This is the worst-kept secret in the history of Georgia Southern athletics, isn’t it?

Yes and no. As President, Keel has been keen on pushing Georgia Southern into the FBS since he stepped on campus. The student body voted to increase fees to support the expensive move in the fall and Kleinlein was hired with a mandate to make the athletic department grow and improve. Also, the Sun Belt is the lowest entity in the FBS conference hierarchy with any proximity to Georgia Southern and began hemorrhaging schools as bigger conferences started consolidating the most powerful football-playing programs into super-conferences, creating a domino effect in which the Sunbelt was the last tile to fall. So, no. The move is hardly a surprise.

The unknowns surround just who else would be joining the Eagles in the Sunbelt. Apparently, Appalachian State is also making the jump, preserving the best rivalry either school has going. Other names, like New Mexico State and Idaho, are also floating around as “football only” members of the conference.

It isn’t that the announcement is a big surprise. But some of the emerging details could still be coming.

Is the Sun Belt the best fit for Georgia Southern?

Not if you believe the Eagles have no business taking their program to the FBS level.

I believe the Eagles should be in the FBS. Now is the Sun Belt a good fit?

As good as you’ll get right away. In fact, as it is constituted right now, it’s actually pretty divine. Keeping the rivalry with Appalachian State—as well as having a twin sister for the move up—is a stroke of good fortune (and probably a lot of inter-institutional emails and meetings, if we’re honest). The nascent Georgia State program is a member of the Sun Belt, giving Georgia Southern (1) an in-state rival, (2) an in-state rival with a new (and so far spectacularly unsuccessful) football program the Eagles should be able to treat like a red-headed stepchild for a decade or more, provided the Eagles don’t take the stepchild in question for granted and (3) a home game in Atlanta for GSU alumni living in that area. Okay, technically it would be a GaState home game, but let’s not fool ourselves.

Also, Troy is team the Eagles faced in the past with some degree of regularity and is a geographic win for the Eagles.

BUT! In terms of stability, the Sun Belt is like having a beach house on a cliff overlooking the sea in California. If the earthquakes and mudslides don’t get ya, the wildfires will. A slew of schools, including former GSU rival Middle Tennessee State, fled the Sun Belt for the (presumably) more fertile ground of Conference USA. Western Kentucky will almost certainly be elsewhere by the time Georgia Southern joins the league in football for the 2015 season. Don’t be surprised if Troy or Arkansas State jump ship or if New Mexico State and Idaho join the conference just to bolt again a year or two later. In the unpredictable land of college athletics, the only certainty is that low-rung conferences like the Sun Belt and Conference USA are filled with member institutions that will bolt for bigger and better opportunities as soon as a “name” conference comes calling.

Couldn’t Georgia Southern have just started in Conference USA?

Rabid Eagle fans lurking on message boards and otherwise detached from reality firmly believe Conference USA has been a viable destination for the Eagles. Some of them also believe Georgia Southern belongs in the Big East or the ACC. They also believe in Bigfoot and think the moon landing was staged on a Hollywood back lot.

Most of the programs in Conference USA are at least somewhat more established as FBS entities. Not necessarily successful, mind you. But established. In fact, should Georgia Southern, App State, Georgia State or any other fledgling FBS program show signs of sustainable success in the Sun Belt, don’t be surprised if a larger conference then comes knocking on Keel and Kleinlein’s doors.

This is the end of the “big fish in a small pond” days, isn’t it?

A lot of Georgia Southern fans from the “status quo” camp are lamenting this aspect of the jump more than any other, and you know what? That’s valid.

But before we start wringing our hands and pining for the “good old days,” why not first step in the Institute of Higher Thinking Time Machine^TM and visit the far flung past of, say, 1989. Erk Russell has just concluded his tenure as the first coach of Georgia Southern by winning his third national championship in five years. In I-A (this was before the change from I-A/I-AA to FBS/FCS), the Southwest Conference and Big Eight still existed, the Big 10 had only ten schools and the SEC was still three years away from pioneering the conference championship game.

If time stood still right there, Georgia Southern would have been poised to be nationally prominent as the biggest fish in a pond of smaller, but quality, opponents.

