Learn About Georgia Southern

[BlueTide]

I know that there is another thread about GSU going, but I thought you guys might like 1 thread that served more as a research spot about us. We are a very proud FCS team and we consider ourselves the Alabama of our division. We have won 6 National Championships and just won our 9th Southern Conference title. Here are a few quick facts so you'll know what to expect from the Eagles this Saturday.

GSU has been running a student-centered aid effort called "Southern Supports the Tide" this year to benefit those harmed by the violent storms around Tuscaloosa. Several GSU people will be doing construction work alongside Bama fans to rebuild houses this weekend.

The original name for GSU's football team in the early 1900s was the "Blue Tide" an obvious homage to the famed Alabama teams of the day.

GSU shut down the football program during WW2 and did not restart it until the 1980s with Erk Russell of Auburn and UGA fame resurrecting our program.

We did not have enough money to buy jerseys for our team, so we borrowed Statesboro High School's old ones. We used medical tape to put a stripe down the middle of the helmets. Over the years, we have kept the same simple jersey design because we embrace our humble roots. Our football team arrives to every home game on 2 old yellow school buses that were purchased in the 80s for $1 each because we had no other transportation for our team. We are proud to be down home southern football fans that don't need laser lights and frills at our football games. We love hard work and determination and our teams deliver that in spades.

In our first 20 years after restarting football, we won 6 Division 1-AA National Championships and became the dominant power in our subdivision.

Paul Johnson, currently of Georgia Tech, brought up the flexbone-based option game that we run today. There are many misconceptions about our offense by casual football observers. Our option game does not try to "hide the ball" so that the defense scrambles around tackling random players trying to find the right man. Instead, we snap the ball, read the defense, find the weakness, and put the ball wherever the defense stands the least chance of stopping us. Some people watch an option team on TV and get the wrong impression of what is happening on offense. They see a runningback blow down the field with a safety chasing after him and they assume that the cornerback or linebacker that was supposed to cover him simply missed his assignment because he didn't know his man had the ball. What really happened was a receiver or another runningback sprinted off the line of scrimmage and blocked the cornerback out of making the play. Another receiver or back blocked the linebacker that had support coverage, leaving the ballcarrier with a 1 on 1 matchup with a safety who had to chase the runner down. The option offense does not rely on deception or gimmick plays as much as it relies on players blocking their man. Only 3 or 4 defenders will be close enough to the ball to get a stop on any given play. If the offense dedicates 2 or 3 receivers or runningbacks to blocking those defenders, it creates a favorable matchup for the ballcarrier to beat the 1 or 2 defenders left to cover him.

GSU is 9-1 this year with our only loss coming at the hands of our nemesis Appalachian State. On the same topic of App State, we beat them the year that they beat Michigan

Georgia Southern fans do not expect to win this game. Most of us just want to go enjoy a good game in a truly historic venue that belongs to a program we very much admire. We want to see both teams get out of this injury free so that we can both pursue a course to our respective national title game. I hope that our offense plays keep away and works the clock down in order to do damage control on the scoreboard. Keeping our players healthy, beating the point spread, and having a fun time will be enough for most of us to consider this game a "victory."

 

[kayakerjess]

Welcome. Thanks for the crash course in Georgia Southern football.

I am flying in to Ttown for the game this weekend and looking forward to having a great time.

 

[#1sabanite]

Welcome, great read thanks

 

[CrimsonCrusade]

My favorite FCS team. Very reminiscent of the Tide in jersey design, tradition, and work ethic. This classy post only reinforces my positive thoughts about GSU. I will certainly be pulling for you in the playoffs. Roll Tide and Put an Eagle Six On It!

 

[MOBILE-BAMA]

Thanks for the update. I hope you have a great time in Tuscaloosa

 

[Housedividedby3]

I'd like to reiterate every word CrimsonCrusade said. Knowing a bit of its history really explains the integrity GSU is known for. Thank you for making this post, and I sincerely hope you, and all the other GSU fans, enjoy our crimson hospitality and an injury-free, hard-fought game for all. RTR

 

[DaltonLegalEagl]

Well said Blue Tide! I am also a proud Ga. Southern graduate and fan, and I am a student of the college game and of southern history. It was Coach Wade's famous halftime speech and the second half performance by Alabama's boys at the 1926 Rose Bowl that started the South to its prominence in College Football. The following article featuring Winston Groom is a classic, and is a must read for ANY Southern football fan or historian:

On January 1, 1926 the Alabama football team was two thousand miles from home and losing 12-0 to Washington in the most important game of their lives- the Rose Bowl. At halftime the dejected Alabama boys sat quietly in the clubhouse as they waited for coach Wallace Wade to enter. Halfback Grant Gillis recalled what happened next. “He opened the door and looked in and said ‘and they told me boys from the South would fight’ and he walked out and that’s all he said.”

