Trying to win is only half the problem at Georgia State
Cheryl Levick hopes Trent Miles can jump-start Georgia State on and off field. (Jason Getz/AJC)
Georgia State held a news conference Monday.
Or maybe it was more like a pep rally.
There was pre-recorded, whip-up-the-crowd music blaring through arena speakers. There were cheerleaders and a mascot named Pounce and a pep band in the bleachers and maybe 100 folks, many in the employ of the university, who stood up and applauded as if on cue.
Just as well. Because the job facing Trent Miles as Georgia State’s second football coach isn’t merely to win games, it’s to make sure more than just friends and family of the running back and the long-snapper are aware that a game is even being played.
All new programs lose games. They lack athletes, tradition and an identity. The most troubling aspect of the fledgling Panthers is not that their win totals were only 6, 3 and 1 in the first three seasons. It’s that their attendance dropped from just OK to off-the-radar during that same span. The announced averaged during this season’s 1-10 season was 12,312. The actual number of bodies in seats were closer to between 5,000 to 8,000 (that’s being generous), and many left at halftime.
Given that enthusiasm for a college football team drained so quickly, it’s appropriate to wonder if starting the program, given the costs involved, ever was a good idea. Remember, this is a concrete, commuter campus that rarely even has supported basketball well.
Athletic director Cheryl Levick nodded in agreement when asked about the declining fan and student support, then commented: “This is a critical hire. [Miles] has to come in and turn this program around in terms of establishing a winning tradition, in terms of getting the students in the stands, and the fans cheering. So he’s got a job on the field and off the field, and he knows that.”
There’s no turning back now. Not with millions of dollars already invested in startup costs, a new practice facility and the seemingly premature leap from the Colonial Athletic Association to FBS and the Sun Belt. Georgia State officials have no choice but to embrace the build-it-and-they will come philosophy. They don’t want to think of the alternative.
Levick again: “We have to produce a winning, exciting product on the field. If we do that, the students will be back in the stands.”
Enter Miles. He has been in worse situations. He came from Indiana State. His predecessor went 1-32 in three seasons. Miles was told, “Fix it or we’re shutting it down.”
No, seriously. The school was going to shutter the football program.
Miles didn’t do any better in his first two seasons: 1-22. But he was viewed as Lazarus-like for going 19-14 over the next three.
He’ll have to raise the dead again. He wanted this job so badly after Bill Curry’s retirement that he sent Levick a bound 42-page plan on how he would fix every aspect of the program. He knows what he’s getting into.
“I’m not a head football coach — I’m a CEO of a football department,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. I’ve got to fund raise. I’ve got to raise attendance. I’ve got to recruit, put together a staff, educate young men.”
Referencing fans leaving games early, he added: “We have to give people something to be interested in. We have to get them to buy in and take ownership and stock in the team. When you do that, it’s hard to get up and walk out.”
He’ll bring in a new staff. Don’t be surprised if one of the assistants is former Falcons wide receiver Terance Mathis, a long-time friend since their days together at New Mexico (Mathis was a senior and Miles a graduate assistant in 1989). Mathis is an assistant at Savannah State but the future of that coaching staff is tenuous. It’s not just a coincidence that Mathis attended Monday’s news conference.
“I think he’ll do great,” Mathis said of Miles. “He’s not a high-profile name where people say, ‘Oh, I know him, he’ll win.’ But he’s a coach who has won and does it right way. I’ve seen him recruit. We’ve been after the same kids before. He’s come to Atlanta and taken kids out of our laps.”
Win games. Build a program. Grow the fan base. It’s the same mission statement as three years ago. It doesn’t look any easier now than it did then.
By Jeff Schultz
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109 comments Add your comment
BravesFan79
December 4th, 2012
4:38 am
Congratulations for giving a bunch of C level students who could care less about grades FULL rides, meanwhile how many deserving A students got screwed out of academic scholarships??
Wait… i see your vision GSU… in the year 2050 GSU will finally make it to a whogivesacrap.com bowl after posting a 6-5 record and will face the almighty Louisiana Technicial Institute, where they will win, and the whole team will receive free milk and cookies, and a Tshirt to prove they were there. Yes… one day all the millions of dollars spent, and all the undeserving scholarships handed out will of been worth it…. just be patient fans and wait for that free Tshirt after winning some meaningless bowl game, for that’s the best you can ever hope for!
BravesFan79
December 4th, 2012
4:46 am
R Reagin: The most realistic and honest post ive ever seen on any G-State article ive ever read. 2 bad the fools who dreamed up this fools gold idea couldnt ‘keep it real”
Paddy
December 4th, 2012
7:07 am
The best of luck to Coach Miles. This is a great hire for GSU. If CTM is busy winning games, recruiting, fund raising and pumping up attendance; what is the Athlectic Dept going to do? Create a great game experience, thats what we were told this summer. Sell some damn tickets Levick and get your hands dirty like you have asked your coach to do.