Instead, college football grew and changed at the topmost levels. Adding conference championship games to the end of the season helped make the SEC the premier brand in college football. Other leagues, eager to catch the same wave, added members, pilfering the once-rich field of I-A independents for the  likes of South Carolina, BYU, Florida State, Virginia Tech and Miami. The moves also made I-A desirable to any school in I-AA with designs on escaping the “Division II” perception, that is, the perception among other sports fans that every program in a I-AA school’s athletic department was playing a division lower when, in fact, the school’s athletic department was a Division I entity and only football in the whole of the college sports universe was split into subdivisions.

The I-AA branding problem is one of the main reasons Georgia Southern and Appalachian State, with nine I-AA/FCS titles between them, are making a move. While past champions of the level like Marshall, UMass, Western Kentucky and Boise State (insert angelic choir here) all jumped up to the FBS, the Eagles have stayed put. Even non-champions from FCS like Central Florida and Nevada have made names for themselves at the next level.

Not that this is total abdication for the “let’s move up” crowd. Georgia Southern fans can be fickle. Remember when we talked about fans leaving the program’s last ever playoff game to catch the Georgia game? That’s hardly big-time, even in the small pond.

Even so, Georgia Southern will never win an FBS championship. So what’s the point?

Here is a list of schools not currently in the BCS conferences who might one day realistically win a FBS championship:

Many, many of the schools in FBS but outside of the BCS conferences have a nice football profile—higher than Georgia Southern’s, in fact. National championships shouldn’t necessarily define a program, unless that program is Alabama. Hell, the University of Georgia hasn’t won a championship in over 30 years and the Bulldogs still manage to field a team every year.

Let’s get to the real question:

If the Eagles move up and don’t dominate the competition like fans are accustomed to seeing, isn’t there a chance the product will die out like others have? One day, could Paulson Stadium be a ghost town instead of the thriving spot it is now on gameday Saturdays?

This is the question that should be keeping the Georgia Southern administration up at night. Let’s look at the tale of the tape:

In Georgia Southern’s favor: Even the woeful tenure of Chris Hatcher featured generally well-attended games; the preserved rivalry with App State and the addition of in-state rival Georgia State to the slate of games will be a shot of energy for the fans; there are no real powerhouses in the Sunbelt after the recent defections, giving the Eagles a shot at some immediate success; Georgia Southern has a 30-year tradition of winning—they won’t forget how to do it overnight.

Working against the Eagles: Being the third most prestigious FBS school in the state instead of the most prestigious FCS school in the nation; the Georgia Bulldogs are still never coming to Paulson Stadium; a matchup with South Alabama is about as sexy as a matchup with Western Carolina; Eagle pride might have to take a few lumps as the program acclimates to a larger setting; weeknight Sun Belt games will suck out loud; in its current iteration, the postseason bowl structure lacks glamor and often costs participating schools some red ink.

That looks like a wash. Any idea what the key to a successful move will be?

In a word: Administration.

It’s easy to be excited now. But there are so many different threads to follow with the Sun Belt move, even 2,000 word blogs only begin to scratch the surface. The Eagles will need to aggressively court new income sources, including corporate ones. The track record there hasn’t been strong, but Kleinlein’s resume suggests he might be able to reverse those fortunes. Georgia Southern also can’t afford to price its fan base out of coming to games. One of the reasons GSU has averaged around 20,000 fans at home games has to do with affordability as much as victory. And although the non-revenue sports and baseball should fare okay in the Sun Belt, Georgia Southern’s basketball program needs a complete overhaul, including facilities. That’s more money.

While the administration is at it, finding new funds for non-athletic endeavors is pretty critical, too. The on-campus community of professors and adjunct staff has been subjected to budget cuts and other restrictions for years. If the school can’t parlay the growth in athletics to growth for the overall university, the entire Sun Belt/FBS experiment will be a monumental failure. And that, folks, is what they call “burying the lead.”

For newbies: Scott Garner is a former award-winning sports writer. He attended GSU from 1991-1995 and covered the Eagles from 1993-2005 and occasionally since then. He is now at work on his first novel while holding a day job at a beer, wine and liquor distributor.

So if you have a favorite IHT post from the last three years, be sure to file your petition for its continued existence here in the comments.

IN OTHER NEWS: work on the fiction project I hope to debut here by fall/winter proceeds. Not robustly, but not glacially, either. It just proceeds. That is all.

So it is time to change the Institute of Higher Thinking.

The blog was originally conceived of as a practice field for writing; a place to set down some thoughts, occasionally attempt to be clever and generally keep the writing chops sharp. I get so few opportunities to write at my job, the blog became the place where I could practice the daily routine of creation.

And although the blog doesn’t reflect it, the practice of consistent writing stuck. The projects I’ve been at work on haven’t been showing up on the blog, but they are alive and thriving nonetheless.

Because of this change in the way I am writing these days, the Institute of Higher Thinking will be getting a makeover, going from practice field to resume. The look of the blog will be new and all of the content currently contained here will vanish. Some of those entries will return—the best ones, after all, belong on a resume, right? Even the returning entries should look a little different with editing and revisions that were not made during the initial postings.

When new content begins to arrive—probably after some lengthy delay—it will be ambitious. I will leave it at that.

As for The Sunday Eagle, the project is not being abandoned. It is simply being placed in stasis. A good idea is a good idea, even if it is currently impractical to implement. Whenever new content concerning Georgia Southern does appear on the blog, it will be with the Sunday Eagle logo at its head.

So take a good look around at the place while it still looks like this. The changes will be coming soon.

In fact, I’m not even mentioning this on Facebook or Twitter. If you stumble across it on a random check here, post it up for the rest of the kids to see.

Also, I don’t designate which year this “September” falls in.

And no, this doesn’t mean The Sunday Eagle is dead, although work to move that particular project forward has slowed. “Life gets in the way,” “if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans,” yadda yadda.

Moving forward, the Sunday Eagle is, well, moving forward. Some new content is already in the workflow queue. Other new content will begin production soon.

As a reader or follower of the nascent publication, here is what you can expect:

The Sunday Eagle will be an occasional Sunday feature on this blog at least through February. The content will be heavily focused on commentary and context, while other content—the sort associated with reporting, not just commenting—is in the hopper.

The month of March will likely be a dead period for the Sunday Eagle, bereft of even occasional content.

A plan for a launch of the Sunday Eagle on its own site and a six-week run of full content is in the works for April and May.

After another summer break, the Sunday Eagle hopes to go full-time in August or September.

In the meantime, the Sunday Eagle will be developing its own Twitter feed, Facebook page and other points of interactivity. We definitely welcome suggestions, ideas, criticisms and accolades through all those channels as well as here on the Stonebrook blog.

So thank you again to the small crowd that affirmed what we believed: if you put thought-out content about Georgia Southern on the web, even with almost no promotion or fanfare, Eagle Nation would come and find it. We look forward to expanding the product, refining it and serving the community of Georgia Southern students, staff and alumni in the coming year and beyond.

Hail Southern!

Both #GATA and #GeorgiaSouthern trended nationally as the FCS quarterfinal playoff game came to a close. Even country music star and former Hootie and the Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker was paying attention.

“Great game between Georgia southern and Old Dominion [on] right now. Great game,” Rucker tweeted on his verified account.

The uninitiated across the nation probably didn’t know what #GATA¹ meant any more than your grandmother grasps the concept of Gangnam Style. Nonetheless, a blip on the Twitter landscape—even a short-lived one on a Saturday afternoon—is proof of the effect social media can have on reaching new audiences. Even briefly.

The web has been in play for marketing and promoting all things Georgia Southern for well over a decade. But the power of social media outlets, particularly Facebook and Twitter, is both exponentially greater than a single web presence and incredibly less permanent. The trending hashtags related to Georgia Southern were gone within an hour. It’s not like Georgia Southern is the only institution working to figure out how to maximize each social media blip. Across the world, every business, institution, cause and self-promoter with an internet connection and/or a smartphone is sorting through the chaos of so many voices to find can’t-miss tactics for keeping their business/institution/cause/project in the larger conversation². Considering the undue influence of teenage girls, politics, one-issue Tweeters and posters, and other random factors in shaping the social media conversation, the next can’t-miss tactic is going to be the first³.

For now, Georgia Southern fans and those folks inside the institution concerned with social media will have to be glad for the momentary blip. And for the win, which sets up another ESPN game on Friday night.

Perhaps Hootie will be watching again. And Tweeting.

(Note: The Sunday Eagle will return next week with a new full-length feature. Please check back in next Sunday around noon!)

Footnotes

¹ (“#GATA…”) And because not even every Georgia Southern fan actually knows the meaning of GATA, it is “Get After Their Asses.” Legendary head coach Erk Russell coined the term while serving as Georgia’s defensive coordinator. The story goes that he rearranged the letters of “Georgia Tech Athletic Association” (GTAA) at the half of a road game against the Yellow Jackets. The move inspired his defense to a great second half and the term stuck.

² (“…keeping their business/institution/cause/project in the larger conversation.”) Also, whether they know it or not, these businesses/institutions/etc. may one day face the task of keeping negative information about their products/services/selves off the social media radar. Check out this story about one businessman getting lawyers involved to keep bad reviews off the social media site Yelp! http://n.pr/120EgVC

³ (“…the next can’t-miss tactic is going to be the first.”) There is, of course, the tactic of “promoted” Tweets, Facebook posts and other social media platforms-for-hire. The quality of this approach is hit-or-miss, but fails to fit the plans of nearly everyone using Twitter because (a) it isn’t free and (b) it isn’t surefire enough to mitigate (a).

Photo by SCOTT GARNER

The irony was fairly palpable. The long-anticipated statue of Erk Russell, founder and patron saint of Georgia Southern football, was publicly unveiled Saturday prior to the Eagles’ playoff game against Central Arkansas. Yet at the half, with the Eagles enjoying a seemingly comfortable 24-9 lead, a sizeable percentage of the student body made an exodus to catch the kickoff of another game featuring another team with ties to Russell. The University of Georgia was trying to earn a trip to play for the national championship, something the Bulldogs had not won since Russell left Athens and took his magic south to Statesboro.

Such a travesty would simply go down as another smack in the face of the greatest Division I football program of the last 30 years, reduced in status by the simple sub-classification of “big” college football, if not for the larger picture. Presumably the same students who fled the bleachers for couches and flatscreens are the very electorate that pushed to vault Georgia Southern into the highest level of college football with their own money¹. Presuming a conference invitation to Georgia Southern by a FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) conference—and if you haven’t been paying attention, several of those conferences are sporting gaping holes thanks to the latest round of college football musical chairs—the Eagles will likely enter what the NCAA terms a “transition” period as soon as next season. Georgia Southern will be trapped between FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) and FBS. While building up scholarships and otherwise arranging to play a new, bigger (and, presumably, better) brand of opponent, the Eagles will be excluded from the FCS playoffs but ineligible to participate in a FBS bowl game.

This equation means that unless Georgia Southern defeats Old Dominion next week in Norfolk, Virginia, and (and!) North Dakota State trips up against Wofford, Saturday’s game could very well be the end of a historic period of postseason games at Paulson Stadium.

Not that everyone knew. A highly unscientific poll of random attendees found about half had considered (or been informed of) the potentially historic nature of Georgia Southern’s matchup against Central Arkansas. Tracy Ham, the quarterback under center for Georgia Southern’s first three playoff games at Our House and the man at the trigger for the Eagles’ first two national titles, had not considered the ramifications of the game. When the scenario was explained to him², he didn’t waste time waxing nostalgic about the Good Old Days, either.

“It’s what you have to do if you’re going to get bigger and better,” he said.

And there lies the crux of the argument and the worrisome future possibly foreshadowed by the departing Georgia Southern students at the half. Are the Eagles really getting better by getting bigger? Is there any scenario in which a team from Statesboro might one day play itself into the national championship picture at the next level of football? Is it even a relevant concern? There is a strong school of thought, stated succinctly by Ham but prevalent among a big swath of Eagle Nation, that simply stepping onto a larger stage enhances the university.

Another thought, which has been tossed around in FCS circles since it was still officially called “I-AA,” maintains the FBS is marching inexorably toward another subdivision³. The Big Boys like those in the SEC, Pac-12 and the erroneously-named Big Ten are sick and tired of sharing revenue with Boise State and any other school from a mid-major conference who happens to barge into the BCS conversation. To combat the problem, as the theory goes, four or five “Super Conferences” will emerge and immediately shut the door to the clubhouse for everyone else, ensuring no one like Kent State, Northern Illinois, Cincinnati or (down the road) Georgia Southern ever gets so much as a whiff of the audacious crystal sphere that is the championship trophy. According to this view of the future, Georgia Southern isn’t moving up so much to compete against teams like Georgia for the national championship but rather to remain in football’s second tier when the biggest schools rid themselves of the mid-major remora attached to their collective underside. If the scenario comes to pass, Georgia Southern has simply positioned itself to be right back where it started under Russell, only with more scholarships and a bigger stadium.

That’s a win, right?

The Tribe of Both and An Uncomfortable Truth

Where the University of Georgia is concerned, Georgia Southern fans largely fall clearly on one side of a completely rhetorical line or the other. On one side is the tribe of “they’re both my team.” These fans take the distinction between the FCS and FBS levels of football and apply it to their own allegiances. It isn’t so different from having a favorite college team and a favorite professional team.

Diametrically opposed to the pragmatic Tribe of Both is the “No Bulldogs” camp. Those fans still in the bleachers as Georgia Southern held off Central Arkansas’s furious last charge are 100 percent No Bulldog loyalists⁴. For these Georgia Southern supporters, red and black clothing constitutes a fashion faux pas. Going to a Georgia game in Athens is a sin. Doing so when the Eagles are playing in Paulson is a mortal sin. To a lesser degree, the No Bulldogs camp also subscribes to No Yellow Jackets, No Volunteers, No Fighting Irish, etc. But the real ire is reserved for Georgia.

In a bar or on a message board, the fine line between loyalty for Georgia Southern and Georgia can be adjudicated from thousands of angles. In the end, though, the simple existence of the line is as troublesome for a Georgia Southern team in the FBS as it is for the one still playing for the FCS championship. Because unless your Aunt Sue went to Clemson and married Uncle Sam from South Carolina, major college football programs don’t see split allegiances coaxing their fan base out of the stadium at halftime. Texas fans aren’t happy for Texas A&M when the Aggies beat a SEC powerhouse like Alabama. Michigan fans don’t tune the televisions in the Big House luxury boxes to the Michigan State game unless their own Big Ten fate is somehow tied to the outcome of the game.

As long as Georgia Southern remained at the FCS level and played well enough to compete for a shot at the national championship, the Tribe of Both was mostly an annoyance to more dedicated fans. If the Eagles complete their move to the next division, those fans could be the difference in filling up a renovated and expanded stadium or having it appear empty and sad compared to the heyday of overflow crowds spilling onto the grass hills of Paulson as we know it.

Getting back to the irony, though, means getting back to Erk.

In Athens, Russell is regarded almost as dearly as Vince Dooley, the head coach for whom he served as defensive coordinator for so many years. Russell was long seen as the “heart” of the Bulldogs and he coined most of the popular vernacular now claimed by the Eagles—“GATA” foremost—while in Athens. Russell himself kept a room full of memorabilia from his days as a football coach, almost evenly divided between Georgia Southern and the University of Georgia. A case could be made for Erk Russell as the ultimate symbol of the Tribe of Both. And a case could be made against it. After winning the 1985 I-AA championship, he famously insinuated that the citizens of Statesboro could replace their Georgia and Georgia Tech merchandise with the Georgia Southern brand.

His admonitions didn’t get as much traction as they might have. But his results as a head coach couldn’t be argued against. And at Georgia Southern, those results were clearest in the playoffs.

Wrapping Up History

If Georgia Southern versus Central Arkansas ends up being the final playoff game at Paulson Stadium, at least it was a win, 24-16. It wasn’t a pretty win, although quarterback Jerick McKinnon came tantalizingly close to the FCS playoff rushing record, held since 1999 by Georgia Southern icon Adrian Peterson⁵. Georgia Southern coach Jeff Monken made a rare clock-management error at the end of the first half, allowing Central Arkansas time to get the ball and kick a field goal as time expired. Then the usually potent Eagle offense fizzled while the oft-maligned pass defense rose to the occasion to preserve the win.

If the Eagles don't win this year's FCS national championship, Paulson Stadium may forever be known as "Six Flags over Statesboro."(Photo by SCOTT GARNER)

Twenty-four, as they say, is more than sixteen.

Beating the Bears will not go down as one of the epic playoff games in Paulson history. The Eagles won two national titles on their home field. That includes a three-point win over Stephen F. Austin in 1989 to preserve a perfect 15-0 season, Russell’s last as the team’s coach. In 1987, the Eagles won a playoff overtime game against Maine (a team Georgia Southern has faced three times in Paulson, always in the postseason). A year later, a recovered fumble preserved a one-point win over Idaho⁶ on the way to the school’s fourth national title. The same magic had been in play in 1988 when a fumble by Eastern Kentucky halted a game-winning drive on the Eagles’ 20-yard line.  The list goes on: the comeback against FAMU, a slugfest with Appalachian State, and two heartbreaking losses to Furman and Western Kentucky.

There was also last season’s barn-burner⁷ against this week’s playoff opponent, Old Dominion. The 55-48 final was a track meet and ODU actually figures to be better this year than last.

Littered across the graveyard of the playoff vanquished are programs already playing at the next level. Arkansas State and Nevada lost national title games to the Eagles but moved up (with mixed success) to play in the FBS. Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State, Idaho, Central Florida, Troy and Connecticut all faced the Eagles in the playoffs—most of them at Paulson—but now play a level above the Eagles. Of the list above, only Western Kentucky bested Georgia Southern.

A portion of Eagle Nation has pined for Georgia Southern to play with the so-called “big boys” for years, and the list of teams on the back end of their own jump up is salt in the wound. A smaller but loyal segment of the fan base points to the mixed success of former I-AA/FCS teams: Boise State has become a major program in college football, but the list of truly significant programs to emerge from a jump in classification is short.

Of course, when Erk Russell came to Georgia Southern, the list of programs with a national championship trophy on the shelf after just two years of competition was short, too. Those who believe in the magic of Eagle Creek are hoping for “One More Time.”

But as one Middle Tennessee State graduate said after the game in Paulson Saturday, “I’ve seen what moving up did for my alma mater. I wish they would have stayed.”

Stay tuned, Eagle Nation.

¹ (“…with their own money”) Or their parents’ money. Or the government’s. Or the banks’, which will be due back with interest.

² (“…scenario was explained”) By this story’s author, specifically.

³ (“…marching inexorably toward another subdivision”) In case the whole “subdivision” thing is baffling (and it can be), here’s the “fits in a footnote” version. In 1978, the NCAA decided to take all the Division I schools and reduce the financial burden of football for the smaller schools. Although these “I-AA” schools could have from zero to 63 full football scholarships, they were theoretically on the same playing field as their “I-A” brethren in every other sport. Thus, there is no I-AA/FCS basketball or baseball or golf. Only football was truncated. Thus, Georgetown is a basketball powerhouse and a football lightweight.

⁴ (“…No Bulldog loyalists) Or they have their split allegiance in a clear, unambiguous hierarchy.

⁵ (“…rushing record, held since 1999”) McKinnon racked up 316 yards and two touchdowns. Peterson rushed for 333 yards and five touchdowns in the 1999 national quarterfinal against defending champion UMass. Peterson famously had flu-like symptoms, drawing comparisons to Michael Jordan. There was no immediate word on McKinnon’s health.

⁶ (“…preserved a one-point win over Idaho”) Idaho, notably, is one of the teams Georgia Southern hopes not to emulate at the FBS level. The Vandals have been consistently, tragically awful since leaving I-AA.

⁷ (“…last season’s barn-burner”) Shamelessly, the author now points you to the live blog written about the game while staying home with a three-week old baby: http://www.instituteofhigherthinking.com/2011/12/03/gsu-odu-a-live-blog/ (Parental advisory: contains cussin’.)

(*Beyond this point, you will see no “I” and only “we.” The project ahead is made possible because of willing partners, as you will see.)What Eagle Nation needs is perspective.

Georgia Southern University has been plenty busy lately, gearing up to a breakneck pace in just the last four months. This year, GSU announced it had crossed the significant 20,000-student plateau. Students voted for, and the Georgia Board of Regents approved, a fee increase to propel the university’s flagship athletic program—football—into the highest level of college competition. They’ll be going there under the leadership of a freshly-minted athletic director. Meanwhile, repeated blows to state budgets and a well-publicized rift between faculty and administration have led many on campus to question the prudence of committing so many new resources to football when some instructors are growing uneasy with the direction of the school.

All of these stories and many more have been ably covered by local media as they have broken. But the local outlets have been outpaced by social media in understanding the deeper ramifications of many of the biggest stories around Georgia Southern’s campus. Limited manpower and resources often compel even the best reporters to stop after” who, what, when and where” and leave very little time for “why.”

