For more than eight months, the Georgia Southern Eagles — and especially their fans — have been itching to get back on the field.
The drama and anticipation of any new season is enough to get people riled up, but for a proud and successful program coming off of a year that fell far below expectations, the offseason wait has seemed to be even more unbearable.
All of the questions and speculation of spring and fall camp will finally get some answers tonight. Georgia Southern will pay a visit to Auburn, jumping right into the deep end of the pool by taking on the 12th-ranked team in the country.
And that brings about a tough line of thought for the Eagle faithful.
This isn’t a fan base that is used to waiting around for success. After all, the Eagles won a national championship in their second year of NCAA eligibility. And they tore through the Sun Belt Conference undefeated on their first try. And then they walked another conference champion up and down the field in their first crack at a bowl game.
Hitting a bump in the road happens to every team and was inevitable for the Eagles. Now that they’re officially a struggling FBS team with the uphill non-conference battles characteristic of most ‘Group of 5’ teams, it’s time to see if the Eagles’ notoriously short turnaround time on achieving goals can put another notch in its belt.
But the thing is, making that turnaround might not mean that an upset against Auburn is in the cards. Moral victories aren’t something that get brought up much around Paulson Stadium, but the goal of tonight’s game needs to be more about what the team achieves for itself rather than what the scoreboard reads after the fourth quarter.
The 2016 season wasn’t the worst record the Eagles have ever posted, but it may have cut deeper than any other disappointing campaign. A team that made its name on making the most out of scraps and that routinely dispatched squads that didn’t play a near-perfect game against it saw its world turned upside down. Armed with experienced seniors all over the depth chart and coming off of an 18-7 mark in its first two FBS seasons, the Eagles’ notoriously potent running game lost its bite and struggling teams had some of their best days when Georgia Southern popped up on the schedule.
Georgia Southern appeared in the FCS national championship game two years after its first losing season in the modern era and came within a field goal of winning its conference after its second losing season. The third losing season was followed by three consecutive runs to the national semifinals.
There has only been one more losing season in the Eagles’ modern era, and tonight is the first chance they’ll have to respond to it.
And it won’t be an easy task. Aside from starting the season against a very highly-touted Auburn squad, Georgia Southern is lining up freshmen and sophomores at plenty of key spots on the depth chart. Add to that the fact that a handful of Sun Belt rivals seem to be poised for peak seasons and it’s no wonder that the Eagles are heavy underdogs in the opener and only given so-so odds of qualifying for a bowl at the end of what will be a grueling schedule.
So where does that leave the Eagles?
Well… it leaves them with a chance to make their biggest statement yet.
A win tonight would be huge. It would dominate the headlines and show up on highlight reels for years to come.
But what’s most important for the Eagles is that - win or lose tonight - the first step is taken towards what could be a memorable journey.
The team is young and inexperienced in crucial places. Mistakes will be made, but the youth of the team allows for enough time to make this a grizzled veteran squad with precision and the ability to shake off negatives down the road.
The schedule doesn’t favor Georgia Southern in 2017. But the trials of this fall could highlight the opportunities that arise over the next two years when the Eagles are an experienced squad taking on Sun Belt teams looking to fill the roster with new star players.
Success in sports is usually cyclical. Ebbs and flows are common. Continued excellence is anything but common. The fact that a 5-7 season just three years into a program’s FBS career is such a perceived catastrophe speaks to the nature of Georgia Southern’s program.
Starting tonight, the Eagles can take another step towards being uncommon.