MoreyG
December 4th, 2012
8:22 am
someone connected is making money on this program–it is not for the students, who are paying more tuition to support a program that cannot possibly earn a profit.
Walking with a Panther
December 4th, 2012
8:35 am
@ Bravesfan 79
Well these days, it looks like the Braves has about as much of a chance of winning a World title as GSU a national championship and you still support them!! What does a better chance at winning a championship have to do with supporting your team?? If that was the case, everybody would be Yankees, Lakers, Alabama, and Cowboys fans.
OldTimer
December 4th, 2012
8:38 am
You are a very negative person. Always a negative outlook unless it is your Favorite Bulldogs you are
discussing. Why not be an optimist?? Sure they will have growing pains but they also have a tremendous opportunity!!
DaveDawg
December 4th, 2012
8:52 am
It’s not a premature leap out of the CAA. In fact, the CAA (with no natural rivals) is what killed Georgia State’s start-up momentum. GSU should’ve done more with the excitement and attention that comes with starting a new program. The Sun Belt conference will, obviously, generate more excitement. Hopefully Kennesaw State paid attention and will start off in the Southern Conference.
@BillyRay
December 4th, 2012
8:54 am
Yeah… those attendance figures are a product of this State’s flagship program playing in its biggest game in +30 years. Georgia Southern averages +20k on the season and State is sub 10k. #Truth
GTBob
December 4th, 2012
8:58 am
Here’s an idea. How about a joint venture? Grant Field is close by, and doesn’t have the cavernous empty feeling the Dome does when only 5,000 of your friends are with you. Tech could supply the facilities,and G-State could supply the football team and coach,since Tech lacks both. The joint venture brand could be GT-SU. Everyone will know instinctively that the missing last letteris a given.
GSU Panthers
December 4th, 2012
9:01 am
I will NEVER attend another GSU game until we have a winning record again. I’m sick of wasting money on a team that NOBODY cares about and a team that never wins.
A Dangerous Idea
December 4th, 2012
9:04 am
I have always believed that if you flip flopped the athletic programs at Tech and GSU, the Panthers would be a major competitor in the NCAA and Tech could concentrate on its role as one of the leading engineering and science “institutions” in the world. Tech cannot do both. By and large – not in each and every case, of course, but Tech athletes are not true Tech students. Their class catalogs rarely crossover. Let the helluva engineers play DIII ball and unleash the Panthers!
Sanjeev
December 4th, 2012
9:07 am
“All new programs lose games. ” Umm no they don’t!! Georgia Southern started the program with no losing seasons and won a title in their 3rd.
Onlooker
December 4th, 2012
9:08 am
I’m just saying but Ms Levick has definitely still got it going on. Very attractive. Nice dress but was black appropriate?
Sonny Jackson
December 4th, 2012
9:09 am
I think they should put their money and efforts into the Cross Country team!
Dr. Phill
December 4th, 2012
9:11 am
I was a professor at GSU when the President hired Lefty and discussions began about football. The University fills an important niche in the Atlanta area, providing quality under graduate and graduate programs for non traditional and working students. The Lefty experiment and the football program were ego trips for the President who attended basketball practice frequently and went on road trips with the team and rubbed shoulders with coaching greats who were pals of Lefty. The President vowed to create an Atlanta version of Georgetown. Most students were dead against the expenses mentioned in the comment above by a GSU student. Basketball may be successful o
bill
December 4th, 2012
9:16 am
Question: Didn’t Georgia Southwestern try football for a bit of time?
Echoes of Da Dome
December 4th, 2012
9:16 am
…………………………………………………………..
(i guess you need students in the stands to make echoes)
Pantherfan93
December 4th, 2012
9:22 am
@@BillyRay – OK I could see the 8,888 because of the UGA game, but why only 13k for both 2011 playoff games when you get 20+ during the regular season?
@PantherFan93
December 4th, 2012
9:30 am
Its tough to understand why playoffs drop off so badly. Maybe playoffs are so foreign to the college football world. Holiday seasons? Students w/finals? I do know our Greek Community tends to have big events outside of Statesboro at the end of the year and that is a HUGE chunk of our students that attend games.
Jim
December 4th, 2012
9:33 am
GSU needs to play its games at sometime other than Saturday afternoons if they want to increase attendance. I went to the first game three years ago and the enthusiasm was great. I think that game was on a thursday night. There is too much competition on saturday afternoons. It doesn’t matter if you are a student or alum of GSU, you still have “allegiances” to Georgia or Tech because of family, friends, or co-workers. Until the Panthers start winning, they need to play their games at a time when they don’t compete with the two local powerhouses,
itsmeagain
December 4th, 2012
9:35 am
It seems self evident that moving to the FBS would be necessary. We haven’t played a down of FBS football yet, and still we’re criticized for having an attendance which is in line with the upper half of the FCS (the division in which we were in). I wouldn’t expect our attendance to go up until 1) we start winning, and 2) we actually become an FBS team. As for whether fielding a team was worth it, it certainly was. Until we had a football team, i really didn’t care about sports at GSU. Now, i can’t get enough of it, whether it’s football, basketball, baseball, or anything else. It’s changed the students attitude towards the university, and that will only increase as we grow. Big things are happening at GSU, mark my words.
panther04
December 4th, 2012
9:39 am
I don’t expect you to really understand sports in the States.
panther04
December 4th, 2012
9:43 am
We go from one dud coach to another dud coach. It is really frustrating. Nothing big will happen until we get a proven winner as a coach.
Jee S. You
December 4th, 2012
9:49 am
Dr. Phill, You do realize that the President when Lefty was there and when football was decided on isn’t the President now, right?
GTT
December 4th, 2012
10:01 am
I feel for you. Ga. Southern is moving up and I think it’s a dumb move. The president says FBS will raise our name recognition nationally. I think going to the Sun Belt conference may gain us the Weedeater Bowl in Shreveport. Does that raise our recogition higher than being a perennial contender in FCS? I don’t think so. Ga. State has moved too fast, and get out of the Dome into an appropriate-size venue.
Me
December 4th, 2012
10:04 am
The problem with Georgia State, and it started with the announcement, is that they are more worried about recognition (remember the ESPN magazine cover) and a big name coach and more prestigious conference and such, rather than focusing on the hard work required to create a successful program. From the beginning the internet mouthpiece of the fanbase has touted how they would RULE FCS football, they would get the pick of the very best recruits, they would over-take Tech as the number 2 athletics school in the state within 5 years. Blah, Blah, Blah. The big name coaches (Reeves, Curry), the big time stadium (Ga Dome), the big conference invites (CAA, SBC), have translated to little more than a good laughing stock. Burn dumpster fire, burn.
Paddy
December 4th, 2012
10:06 am
GT Bob……..great idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GTT
December 4th, 2012
10:20 am
@GStateBen, or whatever. Ga. Southern has not been nationally relevant in a decade? We made the semifinals last season, genius. Your success/relevance envy is not pretty.
GTT
December 4th, 2012
10:21 am
But good luck to Ga. State and sorry you have Ben in your family.
GTBob
December 4th, 2012
10:24 am
You could call the Joint Venture “experimental” or “exploratory”. And to designate it as such, the logo on the helmets would read GT-SU X.
Dr. Phil
December 4th, 2012
10:33 am
Levick is too old for Petrino. Does she have a teenage daughter?
Tommy
December 4th, 2012
10:38 am
I am going to say it again, and again, and again, that the Board of Regents and the State of Georgia should merge GT with GA State. It is a no brainer and tremendous money saver.One team, one President, one head coach, one of everything. Is this too simple for them to understand?
Shultz is an idiot
December 4th, 2012
10:47 am
Jeff,
Must be since to sit back and judge everything Ga State does with negative comments. Oh right I’m a journalist I don’t do anything I just report..must be nice.
It is not the critic (Jeff Schultz) who counts; not the man (Jeff Schultz) who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man (Trent Miles) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause (not Jeff Schultz); who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Schultz you are nothing.
Eagle Fan
December 4th, 2012
11:00 am
“All new programg lose games”
Sorry, but this is incorrect. Georgia Southern didn’t “lose”, they actually won very quickly. UTSA isn’t losing. USA had a couple undefeated seasons to start. Good luck to the new regime at State. Nowhere to go but up!
Paddy
December 4th, 2012
11:20 am
Eagle Fan…….lest we forget; ODU didn’t lose! There were some solid plans out there to follow by GSU. They decided to go with a plan that many have tried and all have failed. Did no one at that U. read a basic Sports Marketing book or confer w/ the world class Business school at GSU? Sell tickets and don’t do anything if it does not help the team win. All the fancy stuff comes years later when there is a ton of cash in the bank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Richard Bagge
December 4th, 2012
11:32 am
Much as I wish GSU luck here, their attendance is smaller than the Georgia Force of the arena football league.
When was the last time the AJC ran a story about them? The team folded fewer than two months ago and the paper never reported it, did it? So why spend inches on the Panthers?
Wayne stuck in AL
December 4th, 2012
11:43 am
Still, no one has addressed the elephant in the room:
Why does GSU have a football team in the first place? (I could ask the same question of UAB and South Alabama, too.)
LetMeJustSay
December 4th, 2012
11:46 am
I sincerely believe Cheryl Levick has been the reason this program is failing, and it is because of her short-sightedness. She lacks vision and she settles for subpar results. She has no ambition, and I truly feel that she doesn’t really care about this school or program.
Paddy
December 4th, 2012
11:59 am
LetMeJustSay……..I think you are wrong on all your point about Ms Levick. Her problem was not selling enough tickets, period. She got sidetracked into the hype of a new program and gimicks and just did things out of order. She can turn it around. Lets see if they really stick to a successful selling campaign. It is the ONLY solution that can guarentee success!
ATL Observer
December 4th, 2012
12:22 pm
1) CTM was a great hire. Anytime you coach football at INDIANA STATE and yet your departure leads the 11:00p news, you must have had some sort of impact.
2) Re: whether it was a mistake to start football in the first place, time will tell. The one thing I’d ask is “what’s the end game?” Is it really going to increase the value of the degree like supporters claim? Central Florida and South Florida are considered like models….are their degrees landing better jobs for their graduates than they were 15 years ago? Or is the end game just to have more students? Hard to buy that for a school that’s already enrolling over 30,000 annually. I don’t like how it’s casually thrown out there that a football program will increase the value of the degree without anyone really exposing that statement to any type of scrutiny.
3) As pointed out by several people above, the biggest problem with the Georgia State program is that they put the cart before the horse (i.e. exposure before winning). Their constant bragging points have been “media market!” (compare the current ten ranked Top Ten programs in college football to the Top Ten media markets, then tell me how much that even matters), “major league stadium!” (that is too big for the team it houses, has seat colors starkly different from the school’s blue, is a cave with a terrible sound system that makes a great band sound awful and no one wants to go to it on a Saturday afternoon), “ESPN cover!” (so that more people can notice that this team employed a mothballed coach who was overrated when he wasn’t mothballed and that his team can’t win), and they had the raw nerve to boast about their 6-5 season when Old Dominion went 9-3 in their inaugural year and Lambuth was among their losses.
4) I’m impressed with Miles’ philosophy: it *is* going to take a “CEO” to make this work. There is an entire culture that needs changing and it’s good that State has a coach that recognizes this.
Astonishing Werepanther
December 4th, 2012
1:03 pm
I will echo the sentiment that, as a student, the whole mood regarding school spirit has changed on campus with the addition of football. There are issues to overcome, and yes, it will take patience, but I still believe it’s part of a great transformation at GSU.
Agent Orange
December 4th, 2012
1:55 pm
So much hate for GSU.
Hate from schools that have nothing to worry about. Very common in this day and age for people to hate for no reason.
Would be nice for once to have people be supportive and not throw something, whatever it is under the proverbial bus for silly reasons.
Paddy
December 4th, 2012
2:15 pm
Atl Observer…..well said!!!!!!!!!!
GTT
December 4th, 2012
3:03 pm
I’ll go out on a limb here and say the number of responses to this column is reflective of the amount of interest in Ga. State football.
Reid in EAV
December 4th, 2012
3:14 pm
I’m a GSU alum, but I never thought adding football was a good idea.
Dwight
December 4th, 2012
3:46 pm
I was a rival coach a number of years ago and I always respected GSU’s athletic program as a unique, familial, and well-run department. They’re athletes were top-notch citizens and the department was excellent at supporting the academic mission. They were also competitive. So little attention has been paid to how the rest of this historically strong athletics department has suffered in the wake of the rush to include football. Despite saying that no sports would be cut as a result of adding football, some sports are being cut and others are barely getting the support they need to be effective. I understand the lure of football but it’s killing everything that was great about that department.
Roger
December 4th, 2012
5:30 pm
It’s not how big the Panther is in the fight but how big the fight is in the Panther. The cohesion of the new assembled staff with the players and their determination will be a big factor. Many principles left by the outgoing Coach & Staff are still valid. The oil of enthusiasm and dedication to efficient practice will go a long way. All will have to pay the price of implementation to the common goal each week.
berry steve
December 4th, 2012
5:49 pm
Roger You took alot of words to say absolutly nothing.
Screwball
December 4th, 2012
5:52 pm
Indicative of the interest (or lack of interest) in GSU sports is the fact that Schultz could write something about Georgia’s backup punter and get more than 90 some comments. Sad.
GSU_Grad01
December 4th, 2012
6:00 pm
What is there to comment on? Seems like a good hire. I was at the 1st game and have given money to the program. Curry is a great man but I am excited to see another coach that has grown a program take the field. Seems like he has a plan, I hope it works.
GSU does face many problems, USF has shown a program can be grown with other schools and even a NFL team in the market.
UGA’s punter would get 20 comments from Tech fans just stirring the pot.