The Sunday Eagle will aim to add context to what you already know about Georgia Southern. Beginning as a regular feature in this humble space before moving to an online home all its own in 2013, The Sunday Eagle will aim to be a combination of the traditional Sunday newspaper, fat with extra sections and long-form journalism, and the ease of access of the Internet. Not to mention the price point: even after The Sunday Eagle moves to its own web address, content will always be free.

Context is just part of what The Sunday Eagle will be working to bring readers. As we grow, so will our offerings. Feature stories, fiction, podcasts and even documentary films are all part of the long-term plan for our ambitious web publication. With every aspect of the project, our goals will be basic: to be clear, informative and entertaining. We will not be doing journalism without a net, either. A group of working journalists, teachers and advisors has graciously agreed to be our conscience and advise us as we build The Sunday Eagle.

What can readers expect from The Sunday Eagle? For starters, our editorial efforts will not be limited to just athletics. While it may seem our early efforts will focus more on sports, a true picture of what is happening at Georgia Southern can’t be accurately painted with just one palette. Readers can expect The Sunday Eagle to delve into academics, campus life, the Statesboro community’s relationships with GSU and the ongoing lives of alumni. Our start will be deliberate and slow, but by the time Georgia Southern moves into the Fall Semester of 2013, we hope to be creating an online spot everyone in Eagle Nation can enjoy, from the diehard superfans to old alumni on the other side of the globe.

Come back next week and see what we have to offer in our first full feature. We think you’ll like it and come back for more.

About Us

Scott Garner and Jake Hallman have been collaborating since “Doctor G and the E.R. Nurses,” a WVGS radio show. The two worked together on the now-defunct student publication The Eagle and for several years at the Statesboro Herald, where each claimed awards from the Georgia Press Association and Associated Press. Scott has continued to sporadically write freelance pieces since leaving everyday journalism in 2005 and now works in marketing, promotion and sales for United Distributors. Jake is a successful photographer and musician and the founder of Stouthouse Media.

“You want to build a bird cage, then?”

“No, shite fer brains. Rooks!”

“Those wee castles from the checkerboard game?”

“Fer fook’s sake. Are ye’s all dumb as sheep’s spooge? Fooking great rooks! In a circle! Rooks!”

Three generations later, someone finally deciphered the man’s wishes and built Stonehenge. It was a big undertaking. The planning and logistics of finding, hauling and erecting the famous landmark would have tested the limits of human intellect given the available resources at the time. And since the best modernity has to offer are a few informed suggestions about the design and function of Stonehenge, it’s hard to say whether or not those early Brits even finished the thing.

“Fook this. These goddamn rooks are too much a vexation of my arse. Which fooking goat-fooker taut of this idea?”

Two points: (1) at some point in history, someone (or a group of someones) had an ambitious idea. They challenged themselves. Then they got to work on the ambitious project and left the world with a monument to human potential. And fooking rooks. (2) Even if Stonehenge is unfinished or imperfect or just a silly circle jerk to keep some rural Englishmen amused until they figured out how to get white people in charge of the world, their efforts produced something. Something amazing and mystical.

I'm the one who looks like he might have stolen his medal rather than run for it.

I started wandering down this line of thought on about the ninth mile of a half-marathon (hereafter referred to as a “halfathon,” because that just sounds less fractional and leaves the achievement somewhat undiminished in the face of an actual marathon). With four miles left to the finish and no experience running farther than 10 miles to draw upon, I was rather paradoxically growing more excited than concerned. I would do this. I would finish a halfathon. A year earlier, while working at the Savannah Rock and Roll Marathon, I had made up my mind to participate in the event. I had been checking IDs for runners who wanted a free beer being offered at the finish line to participants. The experience went something like this:

Me: May I see your ID?

Runner: Sure.

My Internal Monologue: That’s a pretty hot chick. Obviously running is good for her, because she looks to be in pretty good shape for a lady my age.

Birthdate on Driver’s License: June 12, 1905.

Runner: Can you hurry up? The last time I had to wait this long for a drink was prohibition.

