When the infant varsity football program at Georgia State visits Alabama Thursday night, the lopsided odds fit well into the history of Panther football.
Seven years ago, a ragtag bunch of student-athletes packed up salvaged football pants and fearlessness for a trip to Tuscaloosa. They were the dreamers of the “G-State” club football team and their pursuit left lasting marks on their characters and careers.
One was attorney Ed Gadrix, then on the GSU athletic board.
“[University president Carl] Patton gave me dirty looks,” said Gadrix, a 1965 graduate who helped bankroll the team. “He didn’t let us talk about football [at athletic board meetings]. A lot of people thought we were kooky.”
Gadrix spoke while tailgating at the Panthers’ final home game earlier this month at the Georgia Dome. To him, the scene wasn’t so distant from the few hundred fans who dotted DeKalb County’s Adams Stadium for G-State football games.
“It’s actually more fulfilling than surprising,” he said of the crowd of 14,689 heading into the arena. “We never doubted. We talked about this at the time. We thought what we started would grow into this.”
Back in the day
On Aug. 30, 2003, the “G State” team traveled to Tuscaloosa as preseason bait for Stillman College, a Division II team.
With a budget of $50,000, built from $125 dues from each player and their own ticket sales, the club team had far patchwork than the disparate varsity roster today. G-State players were often older, rehabbed, hailed from other countries or had no football experience.
“I wanted to see what I had left,” said Tony Henry, now 35, who had played at Southside High School. He fit practices around classes and a job at a Kraft foods warehouse to support his family. “For me, it was all about the love of the game.”
G-State used equipment cast off from other programs. Their opponents gave them looks that said “second string” or worse.
“The tackle on Stillman gave me a look like, ‘Here comes the sub.’ And I blew him up on the ball and instantly sacked their quarterback,” said Mike Jamal, a defensive tackle. “I remember it was a big day for them, with alumni and tailgating and everything. Impressive was the word.”
G-State lost big to Stillman, the score of the scrimmage not recorded.
“It was a long bus ride home,” said Joe Miller, 30, a two-way lineman from St. Pius. “We were able to see what we could be in time.”
Club football changed them
Making a football team from scratch gave the G-State men some critical graduation gifts: confidence, tolerance for risk, leadership and inspiration.
Gadrix encounters naysayers as he lobbies to legalize horse racing in Georgia.
“I went through this same thing with [GSU] football,” he said. “You can accomplish anything if you are passionate.”
Enrolled in the GSU law school, Jamal started the Catholic Legal Student Association.
“My football experience helped me create what didn’t exist,” he said.
Miller “realized through playing that my place was in educating through teaching and coaching.” He does both at Blessed Trinity. A former student, Sam Burkhalter, is a Panthers running back.
Team founder and center Preston Stancil, 31, of Buford now recruits insurance agents like he once enlisted guys from the GSU weight room. He pushed himself through personal challenges “by remembering what it was like to hit the sleds,” he said. He helps lead a Celebrate Recovery group through his church and his club football experience helps him to let people know that anything is possible.
Henry counsels at-risk teens in a program called Defying the Odds.
“I tell them now look at GSU and all the fanfare. It had to start somewhere,” he said. “I was a small piece of the puzzle.”
Another Tuscaloosa milestone
The start of the varsity football program was announced in 2008, a year after the club program ended. These alums’ pride stops well short of taking credit for starting today’s team, said Mark Lawson, who served as campus sponsor in 2002. They feel a special investment, though, approaching the showdown with the defending national champs. On Facebook, Lawson’s profile picture is a flag proclaiming, “Beat Bama. Go Panthers.”
Ben Moore, the club team’s publicist and marketing manager, will be one of the outnumbered Georgia State fans cheering Thursday night.
“For where we’ve come from, how the vision was constructed and the thousands of hours that many, many people dedicated to make our dreams a reality, I could not be happier,” Moore said.
Bryant-Denny Stadium stands just across Interstate 359 from the 9,000-seat bleachers where G-State lost big to Stillman in 2003.
"We rolled past Alabama back then," Henry said. "Now this team will make the ultimate stop. What better way to put Georgia State on the map?"
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