With those ten words the coach hit the players where it hurt most. He hit their Southern pride, their Southern identity and he hit their Southern grandfathers in the gut.

After taking that one sentence hit in the locker room the players returned to the field and fought back to defeat Washington 20-19 in Pasadena. Back in Alabama hundreds followed the game as the play-by-play was transmitted across the wires and printed out on ticker tape. The Alabama boys were welcomed as conquering heroes at train stops throughout the South during the four-day train ride back to Tuscaloosa.

Sixty years after suffering defeat in the Civil War, Southerners had a reason to be proud.

Historians have long pointed to the 1926 Rose Bowl as the day the view of the South, above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, began to change. Football was fast becoming America’s favorite sport and Southern teams were becoming national contenders on the field.

After the 1926 Rose Bowl, the South was no longer perceived as a region filled with inferior, backward hill billies, a stereotype perpetuated by the Northern press since the Civil War said Winston Groom, author of The Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History and Vicksburg, 1863.

“In general the northern press was very condescending to anything that was Southern including the football teams. We were considered a backwater ever since the Civil War and we were treated like losers."

Groom compares Alabama’s 1926 pre-Rose Bowl press coverage to the inflammatory Northern press coverage of the South in the years leading up to the Civil War. “The Northern press portrayed the South in very dour terms. There was all sorts of literature such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Harper’s Weekly with all those drawings where it seemed like everybody in the South had a bull whip and was going around whipping slaves all day long. They felt we were wicked and evil people. The North with impunity could insult the South.”

Groom points to sports writers and other commentators of the time like Will Rogers who called Alabama ‘Tusc-a-losers’ before the 1926 Rose Bowl. “The sports writers had a field day making fun of the Southern team and they called us hicks and Tusc-a-losers and all sorts of things. Someone predicted we’d get beat fifty to nothing.”

Though harmless, these jibes may have stung University of Alabama president George Hutchenson Denny Jr., who was in Pasadena for the game, in a way that perhaps no one could imagine.

Denny’s father was a member of the 1st Company of Richmond Howitzers, an elite Confederate artillary unit attached to the Army of Northern Virginia. The unit fought at the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg among others. After the war Denny Sr. became a Presbyterian minister and settled in Hanover County, Virginia.

George H. Denny Jr., was born in the war-torn village of Hanover Court House five years after Robert E. Lee’s 1865 surrender. The small town played host to a bloody battle in 1862 where 730 Confederates were captured and 200 left dead on the field. Located twenty miles north of Richmond, Hanover Court House became the epicenter of some of the worst battles of the war that raged between the Confederate capitol and Washington D.C.

Denny Jr., became president of Washington and Lee University in 1901 where he studied General Lee’s writings and his university administration policies. Denny also contributed mightily to the Washington and Lee Generals football program. The school was named for George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

In 1912 Denny became president of the University of Alabama where he began building a football program that became a championship dynasty. During his tenure as UA’s president, Denny made four trips to Pasadena to witness Alabama play in the Rose Bowl.

At the 1927 Rose Bowl Denny watched as Alabama was down 7-0 to Stanford going into the game’s closing minutes. It looked as if Alabama would go home in defeat. But Alabama got the break it needed when Marion County native Clark “Babe” Pearce clawed through the Stanford line to block a punt. That blocked punt led to Alabama’s only touchdown and a tie as time ran out.

Pearce was the son of Alabama football player Marvin Pearce and grandson to Confederate veteran James Pearce. James Pearce was a member of Tuscaloosa Confederate General Phillip Dale Roddy’s Fifth Alabama Cavalry. After the unit surrendered at Selma in 1865 Pearce returned to his home at Pearce’s Mills in Marion County where his son Marvin was born in 1879. Marvin was a member of Alabama’s 1895 squad where he was a teammate to Henry M. Bankhead, son of John Hollis Bankhead Sr., the last Confederate veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Bankhead Sr., born at Moscow in what is now Lamar County, enlisted in the Confederate army on October 3, 1861 as a member of the 16th Alabama Infantry. Bankhead fought at the Battle of Fishing Creek in Kentucky where the unit had nine men killed in January 1862. Three months later 162 men of the unit were either killed or wounded at the battle known as ‘Bloody Shiloh’ in Tennessee.