My Uncle Tom used to say, “Americans will do anything to lose weight other than diet and exercise.” Tom died after complications from gastric bypass surgery. Irony rides with a spear, y’all. The runners at the 2011 Rock and Roll Marathon proved over and over again the holistic value of a good jolt of cardiovascular activity on a regular basis. Sure their knees were shot and bones in their feet rolled around like a baggie full of Scrabble tiles. And so what if marathoners were known to lose toenails, shit themselves on the course or, in the case of one gentleman running in front of my cousin’s wife during the 2011 marathon, drop stone dead at Mile 20. They looked great! And not the “great” of an underfed Victoria’s Secret model who believes one candy corn a year is an appropriate sugar intake. Runners look healthy. They look well-preserved. By all the data I’ve been able to gather, women who run have the best asses in the free world (this includes my wife, who also completed this year’s R&R Halfathon).

The biggest problem with wanting to run the 2012 R&R Halfathon was simple: I would have to run it. And to run it, I would have to train for it. And training takes commitment. It takes the desire to follow through. It would mean persevering when the fun of beginning has given way and the fun of accomplishing the goal is still far away. Running the R&R Halfathon was, in short, the very sort of thing I always quit on as soon as the next Big Idea caught my fancy.

Seeing things through has always been a problem with me. Big ideas and visions of grandeur attract me like a Paula Deen restaurant attracts pasty Yankees with a hankering for fried chicken. But what was an occasional problem for about first twenty-five years became a constant problem in my thirties. If I said I was going to finally write that novel or run a halfathon, you could bet I probably wouldn’t. In fact, a couple of folks did just that. They bet I wouldn’t finish the halfathon and it was smart money. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 471 times, what the fuck? Are you just an asshole or something?

There is no need to get into the full story. I had my fooking rooks and I needed to get them up the fooking hill. I did it. And on Saturday, November 3, I ran 13.1 miles with over 15,000 other runners, collected my medal and accomplished a goal. A big goal.

But just because my rooks are at the top of the hill doesn’t mean I’m finished. At least I hope not.

Two more ambitious goals are still in front of me. By the middle of next year, I hope to post a serialized novel here on the Institute of Higher Thinking blog. I am working on it as a part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), although I will almost certainly fail to produce the goal of 50,000 words by November 30. I wanted to finish the halfathon in under three hours, too, but not doing so didn’t diminish the accomplishment of crossing the finish line. I just want to write the novel.

The other project is something I’ not going to talk about just yet. It’s even bigger in its own way, and it has been repeatedly pushed back. I hope to debut something in this space on Sunday, November 25. I hope no one is betting against me this time, although I would still understand if they did.

One fooking rook does not a Stonehenge make.

Spiced rum is how Steve the Party Monkey rolls, yo!

Steve has been a very successful monkey. His stock portfolio is rife with winners, even in this unpredictable economy. He has a 3-handicap on the golf course. He produced a string of successful Alt Country albums and had an uncredited sit-in with Wilco during their last recording session. Steve has read many of the great books and his conversations on post-Tarantino film tropes are captivating.

A good party monkey knows when to say when. Steve learned the hard way.

At least no one wrote "DIPSHIT" on his forehead in Sharpie this time.

One night, after smoking two bananas (not the approved method of ingestion, by the way, even for a monkey) and too much Jack Daniels, Steve sent a strongly-worded text message to his boss. Although his job satisfaction was low, Steve was in no position to burn bridges. Calling his immediate supervisor a “total cint” (sic) was a match and a can of gasoline.

Things would have gone better if Sara the Stuffed Panda had answered his 3 a.m. booty call.

Pretty much, Steve the Party Monkey hit rock bottom.

But this is a happy story, and Steve was one smart monkey. He did three things to quickly recover his life.

1. He gave up smoking bananas.
2. He limited his drinking until after noon except on designated International Drinking Holidays (New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day (if single), St. Pat’s, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, Bastille Day, The First Day of College Football Season, The First Day of the NFL Season, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve).
3. He got on LinkedIn and began looking for a new gig.

And he surfed some porn.

Steve also decided it was time to start working out.

"Hey man, how many Lincoln Logs can you bench?"

It was not long before Steve the Party Monkey had a new job. While hanging out waiting for some temp work at the local Books-A-Million, Steve the Party Monkey was spotted by a young man with a keen eye for talent. Before he knew it, Steve was riding home with his new boss.

And new best friend.

"Take the picture quick! I gotta get down from here and pee."

The job comes with a lot of perks, including a hot new ride.

"Can I get some spinners on this biatch!?!"

STAY TUNED FOR THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF STEVE THE PARTY MONKEY!! (And Atticus).