georgia Dome if the Panthers go big time. There might also be similar sparks of jealousy at Georgia Southern, a more likely rival, if the Panthers stay put.
The football obstacles for Georgia State are obvious. There will be growing pains in a new program and the team may need to seek guaranteed-income road games against major college opponents to improve the balance sheet. For example, Rutgers, my alma mater, has announced that they will pay Kent State, a Mid-America Conference school, $750,000 to play in their refurbished stadium in 2009. Georgia State will be serenaded by Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and playoff series schools to be homecoming patsies for three or four years. They'll lose most of these games, but this may give the university a chance to see which conference might be their best fit for the future.
And if Georgia State wants to shop for a BCS conference affiliation in the future then why not look to the Big East? There´s no room in the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Southeastern Conference for a new entrant, and an Atlanta presence would only elevate the Big East media profile in the southern states. Match-ups against Louisville, West Virginia and a rapidly emerging South Florida program would no doubt sell out the Georgia Dome. Georgia State is quite similar to Pitt and South Florida, both large urban universities that play home games in NFL stadiums, and they are also important to local economic development. And Georgia State´s total enrollment would make it the 3rd largest institution in the conference, after South Florida (43,600 students) and Rutgers (34.400).
In the meantime, Georgia State needs equipment and facilities so that Bill Curry can convince Atlanta-area high school stars to stay home. College football fans should wish him well.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
With over 27,000 students, Georgia State is the second largest university in the Peachtree State. A member of the Colonial Athletic Conference, the university already plays 16 Division 1 sports. Carl Patton, the university´s recently retired president took a leadership role over the past 16 years to incorporate campus planning into the revitalization of downtown Atlanta and positioned to become a national urban university. Plans are underway for $1 billion in new facilities on campus and the university raised over $127 million in its first capital campaign. (As an aside, I must state that I am briefly acquainted with Dr. Patton. He was head of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when I was a graduate student).
With the hiring of Curry as coach and the availability of the Georgia Dome as home field, Georgia State is better positioned to enter major college football than most public universities.
However, I see two non-football obstacles to gridiron success: less than ten percent of the students live on campus and cross-state academic rivals Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia will not want the newest player on the block to have a favorable long term agreement to play in the Georgia Dome if the Panthers go big time. There might also be similar sparks of jealousy at Georgia Southern, a more likely rival, if the Panthers stay put.
The football obstacles for Georgia State are obvious. There will be growing pains in a new program and the team may need to seek guaranteed-income road games against major college opponents to improve the balance sheet. For example, Rutgers, my alma mater, has announced that they will pay Kent State, a Mid-America Conference school, $750,000 to play in their refurbished stadium in 2009. Georgia State will be serenaded by Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and playoff series schools to be homecoming patsies for three or four years. They'll lose most of these games, but this may give the university a chance to see which conference might be their best fit for the future.
And if Georgia State wants to shop for a BCS conference affiliation in the future then why not look to the Big East? There´s no room in the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Southeastern Conference for a new entrant, and an Atlanta presence would only elevate the Big East media profile in the southern states. Match-ups against Louisville, West Virginia and a rapidly emerging South Florida program would no doubt sell out the Georgia Dome. Georgia State is quite similar to Pitt and South Florida, both large urban universities that play home games in NFL stadiums, and they are also important to local economic development. And Georgia State´s total enrollment would make it the 3rd largest institution in the conference, after South Florida (43,600 students) and Rutgers (34.400).
In the meantime, Georgia State needs equipment and facilities so that Bill Curry can convince Atlanta-area high school stars to stay home. College football fans should wish him well.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
Print
Email