But it was at the September 1863 Battle of Chickamauga in north Georgia that was perhaps the 16th Alabama’s bloodiest. Over half of the 414 men engaged at Chickamauga were either killed or wounded. Bankhead suffered a wound to the arm after leading a charge into the Union lines. Despite having the use of only one arm, Bankhead crawled across the burning battlefield to pull a more severly wounded comrade from the flames.

Bankhead was one of the remaining 50 soldiers in the unit that surrendered on April 26, 1865 at Goldsboro, North Carolina.

As Bankhead sacrificed his body on the battlefield so did the Alabama football players on the football field. Perhaps this can’t be more plainly illustrated than in the oft-told tale of Hargrove Van de Graaff.

Hargrove is immortalized in Alabama football lore as the player who in 1913 was willing to rip off his dangling ear so he could continue playing against Tennessee. The story is recounted in Groom’s Crimson Tide book. “His ear had a real nasty cut and it was dangling from his head, bleeding badly.” Tenneessee lineman Bull Bayer remembered. “He grabbed his own ear and tried to yank it from his head. His teammates stopped him and his managers bandaged him. Man, was that guy a tough one.” Hargrove and his two brothers, Bully and Adrian, were part of the first family of Alabama football. The three brothers were teammates from 1915 to 1918. In 1915 Bully was chosen as Alabama’s first All-American player.

The Van de Graaff brothers' grandfather Abram Sebastion Van de Graaff was a member of the 5th Alabama Battalion, a unit attached to the army of Northern Virginia. As a member of the 5th Alabama Van de Graaff fought in many battlefields of the Civil War, but perhaps his most memorable fight was on the bloody killing fields south of Gettysburg, Pa., on July 3, 1863.

The 5th Alabama Battalion was among the first Confederates to encounter the Union army in the fields and woods west of the town on July 1st. As the Fifth Alabama advanced they began firing on Union Brigadier General John Buford’s Cavalry. The Confederates drove the Yankees three miles back through the town where the defenders entrenched themselves on the high ground of Cemetery Ridge overlooking Gettysburg. Two days later General Lee, in an attempt to smash the Federal army at its center, launched the grand and ill-fated deployment that would become erroneously known as Pickett’s Charge. On the morning of July 3rd Confederate generals began forming the 12,500 man assault force. The men of the 5th Alabama Battalion led by Maj. Van de Graaff were placed in the forward position as part of Brig. Gen. James Archer’s third brigade.

Historians calculate that about 45,000 men from both armies were killed, wounded or went missing during the three day battle at Gettysburg. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the same number of people that watched Alabama play in the Rosebowl on January 1, 1926. That January day in Pasadena the sons and grandsons of Confederate veterans left the clubhouse and scored 20 points in seven minutes and held on for a victory over Washington. Coach Wallace Wade had been told correctly; Southern boys would fight.

 

[Blindside13]

Very nice read and I will be pulling for GS in the playoffs. I know GS has been a powerhouse for years.

 

[p'colabamaman]

Wow, I'm very impressed by the GSU fans' posts. Thanks.

 

[MBA_99]

I and my family will be there, and look forward to striking up a chat with any GSU fans we meet.

I follow Ga Tech football as well. I just hope for your sakes when you're forced to drop back and pass, you stand some chance of doing so. Nothing is more painful than watching a Paul Johnson team do so.

 

[ATLGSUEAGLE]

Thanks all Bama fans, we look forward to visiting your house!

 

[Maudiemae]

Wow, I'm very impressed by the GSU fans' posts. Thanks.

Me, too! Thank you for joining us and posting.

 

[GreatMarch]

I have always pulled for GA Southern and especially so when they played Youngstown St with Tressel. Thought that guy was dirty even back then. I remember Tracey Hamm and how that team won the 1st Natl Championship as an infant program. Erk grew up around Sloss Furnace area of Bham and always told it like it was (while winning Vince Dooley his only Natl Championship with Herschel), but the only thing I did not like about the GSU program was what seemed to be all the influence of past *U people at GA Southern.

 

[bilbo]

that has to be one of the best posts by an opposing fan ever

 

[ccc2259]

Wow, I'm very impressed by the GSU fans' posts. Thanks.

As am I. Thanks for the contributions.

 

[bama70]

Thanks Blue Tide for the great post. I will be unable to attend the game this weekend so I have given my tickets to two Georgia Southern graduates who are currently great UA fans. GS did not have a football program while they were in school. Both of their daughters graduated from UA so they also have a substantial financial investment in The University. They will be taking their two grandsons to their first Bama game.

 

[happytidefan]

Wow. I came into this thread knowing nothing of GA Southern. Thanks for the education and for this very fine post. Welcome to Tidefans!

 

[CrimsonCrusade]

Well said Blue Tide! I am also a proud Ga. Southern graduate and fan, and I am a student of the college game and of southern history. It was Coach Wade's famous halftime speech and the second half performance by Alabama's boys at the 1926 Rose Bowl that started the South to its prominence in College Football. The following article featuring Winston Groom is a classic, and is a must read for ANY Southern football fan or historian:

On January 1, 1926 the Alabama football team was two thousand miles from home and losing 12-0 to Washington in the most important game of their lives- the Rose Bowl. At halftime the dejected Alabama boys sat quietly in the clubhouse as they waited for coach Wallace Wade to enter. Halfback Grant Gillis recalled what happened next. “He opened the door and looked in and said ‘and they told me boys from the South would fight’ and he walked out and that’s all he said.”

With those ten words the coach hit the players where it hurt most. He hit their Southern pride, their Southern identity and he hit their Southern grandfathers in the gut.

After taking that one sentence hit in the locker room the players returned to the field and fought back to defeat Washington 20-19 in Pasadena. Back in Alabama hundreds followed the game as the play-by-play was transmitted across the wires and printed out on ticker tape. The Alabama boys were welcomed as conquering heroes at train stops throughout the South during the four-day train ride back to Tuscaloosa.

Sixty years after suffering defeat in the Civil War, Southerners had a reason to be proud.

Historians have long pointed to the 1926 Rose Bowl as the day the view of the South, above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, began to change. Football was fast becoming America’s favorite sport and Southern teams were becoming national contenders on the field.

After the 1926 Rose Bowl, the South was no longer perceived as a region filled with inferior, backward hill billies, a stereotype perpetuated by the Northern press since the Civil War said Winston Groom, author of The Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History and Vicksburg, 1863.

“In general the northern press was very condescending to anything that was Southern including the football teams. We were considered a backwater ever since the Civil War and we were treated like losers."

Groom compares Alabama’s 1926 pre-Rose Bowl press coverage to the inflammatory Northern press coverage of the South in the years leading up to the Civil War. “The Northern press portrayed the South in very dour terms. There was all sorts of literature such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Harper’s Weekly with all those drawings where it seemed like everybody in the South had a bull whip and was going around whipping slaves all day long. They felt we were wicked and evil people. The North with impunity could insult the South.”

Groom points to sports writers and other commentators of the time like Will Rogers who called Alabama ‘Tusc-a-losers’ before the 1926 Rose Bowl. “The sports writers had a field day making fun of the Southern team and they called us hicks and Tusc-a-losers and all sorts of things. Someone predicted we’d get beat fifty to nothing.”

Though harmless, these jibes may have stung University of Alabama president George Hutchenson Denny Jr., who was in Pasadena for the game, in a way that perhaps no one could imagine.

Denny’s father was a member of the 1st Company of Richmond Howitzers, an elite Confederate artillary unit attached to the Army of Northern Virginia. The unit fought at the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg among others. After the war Denny Sr. became a Presbyterian minister and settled in Hanover County, Virginia.

George H. Denny Jr., was born in the war-torn village of Hanover Court House five years after Robert E. Lee’s 1865 surrender. The small town played host to a bloody battle in 1862 where 730 Confederates were captured and 200 left dead on the field. Located twenty miles north of Richmond, Hanover Court House became the epicenter of some of the worst battles of the war that raged between the Confederate capitol and Washington D.C.

Denny Jr., became president of Washington and Lee University in 1901 where he studied General Lee’s writings and his university administration policies. Denny also contributed mightily to the Washington and Lee Generals football program. The school was named for George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

In 1912 Denny became president of the University of Alabama where he began building a football program that became a championship dynasty. During his tenure as UA’s president, Denny made four trips to Pasadena to witness Alabama play in the Rose Bowl.

At the 1927 Rose Bowl Denny watched as Alabama was down 7-0 to Stanford going into the game’s closing minutes. It looked as if Alabama would go home in defeat. But Alabama got the break it needed when Marion County native Clark “Babe” Pearce clawed through the Stanford line to block a punt. That blocked punt led to Alabama’s only touchdown and a tie as time ran out.

Pearce was the son of Alabama football player Marvin Pearce and grandson to Confederate veteran James Pearce. James Pearce was a member of Tuscaloosa Confederate General Phillip Dale Roddy’s Fifth Alabama Cavalry. After the unit surrendered at Selma in 1865 Pearce returned to his home at Pearce’s Mills in Marion County where his son Marvin was born in 1879. Marvin was a member of Alabama’s 1895 squad where he was a teammate to Henry M. Bankhead, son of John Hollis Bankhead Sr., the last Confederate veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Bankhead Sr., born at Moscow in what is now Lamar County, enlisted in the Confederate army on October 3, 1861 as a member of the 16th Alabama Infantry. Bankhead fought at the Battle of Fishing Creek in Kentucky where the unit had nine men killed in January 1862. Three months later 162 men of the unit were either killed or wounded at the battle known as ‘Bloody Shiloh’ in Tennessee.

But it was at the September 1863 Battle of Chickamauga in north Georgia that was perhaps the 16th Alabama’s bloodiest. Over half of the 414 men engaged at Chickamauga were either killed or wounded. Bankhead suffered a wound to the arm after leading a charge into the Union lines. Despite having the use of only one arm, Bankhead crawled across the burning battlefield to pull a more severly wounded comrade from the flames.

Bankhead was one of the remaining 50 soldiers in the unit that surrendered on April 26, 1865 at Goldsboro, North Carolina.

As Bankhead sacrificed his body on the battlefield so did the Alabama football players on the football field. Perhaps this can’t be more plainly illustrated than in the oft-told tale of Hargrove Van de Graaff.

Hargrove is immortalized in Alabama football lore as the player who in 1913 was willing to rip off his dangling ear so he could continue playing against Tennessee. The story is recounted in Groom’s Crimson Tide book. “His ear had a real nasty cut and it was dangling from his head, bleeding badly.” Tenneessee lineman Bull Bayer remembered. “He grabbed his own ear and tried to yank it from his head. His teammates stopped him and his managers bandaged him. Man, was that guy a tough one.” Hargrove and his two brothers, Bully and Adrian, were part of the first family of Alabama football. The three brothers were teammates from 1915 to 1918. In 1915 Bully was chosen as Alabama’s first All-American player.

The Van de Graaff brothers' grandfather Abram Sebastion Van de Graaff was a member of the 5th Alabama Battalion, a unit attached to the army of Northern Virginia. As a member of the 5th Alabama Van de Graaff fought in many battlefields of the Civil War, but perhaps his most memorable fight was on the bloody killing fields south of Gettysburg, Pa., on July 3, 1863.

The 5th Alabama Battalion was among the first Confederates to encounter the Union army in the fields and woods west of the town on July 1st. As the Fifth Alabama advanced they began firing on Union Brigadier General John Buford’s Cavalry. The Confederates drove the Yankees three miles back through the town where the defenders entrenched themselves on the high ground of Cemetery Ridge overlooking Gettysburg. Two days later General Lee, in an attempt to smash the Federal army at its center, launched the grand and ill-fated deployment that would become erroneously known as Pickett’s Charge. On the morning of July 3rd Confederate generals began forming the 12,500 man assault force. The men of the 5th Alabama Battalion led by Maj. Van de Graaff were placed in the forward position as part of Brig. Gen. James Archer’s third brigade.

Historians calculate that about 45,000 men from both armies were killed, wounded or went missing during the three day battle at Gettysburg. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the same number of people that watched Alabama play in the Rosebowl on January 1, 1926. That January day in Pasadena the sons and grandsons of Confederate veterans left the clubhouse and scored 20 points in seven minutes and held on for a victory over Washington. Coach Wallace Wade had been told correctly; Southern boys would fight.

If you attend the game in Tuscaloosa you should stop by the Paul "Bear" Bryant Museum. Has a lot on our history and a section devoted to that very game. I think you would really enjoy it.

