![]() That's what got me here, that they expected to win," senior safety Matt Dobson said. "I came up here from a high school in Florida that won championships, and the only thing I knew when Georgia Southern recruited me was they won. In their last FCS game, Monken's Eagles beat the Gators in Gainesville, 26-20, without completing a pass. Humble beginnings might've been why GS dressed like the Crimson Tide, but the triple option is why it won like them. In 29 years of FCS play, Georgia Southern won 10 conference titles and six national championships, the most of any program in I-AA/FCS history. RB Ezayi Youyoute and bust of original head coach Erk Russell. Nobody proves the worth of an offense more than Coach Johnson. ![]() You'd have to argue those established schools they played, who'd been playing football for years, should've had the advantage. In 1985, the first year they ran Coach Johnson's offense, they won a national championship. #FBS SPREAD LIST FULL#Southern played three games in '81, against a group of police officers from Jacksonville, the Fort Benning Doughboys, and the Florida State JV squad - '82 was their first full schedule. You could win," former Georgia Southern head coach Jeff Monken said.Īnd it worked really quickly, as Monken explains: Because no matter what defense you'd face, you could fix things. But the tradition that made Georgia Southern is the triple option of Paul Johnson, the Eagles' offensive coordinator in the mid-1980s and head coach about a decade later. For home games, the team rode in yellow school buses, on loan from the county.Įrk formed tradition out of embarrassment. With no team-building rituals, Russell renamed a drainage ditch between two practice fields Beautiful Eagle Creek, bottling its "magic water" in a milk jug to pour on opponent fields for luck. Southern was a teacher's college sunk hours south of the Georgia gnat line ( Mike Leach explains Georgia gnats here) in the sparsely populated coastal pines. Uniforms were expensive, so tradition became athletic tape striped down blue helmets with no logos. In 1982, GS hired Georgia defensive coordinator Erk Russell to build a modern program with virtually no budget. You might not've known Georgia Southern until the Eagles beat Florida in November 2013, but Statesboro lives to tell you about tradition. "And man, you didn't want to let the offensive line down. ![]() The line would give me and the other backs a number to reach, and If I didn't get it, I'd have to answer to them." "Like, you have to rush for that many yards. ![]() The offensive line would say to me, 'You're going to rush for 150 yards,'" said Brieda. "You're getting 150 yards today!" they'd tell running back Matt Brieda, according to the onlookers, such was their confidence in new head coach Willie Fritz's run-first spread option. The folks standing around at spring practice tell a great anecdote, except they all tell it wrong.ĭuring the Eagles' undefeated inaugural run through Sun Belt play, the senior-heavy offensive line would meet with its running backs before each game. This is not tradition at Georgia Southern. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |