When Georgia Southern made the jump to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2014, it took about a month for the Eagles to truly arrive on the big stage.
An opening home win against FCS Savannah State was an afterthought and close losses at N.C. State and Georgia Tech didn’t do a ton to move the needle since the Eagles couldn’t quite finish off either upset bid. Even a win at South Alabama in the Eagles’ first Sun Belt game was lacking something since it occurred hundreds of miles away.
Georgia Southern finally hit the big stage on Sept. 25, 2014. On a muggy Thursday night at Paulson Stadium, 24,545 screaming fans were on display for Georgia Southern and the ESPNU cameras as Appalachian State wandered into a teeming hornet’s nest and stumbled out on the wrong end of a 34-14 beatdown.
That night was the culmination of a jump up to FBS that was years in the making. The game featured not only the national television cameras and a rabid crowd, but also a brand new (and FBS-caliber) football operations center and what would turn out to be the 2014 Sun Belt Conference champions.
In short, it was an environment that no visiting team ever had a shot of surviving.
Fast forward four years and the landscape is a bit different. The Eagles followed up 2014 with a bowl win in 2015, but the next two years could charitably be described as a disaster.
Every team is destined to have some off years, but the 2016-17 stretch exacted an especially heavy toll on the Eagles. For every loss that mounted, another few hundred heads weren’t making their way to Paulson Stadium on gameday. To make matters worse, all of this has happened just as Appalachian State - the longtime rival that the Eagles were head and shoulders above during each team’s inaugural FBS season - has now become the class of the Sun Belt.
Even as the Eagles have rebounded this season, fans have been reluctant to buy back into the hype. Through four home games this season, Paulson Stadium has yet to welcome in 18,000 through its gates.
That’s something that needs to end tonight.
Paulson may be the home of the Eagles, but tonight it should once again turn into a hornet nest as App State pays another visit.
Players and coaches are usually pretty muted when talking about crowds. They’ll say they appreciate the home cheers, just as they’ll swear that practicing with pumped-in noise and focusing on the action will negate a hostile crowd at road games.
They’re lying. The focus and preparation may be real, but so is the power of a full stadium.
In 2014, shoulders on App State players starting hanging low just a few plays into the game when a long Eagle touchdown run set off the powder keg that was the Georgia Southern student section.
A year later, a travelling Eagle contingent had the same effect. In a cold downpour, the Eagles and Bowling Green were in the third quarter of the GoDaddy Bowl when Georgia Southern broke off a long touchdown. The game was still within reach, but the ensuing TV timeout saw the sky open up and the rain reach monsoon levels. That only intensified the cheers and animation of the Eagle fans and — across the field — it was possible to see any remaining fight get sucked right out of the Bowling Green sideline.
Showing up matters. Being loud matters. For the first time in a few years, the Eagles matter.
And this game — played against Appalachian State on a Thursday night, in front of ESPNU cameras and on the FBS stage — might matter as much as any before.