 

[TommyMac]

I have always pulled for GA Southern and especially so when they played Youngstown St with Tressel. Thought that guy was dirty even back then. I remember Tracey Hamm and how that team won the 1st Natl Championship as an infant program. Erk grew up around Sloss Furnace area of Bham and always told it like it was (while winning Vince Dooley his only Natl Championship with Herschel), but the only thing I did not like about the GSU program was what seemed to be all the influence of past *U people at GA Southern.

A 59-24 beatdown, probably the biggest of Tressel's career.

 

[DaltonLegalEagl]

I hope to get to the museum this weekend with my wife, 14 year old son and 17 year old daughter. My son play's 9th grade football and dreams of one day playing at Ga. Southern while my daughter is interested in Alabama. She is a Junior and is into dance/theater/chorus.

Football in the South starts with Alabama! I'd like to think that Ga. Southern has written a chapter or two, as well.

As for our patriarch, Coach Erk Russell was born and raised in Bessemer, grew up an Alabama fan, and always assumed that he would play for Bama, but when he was a High School senior, Auburn came knocking harder and he wound up going that way. He was the last 4 sport letterman at Auburn (football, baseball, basketball, and tennis). Erk was a legendary figure, much like the Bear. Everything that you have heard of about the Georgia Bulldogs of the 60s & 70s, like the famous junkyard Dawgs, you can credit Erk. Vince Dooley was the consummate politician and was a good AD, but Erk was really the coach. If he had been the head coach instead of Dooley, I have always believed that UGA would have had more than 1 NC during those years.

But, because Dooley hung on at UGA in the 1980's instead of going to Auburn, that became Ga. Southern's good fortune when we recommenced our football program in 1981 after stopping during WWII. Erk was looking for a new challenge and this fit him to a T. Incidentally, Erk was a head coach in High School in Georgia for 1 year and won a state title at Grady High School in about 1957 as I recall.

He literally took a program with nothing (they had to run down and buy a football at K-mart before the press conference announcing Erk's hiring in 1981), and took a bunch of walk-ons and non-athletes, and hand-me-down equipment from other colleges and high schools around the southeast to start the program in 1981 and 82. By 1984, our first year in Division I-AA, we finished 8-3 and missed the playoffs. In 1985, we won our first title with Tracy Ham as QB. But to understand Georgia Southern football, it is important to understand how proud we are of our roots and our humility.

For anyone interested, here are some Erkism's from our storied coach:
1. when ordering our uniforms, he liked the old Blue Tide colors and nickname that Georgia Southern had first been called in the 1910s & 20s, (and with his roots in Alabama, I think that he was influenced by the Alabama uniform). Erk said we couldn't afford fancy stripes or extra stuff on our uniforms and helmets, so we just had plain blue shirts and plain white pants and a plain blue helmet. Before our first game, Erk told all of the players to take some athletic tape and make a white stripe down the middle of the helmet to dress them up.

2. One time when he was being interviewed before our first of three games with Florida State, Erk was asked about our program amid some of the problems at Miami and other major schools, and he said we can't afford to cheat. "We'd like to, but that cost money and we don't have any."

3. One time after we got a couple of illegal participation penalties because our players got excited and would creep over the sidelines and into the field, Erk invented "KYAOOTA" which translated means: Keep Your ..... Out Of This Area. He would yell KYAOOTA anytime the players AND other coaches got too close to the sidelines.

4. He always preached that we should all just "do right" and everything else in football and in life would be okay.

5. He used to head butt players with their helmets on but with his bare head while at Georgia.

6. Erk won 3 NCs in 5 years with an upstart program, and we won a 4th NC with his team the year after he retired. Coach Paul Johnson won 2 more a decade later.

7. When we were getting ready to go to Northern Iowa to play our first "big away" game, Erk filled up a milk jug of "beautiful Eagle Creek" water from the drainage ditch that ran next to our practice field. He sprinkled it around with the team saying things like, this is where so and so will score the go ahead touchdown, and this is where that guy will make a play or get a tackle, etc. We were extreme underdogs in that game and against Furman the following week, but we won both, and we all believed in Erk and in the magical waters of Beautiful Eagle Creek!

8. Ask a Ga. Southern fan what GATA means.

9. Ask a Ga. Southern former player what MAMBO GOOK means.

10. During our pregame banquet with Furman the night before the 1985 Championship game, Coach Sheridan got up and said a few remarks about Furman and the game. Then, Erk was invited to speak. He got up and said that the game reminded him of two people, one man named Furman and the other was called Georgia Southern On getting ready to play Furman, and keeping us loose and ready to play, he said:

These two men met St. Peter at the Pearly gates at the same time. St. Peter asked each what he had done on earth as an occupation. The first guy stepped forward and proudly stated he was a poet. And he really was. He had published several important works (This was Furman)

The 2nd man timidly said he was a poet too. But then he began to wonder "Why the hell did I say I was a poet?" He had done a few limerics in his time but that was all (This was Ga Southern)

Old St. Pete said "Before I let you in, each of you must recite a short poem using the word Timbuktu.

Without hesitation the 1st man came forth with...

As I walked along the shore
And heard the mighty breakers roar
A sailing ship came passing through
It's destination... Timbuktu!

St. Peter stood in awe. "That was great" then St. Pete turned to the other guy. "Now it's your turn" again the 2nd man was asking himself "Why did I say I was a poet?" There he was calling on all resources available. Help me!

And then it came to him and he blurted out...

As Tim and I a walking went
We saw three maidens in a tent
Since they were three and we were two,
I buck one and Timbuktu.

The point of this story is that if one wants to get the job done badly enough, he will always find a way. Hopefully, we could find a way to beat Furman. Hopefully we had a "bad case of the wants"

Furman was nationally known as a powerhouse and was highly favored in this game, while we really had no business being there with our athletic tape helmet "stripes" and our upstart program. But, if we wanted it bad enough, then...

One of these days we'll catch a top 5 FBS team napping, and...if we want it bad enough...
************
Erk brought this story from his Georgia days when they prepared to play Ga. Tech:
On defense, each player has a primary area of responsibility. For example, the defensive end's first responsibility was the "eight hole." The linebacker had the "four hole." We expressed areas of responsibilities for every position in terms of "hole numbers." There was rarely a time that someone did not write in big letters on the blackboard prior to the game, "Mambo Gook."

The "Mambo Gook" story goes like this: A young Georgia Tech engineering graduate had been working in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia for around six months. He was about to go stark raving mad because the only women that he had seen in Arabia were those who were dressed in the long gowns with veils covering their faces. The women were not very friendly at all. As a matter of fact, he hadn't spoken to one since he had been working there.

He had been used to the feminine pulchritude of Peachtree Street in Atlanta and missed that scenery and his feminine companionship more than else. As he was sitting in the little bar at the golf course there Saudi Arabia, he happened to be seated next to one of the local sheiks. This particular sheik had spent some time in the United States and conversed with the young engineer as best he could with the little English he could speak. As they sipped on their drinks the young engineer expressed to the sheik that he liked everything fine, except he really missed the feminine companionship that he once enjoyed back in Atlanta. The sheik could get enough out of that conversation to understand what the young man meant. He promised the engineer that he would have, from his harem, one of his wives waiting for him when he got off from work the following afternoon.

Well, the young engineer hustled and worked through the day. He could hardly wait until quitting time. As he approached his tent, he saw this woman standing out front with her long gowns and veil. He figured that she knew why she was there and he surely knew why she was there, so he wouldn't waste any time. He picked her up right there at the tent flap, rushed her inside, threw her down on the cot and commenced to making wild, passionate love to the woman. Immediately she began to shout, "Mambo Gook," "Mambo Gook." She repeated that over and over and over again. The young engineer figured this was an Arabian, expression of ecstasy.

Well, it didn't take too long for the young man to finish the first round and as soon as he relaxed his grasp, the woman still screaming, "Mambo Gook," ran through the tent flap and disappeared across the desert, continuing to scream, "Mambo Gook."

The next day the young engineer and the local sheik had made arrangements to play golf and the young engineer wanted a chance to thank the sheik for his courtesy of having the woman there. As they played the first hole, the sheik hit a magnificent shot, straight to the green, the ball hit, bounced and rolled right into the cup. It was a great golf shot and the young engineer wanted to express the greatness of that shot with something more than the usual, "Nice shot," or, "Great shot." The thought of the Arabian expression of ecstasy occurred to him, and he said, "Mambo Gook, sheik, Mambo Gook.".

The sheik turned to him, looked at him with amazement and said, "What do you mean, wrong hole?"

The point of this story was that as you line up to play defense you're thinking to the opposition, "If you think you're coming my way, that's the wrong hole brother, because you ain't gonna make nothin' here."